Product Review: Planet Bike, Protege Bike Computers

Our family has used Planet Bike Protege Bike Computers for a number of years now. We have used each of the wired models; Protege 9.0, 8.0 and 5.0.

The Protege 5.0 features:

• speed
• ride time
• trip distance
• odometer
• clock

The Protege 8.0 adds:

• speed comparator
• average speed
• maximum speed

The Protege 9.0 has all of the features mentioned above, plus a thermometer.

The instruction manual is easy to understand. Installing a Protege bike computer takes about 30 minutes. If you can set the time on a digital watch, you should have no trouble setting up the computer. It is important to measure the circumfrence of the tire accurately. To do this, I put the valve stem directly at the bottom of the tire, draw a line with sidewalk chalk, then walk the bike until the valve stem makes one revolution. I then draw another chalk line and measure the distance between the lines. The direction book tells you how to convert the measurement to millimeters, which is what you enter into the bike computer.

It can be a little tricky getting the magnet lined up with the sensor correctly. They do need to be lined up correctly and come really close together.

Once installed, using the computer is a breeze. You simply push it up in the holder for a few seconds to reset the trip odometer. The display is easy to read, even in bright sunlight. The information is amazingly accurate. How accurate? We did a family test of their accuracy today on the way to the supermarket. We reset the trip odometer on all four of our computers at the same spot, then checked them when we got home. Here is the result.

In our test all of our computers recorded distances within .03 miles (highlighted in yellow.) Some of the slight distance variation could be from tiny variations in routes as well as differeing riding habbits (like swerving back and forth.) All in all, our test shows the computers are very accurate.

We have never had an actual Protege computer fail, but we have had two wire harnesses fail over the past few years. Also, my mom lost a Protege computer because it fell out of the holder. I can think of no other negatives to these comptuers.

We have also tried a Schwinn bike computer and found the Planet Bike computers much nicer to use.

I highly reccomend the Planet Bike computers. They run about $15 - $25 at most online stores. If you enjoy riding and like gadgets, you'll love a Planet Bike Protege.