Cycling computers can vary from simple wired setups that only show speed all the way to expensive touch screen variations. In this review, we’ll be looking at the latter with the new Bryton Rider 750 GPS bike computer. Although the model number scheme is a bit confusing, the Rider 750 sits at the top of Bryton’s GPS lineup and features the latest technology and connectivity. Designed around a 2.8” color touch screen, the Rider 750 can interface with sensors, power meters, electronic shifter groupsets, smart bike trainers, and even Shimano E-Bikes. Additionally, the Rider 750 provides turn-by-turn navigation and on-board voice search to quickly find points of interest.
Bryton’s Rider 750 GPS computer offers an impressive range of features and intuitive full color touch screen at a nearly unmatched price point.
As with other Bryton products, the Rider 750 is very competitively priced. Whether you purchase the standalone headunit at $269.95 or as a bundle with cadence/speed/HR sensors for $349.95, the Rider 750 is a fraction of the price of similar GPS cycling computers. Coupled with the Bryton Active app, the Rider 750 can also interface with a variety of third party software to create cycling routes, workouts, or automatically sync data. Due to the sheer number of features the Rider 750 offers, we’ll focus the review on the main features and user interface.
| Rating | 9.5/10 |
| Retail Price | $269.95 / $349.95 (bundle) |
| Measured Weight (in g) | 92 (head unit), 30 (sport mount) |
| Likes | + Competitively priced + Graph views are easy to read and informative + Voice navigation is accurate and works quickly |
| Dislikes | – Touch screen gestures can be inconsistent – Slow load times when manipulating map – Touch points on some dialogs are small |
| Where to Buy (US) | Bryton |
UNBOXING
The Bryton Rider 750 is shipped in a small cardboard box with Bryton’s green/black graphics printed on it. An overview of the features are printed on the sides of the box with a reflective graphic depiction of the computer on the front. For the “head unit only” option, you’ll find the following in the box:
- Rider 750 GPS
- Stem mount + O-rings
- Bryton Sport Mount + Shim + Allen Wrench
- Micro USB to USB charging cable
- Tether Strap
- Warranty Card
- Instruction Manual + Touch Screen Quick Guide
To supplement the somewhat simple instruction manual, Bryton does offer additional guides/tutorials on their website.
MOUNTING
As with other Bryton devices, the Rider 750 has a Bryton quarter turn mount molded into the base of the computer. Although it looks very similar to a Garmin mount and can even be put on a Garmin mount with some force, the tab positions are slightly different. We don’t recommend mixing the mounts as we’ve found that over time, the mounts can get damaged due to the slightly different design. Bryton includes two mount options: standard stem mount with o-rings and the Bryton Sport out-front mount. The stem mount works well and feels secure. With the 2.8” sized screen, the Rider 750 fit comfortably on our 100mm stem.
The Bryton Sport Mount is an aluminum out-front (or out-in-front) mount that allows you to place the Rider 750 directly in front of your handlebar. It’s a single-sided design so you won’t be able to mount lights underneath it. This means if you want to run a light you’ll need to mount it on your handle bar (lights like the Fabric Lumaray only support Garmin/Wahoo at this time). Otherwise, the aluminum mount is well built and has a low profile design that places the computer directly in your field of view.
FIT & FINISH
Visually the Rider 750 has a rectangular design with black plastic housing. Aside from Bryton prominently printed on the front face and the bottom of the screen, the computer has a simple design. The Rider 750 is thicker than simple computers like the Bontrager RIDEtime Elite due to the battery and mount design, but it’s very similar in size to the Rider 320. There is a raised center portion on the bottom of the computer with the protruding Bryton mount molded into it. Additionally a rubber gasket covers a micro USB port which fits well and helps the Rider 750 achieve an impressive IPX7 rating.
Despite being a touch screen design, Bryton has also included four physical buttons on the device. Two are mounted on each side of the computer near the bottom corners. Each button is fairly large with ridges on them making it easy to touch even with gloves on. One minor issue we found with the Rider 750 is the glossy screen. It’s highly reflective which means in certain lighting conditions you’ll be looking at yourself on the screen or a reflection of the surrounding environment. We’d prefer a matte screen which would probably look less attractive in product shots but would increase usability.
USER INTERFACE
The Bryton Rider 750 features a 2.8” touch screen that significantly simplifies the user interface. Rather than having to use multiple context dependent physical buttons, you can simply click or swipe on what you’re interested in. The touch screen does not support multi-touch though, so you can’t do things like pinch-to-zoom and is limited to single button presses/holds or swipes. There are primarily four types of interactions:
- Swipe – you can swipe left/right to switch between pages or up down to navigate menus. Bryton has also integrated some nice shortcuts such as swiping up to return to the main menu from any screen.
- Long press – this can be used to change the data field types quickly from the main screen.
- Short press – this is the primary interaction that used to select menu items or buttons on the screen.
- Press + Hold – the navigation maps can be panned by pressing and dragging a finger around.
While the touch screen works well, we often found that the swiping actions could be inconsistent. For example, a swipe left/right would be registered as a quick press instead and a swipe. This can be a bit frustrating but the user interface is otherwise pretty easy to understand and use (i.e. you don’t need a user manual). We were surprised to find that the touch screen is also sensitive enough to work with gloves on which is quite helpful as some actions such as clearing a ‘do you want to start ride’ prompt require pressing on the screen.
There are also four physical buttons, two mounted on each side of the Bryton Rider 750. The top left button acts as a screen lock / power button – with a long press turning the computer on/off while a short press will enable/disable the screen lock. Screen lock is a great feature to have while riding to guard against dripping sweat or an accidental touch. On the bottom left is a lap button that allows you to record upto 130 laps to track your progress. The top right button is a start/pause button that can start a recording or pause an active one. Finally, the bottom right is a menu button that cycles through the pages on the main view.
BRYTON ACTIVE APP
To take advantage of the navigation, workout, and syncing features, the Rider 750 needs to be connected to the Bryton Active app (free on both Android/Apple stores). The app primarily consists of four tabs: review previous rides, setup workouts/plan trips, setup profile and connect devices. Once connected, the app allows you to adjust bike profiles, screen displays and configure units and settings. We found that using the Bryton Active app to configure the screens was quicker than the actual device, as your phone is likely larger and more responsive.
Additionally, the app allows you to create custom workouts such as intervals and upload them directly to the device. There are a few templates for workouts already setup that can be customized with the desired rest/interval times. To plan a route, Bryton offers three options. First you can use the app to directly create waypoints on an interactive map. Second, you can upload GPX files directly through the app and onto the device. Third, you can access routes through third party applications such as Strava by making them visible to the Bryton Active app.
Although the Bryton Active app is well designed and easy enough to use, it definitely lacks the refinements and sleek UI of more popular apps. For our riding, we primarily used the app as a middle man to sync up ride data to other applications where we could share and analyze the results more closely. One annoying bug we came across was that with some updates, the app would forget the Rider 750 device and we’d have to resync it. This seemed to also keep resetting the imperial units (mi/lbs) back to metric units which made us believe we were cruising at a much faster speed before realizing they were in km/h.
NAVIGATION
One of the new features incorporated into the Rider 750 is the on-board voice navigation. This allows you to simply search for a destination by voice on the navigation screen instead of selecting a location on the map. We found that it worked well and could quickly find local results that matched. The Rider 750 also allows you to display a full map as one of the main pages which quickly updates and tracks with your heading and location. One gripe we had was that it was easy to trigger ‘processing’ screens by zooming in/out or panning the maps. While it’s not nearly as responsive as Google Maps on a cellphone, if you’re doing a cycling event or exploring a new route, the navigation feature is a great way to stay on track. The Rider 750 even re-routes if you miss a turn which is quite useful.
THE VERDICT
Overall, we found the Bryton Rider 750 to be a very competitively priced and full feature touch screen GPS cycling computer. The 2.8” touch screen makes the user interface much simpler as you don’t need to remember button press combinations to navigate menus. We were also impressed with the color screen which has a much more flexible display allowing for not only simple display fields but also circular graphs, bar graphs, and map displays. Bryton also incorporated enough connectivity to allow the Rider 750 to interact with everything from electronic shifting groupsets, smart trainers to BLE/ANT+ sensors.
The Rider 750 has enough compatibility and features to rival much more expensive GPS computers on the market. The main issue we found with the computer was that the map update rate was slow and led to many ‘processing’ screens. Otherwise, the turn-by-turn directions worked well with a voice navigation that was quite accurate. If you’re looking for a modern GPS cycling computer that can connect to all your sensors and third party applications that won’t leave your wallet empty, the Bryton Rider 750 is hard to beat.
Disclaimer: The product for this review was provided by Bryton. The views expressed on this website are solely those of the authors and are here to help people make an informed choice before a purchase. The authors or the blog itself does not get any monetary compensation from the product manufacturer or third-party websites/vendor links that are posted here.