• Apparently not. They supposedly canvassed opinion on this ages ago and came to the conclusion that most people didn't want it, so the hardware has no speaker/beeper at all. I find this surprising given the chorus of auto-pausing Garmins on a group ride suggests to me that most people prefer to use that function..

    "Lots of research we did suggested that audio cues were not important for the majority of riders, and in fact, a notable percentage didn't want their cycling computer to make any sound whatsoever. We also reasoned that the number of times a rider would want any audio cues would likely be outnumbered by the times they didn't need them. Instead, the directions or other info that Karoo gives are all customizable and highly visible on its large display when you need them. While we could have played it "safe" and integrated a speaker into Karoo just in case, we decided to keep weight down as much as possible, and maximize the device's space efficiency, because we had a lot of critical hardware to bake into it. As mentioned, if there is enough demand for audio cues, we will work on ways to integrate them in the future..

    .. we are building a single product with a small team and had to make very careful decisions on space, size, weight, cost, waterproofing, complexity and sheer software development overhead. Every additional piece of hardware needs hundreds of man hours of firmware, software, settings, tests and design constraints. It also adds cost and complexity to assembly. We decided a big screen could more than adequately adjust to deal with notification preferences and allow us to make something obvious enough that the rider will not miss a turn."

  • I find this surprising given the chorus of auto-pausing Garmins on a group ride suggests to me that most people prefer to use that function..

    Looks like a case of asking people what they want rather than observing what they do.

    The Fenix beeps and vibrates to provide feedback and ask for attention. It's tiny.

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