Garmin Varia RTL515 & RVR315 Cycling Radar Review

Hey folks, it's Ray of DCRAINMAKER.com here, and today I've got your in-depth review of the Garmin Varia radar RTL515 and RVR315...there's so many code here! All ya gotta know is there's two new radars. One's a big one, and one's a little one. The big one's the exact same size as previous one. They do all the exact same things, except one new major feature. Which is both of these new radars have Bluetooth in them. Bluetooth Smart in particular, and that allows them to connect to third-party apps as well as Garmin's own apps on smartphones. So that's the main headliner feature here. Now if you're familiar with Garmin's radar units in a past they've been around about a half a decade or so. This is the third iteration. And from a fundamental standpoint there's no major changes here. There is a new addition of Bluetooth Smart, and a slightly bigger battery on the RTL515. But beyond that it's kind of more or less the same thing. They have added as well a new peloton mode. Yes I said peloton mode. No, not that Peloton, peloton like the original word peloton for a group of cyclists. Yeah the same word that Peloton, that Peloton tries to sue everyone else for using. But in this case it just simply mean that if you're in a group of cyclists it'll go ahead and reduce the brightness level. Well...you'll reduce it because that's a manual feature, so it's not so bright anymore. It's as simple as that. And before we get too much further I know a lot of folks I don't really much cycling radar like: 'Why the heck would you need a cycling radar?!?' and 'Why wouldn't you just use a mirror anyway?!' - those cost like 10 or 15 bucks. These cost a lot more than that. and it's true a mirror would work in a mirror does work and that's fine that's great I would also say that battle has been fought and not decided for again a half a decade now you either on one side on the other side there's no real changing your opinion for me that what I find useful about the selectmen radar is primarily out on country roads quiet roads where you're out there for many many hours you've got to pick up a car that's approaching you from behind before you might be able to see it or if you're fatigued or something like that so that you know it's there I've also found it super useful in mountain passes when I'm descending where the wind noise is really high and you can't hear cars approaching from behind to be able to make the right decision about whether or not to let that car pass pull over or whatever the case may be it does not work in cities I'll tell you that straight up front it's pretty much useless in cities I wouldn't bother using it there technically it works just fine but I don't think there's much of value in it so with that let's crack open the box here I want to with the RTL 515 again this is the successor to the existing RTL 510 or 511 if you're in Germany so I'm going inside here we've got a micro USB charging cable come on garmin USB see all the things you can do it I know you can we have some mounts and then we've got the rest of the there we go and here is the actual radar right there on the side of the box you'll see the specs listed right there the only Mets changed between those punks in the previous box is it win from 15 hours to 16 hours of battery life and then they added a very app compatible literally identical every other bit of it keep in mind that 16 hours is if you're in day flash mode if you're in one of the other modes it drops down to 7 hours so if you're in for example always-on mode or night flash that's only 7 hours about early life which isn't a ton of battery life I was hoping to see that maybe increased bit more but I guess that is where it is any case here is the RTL spot 15 go ahead and lift off the top tape stuck there we go okay and you can see on the back of it here it's identical to the RTL 510 if I go and zoom this and we there we go you see that from the back it's identical the only difference the only thing is this little Bluetooth logo right there versus not right there and of course I know it says the name but that that's cheating aside same front same side same it's the same the same weight I've done all the things it's the same so if we cracked open the bag of mounts here this allows you to mount it on your seat post now it has is the plastic part you'll notice it's a garment quarter trim out look at the old one out of the way here it's a gorman quarter trim out so that means you go ahead you snap it in place and like this and it goes onto your seat post and these are four different types of C posts so if you have a bit more of a square it off so you post you can use this versus this one here is a bit more rounder C post like that again they just stop and place there versus this one here is for a typical arrow C post that's more triangular and they go on there using one of the two rubber bands snapping like this and on you go there's even like third-party mounts others humm the cool stuff I've got shapeways or an Amazon there's saddlebag mounts and mounts for I mean all the crazy stuff people in doing this for years and again the micro USB cable right here there we go and this goes ahead and it connects down into the bottom right there now setup is pretty easy and pretty straightforward here I'm gonna grab my edge 5:30 and just get this all set up and added so I'm gonna go ahead back to the main menu here and go up to sensors and we'll go add sensor and now I'm gonna turn this on and you want to validate that little purple light is blinking that means it's in pairing mode and we go ahead down and search for radar you can also just search for all things and get the radar or the bike lights individually and this is the one at the bottom that I want click add sensor you give it a second it's kind of formats light Network and that's because the very radar is actually two things it's an ant plus cycling rater that's an official device profile standard type open standard and then there's also the light networks out of it that way I can control the lights and you can see right there when I need that I have to this is the radar one right there and this is a light one so effectively it's two different sensors though to you it'll all be kind of one for most general usage if I open this up on the Rayner I can go down and I can look at the alert settings I can change whether it has a color overlay or not and I'll mix sense in just a moment I can change whether the vehicles are shown on the right hand side or the left hand side and I can change the tones from a multi tone to the single tone that's a single tone and that's multi-tone the reality is this the compatible with all sorts of devices wahoos element bolts in Rome the state is L 50 and M 50 the crew series so the original hammerhead crew I'm presumably the crew two as well and I think Sigma's also so they're gonna add it so it's not just a Garmin thing and of course they're supported on virtually every Garmin bike computer made in the last I would guess like six or seven years at this point and most of their watches as well okay now before we head on the road a quick note if you're finding this video useful interesting or something like that just simply whack that like button right now it really helps out this video and the channel quite a bit so once you're on your bike and you got this thing all mounted it's gonna show you cars approaching from behind and the way that does that is these little dots there each dot represents one car one vehicle and it goes from the back of bottom of the display all the way the top that indicates how far is away from you up to 140 meters so I find it actually you can detect a little bit further than that as well so goes for 140 meters up to zero so as the cars approaching you it's just Amber kind of orange a yellow color and then once all the cars are clear it turns green I can display eight cars at a time on the screen case there's also a red zone alert as well that's when an overtake speed is super high in that case the difference of the speed between a car and you is considered a concerning and so it gives you the red overlay instead now the key thing to understand about varying this has been true since the very beginning it's all about the relative speed between you and that vehicle so and that's how it works it's looking for things that are overtaking you from behind this is on the back your bike so it's not looking at anything in the front is purely from behind there and it's trying to see things that are closing that gap and by things I literally mean things it can be a car it can be a truck it can be a cyclist it can be a moped it can be a train or even a plane anything that you've text from a radar standpoint that's going to close that gap it's going to show you on this so that gets to the next question what happens if you're rotting in a group a peloton if you will no problems it will not detect or alert and all the people that are in your group because you're all traveling at the same speed now if a car comes up behind you and there's enough of a gap between all the cyclists it will actually show that on your display which does bring up one of the minor new features which is the new peloton mode and that simply just goes ahead reduces the flashing brightness on the unit so you see right here this is the always-on mode right there that's kind of the always they're always on I press it once more you can see it dimmed it just slightly I know it's really hard to see it doesn't dim it a ton it just slightly and you press it again and now it's a daytime pulse and you press it again and now it's a nighttime pulse press it one more time it shuts off the light entirely so now you're just on a radar only and you go again into the full daytime always-on mode now what about false positives honestly none like I mean in Finn's I had to find a false positive is a train of false positive I don't think so it's approached me from behind looks no different their truck even though it's on a track next to me but I have not seen false positives here every one that I've looked at I can account for something that was overtaking me sometimes a car will turn off so obviously if a car is overtaking me and it makes a turn off this won't you know continue to show the car anymore disappears the grid but that to me is is a valid way of demonstrating that traffic but let's talk a big new feature which is app compatibility so grab my phone right here you will see this is the new very radar app it is super simplistic that's this design I can click on pair devices right there and then you see it's found at very a radar 42 that's mine yep and now what happens is the exact same as what happens on the garment edge device so outside you can see the cars approaching it shows it in the yellow first and then if there's fast moving cars it shows in rebel squiggly line indicating which one is a fast one versus which one is a normal speed car and then once the cars are gone it goes to green and that's it like if you look at the app you can see your battery status at the top and the fact that's connected that's it over on the right hand side right there you can see the devices that are listed in there so there's that that's someone I got right now and you can see my settings I can turn on or off sounds of vibration and that is the sum total of things to tap on that's it which is fine it's it's simplistic but it's more than just the garment barrier radar app sure the ANT+ side of the Varia radar is open standard but Garmin is now added in and Bluetooth smart side as well so that third-party apps can take advantage of it the first app to do so is ride with GPS so if I go ahead into this I can go down to bluetooth and sensors set up very a radar I don't know if this particular units paired so I'm just going to repair it right there there we go so it found out no problem that once I turned it on again click use on that radar and then go back into the app and go ride and while I'm outside it's gonna show me the traffic going by in the exact same way and the color to see you a little different at this point but that may be because the beta side of it but it does show you the distance from left hand side in this case it's showing me and feet as opposed to meters or yards but again probably customizable in the settings as well in the back of the settings I can choose whether display the cars and left hand side or the right hand side as well as audio alerts when the cars are clear or when they first arrive in the back of the radars range now I'd love to see what other apps can do with this right now it's not like a purely open standard apps have to contact Garmin and get approval but I don't expect that's gonna be too much of an issue but I'd love to see them just publish the API up onto the sdk whatever may be and be able to go to town on it and let things just kind of floor it okay with that I think I covered everything there is to cover it except for I forgot to unbox this one and here's the thing this one works exactly the same as the other one this is the small one and that's the same mounts there we go same disappointing microUSB cable and if I go out of here it's almost identical except that it's smaller and without a light so so this is the RvR 315 you can see when I turn it on is that the way this how the way nothing exciting happens except for this little blue light right there that indicates it's on that's the only way you know it's huh same at mount on the back you can see the same Bluetooth smart logo right there bring up nice and close there we go right there you can see it same m+ logo all the same except it's now a very small portion of the size of this because it does not have the light so put the two side-by-side they basically just cut off the light and call the done so there's no flashing light on this when cars approach you actually with this one here they will see a flashing light in the last 30 meters or so they won't see this here the theory behind the flashing light is to make the car aware of you or more aware of you in case they didn't already see you that's probably debatable but you're not gonna get it with this the only difference besides the size and the lack of light is that this one is 50 bucks cheaper this is 149 and this is 199 which brings me sort of the last thing here in the past couple months garments been discounting their existing one down to 129 u.s. and roughly 99 euros or pounds it's been selling like hockings people bind this thing every has been sold out in a lot of places just starting to get back into stock again and I think that price was like a spot-on really good price and I would have loved it seen the smaller unit the non taillight version sold for 129 or even $99 I think that would have been like a huge market mover there now for most people you're probably not gonna go out and upgrade to the new version because you've probably already got some sort of Garmin or wahoo or whatever that's gonna display this radar information where is useful though is for folks that may not have this sort of thing on their bike for example myself on my cargo bike I don't have a garment on there I just used its little bike thing that's built into it but I do my phone mount on there and I often use the phone Mountain I'm out riding so now I can go and put this on the back of the car of the bike put that on there from a display standpoint and be good to go so it's good for for those sort of scenarios where you may be using your phone either as a primary device or potentially a backup device with that otherwise it works just fine like it's just the very you know in love and you've been using it for years and there's no real downside here anyways hope you found this interesting or something if so go ahead like that like button the bottom there or hit the subscribe button in the corner there's plenty more sports Technology goodness something even tomorrow for that matter coming up over the next couple of days and weeks as companies start to warm up a bit and give us some more goods to play with have a good one

Channel: DC Rainmaker

Views: 288,443

Keywords: Garmin Varia RTL515, Garmin Varia RVR315, Garmin Varia Radar, Garmin Varia Cycling Radar, Cycling Radar, Varmin Varia, Garmin Varia RTL510 vs RTL515, Garmin Varia RTL510, Garmin Varia RVR315 vs RTL510, DC Rainmaker, rainmaker, dcrainmaker, peloton mode, Ray Maker, Garmin Edge, Wahoo radar, Varia Radar RTL515, Varia RTL515, Varia RVR315, Varia Radar RVR315, garmin, Cycling

Id: bhRVOV09yM4

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020