| HN Mirror

I feel like this effort is more for people who commute/ride from point A to point B as you said; another way to put it is, it is more for people who are _not_ actively training. If/when I'm training with power I don't much care about mapping, I know the routes I will take, lots of times in a park and/or around a natural feature of some sort (like a lake). It's only when trying to discover a new route that I would even consider using something like this -- but honestly, not even then. I usually plan a new route ahead of time, and can even preload it into my cycling computer. And do some exploring as well. I just did this yesterday, as a matter of fact, and it's awesome. Again, this is not when you're trying to get to your job on time, where routing based on traffic is what's needed.

Note: some bike computers also have built-in mapping, something I find useful on my Garmin Edge 530 is the breadcrumb feature which allows me to explore new territory to my heart's content and not worry about getting lost as I can just turn around at any point and follow the breadcrumbs on the map.

Note 2: I don't even have my phone out, it's always in my under-seat bag. Cycling computers are great, battery lasts forever (well in excess of 10 hours of riding with the computer on), visible in all lighting conditions, show a plethora of data at the same time (I have 8 live metrics shown at once), and are mounted in such a way that if you fall they likely won't get damaged, because a) they're unlikely to take a direct hit, and b) aren't big & heavy like a $1k iPhone 11 Pro Max with lots of glass that can shatter.