Bryton Rider S800 T review – it’s this or a Garmin, and I’ve made my choice

Bryton might be off your multisport radar because the brand solely manufactures bike computers, with the Rider S800 T being its premium model. The £419.99 ($479.95) asking price is for a bundle including cadence and speed sensors, and a heart rate monitor. 

On paper, Bryton’s specialisation in head units is a double-edged sword.

The downside? Possible lack of integration with your wrist interface. On the upside, the Taiwanese outfit should know a thing or two about bike computers. 

Good touchscreen, buttons less so

First impressions are good. The Bryton Rider S800 T is a slim and slick unit with a 3.4-inch touchscreen featuring a further two buttons each side. These should help handling in the depths of winter with thick bike gloves. 

However, the issue is that those double-double buttons are very close together, meaning it’s too easy to press the wrong button. In short, stick to the touchscreen.

When you do, you receive a wealth of features including navigation and mapping. This is a bit of a mixed bag. 

Inconsistent navigation

The OpenStreetMap base map is clear and, when zoomed in, even shows street names.

Where it struggles to compete with the competition is designing your routes, which is clunky via the Bryton app.

 I recommend using your PC or laptop for ease of use. Mind you, routes are easy to follow, with clear turn instructions given well in advance. 

Minor deviations result in automatic rerouting if you ignore the U-turn alert, but this doesn’t cope well with more complex rerouting tasks. The voice search for things like addresses is a little erratic. 

Similar to many of the best bike computers at this price point, the climbing feature flicks to the climbing screen when approaching an ascent, providing an overview of a route’s climb segments. 

This is useful for pacing, especially if you have a power meter to stick to a certain wattage. As you’d expect, the S800 syncs with your power meter. In fact, a power meter is arguably the sole add-on missing from this bundle.

Broadly compatible

There’s also connectivity to electronic shifting systems and rear-view radars.

We tested the latter with Bryton’s Gardia R300 radar (an extra £109.99) and it worked well. (For those unfamiliar, a cycling radar detects overtaking vehicles and warns you on, in this case, the S800.)

This is via Bluetooth, which is also used to sync to your smartphone, which is used for data uploads and firmware updates. There’s no WiFi support on the Rider S800.

You have a group ride feature to hook up with the locals and a group chat feature to annoy the locals. There’s also a nifty Explore feature, where you say how far you’d like to ride and the computer will devise up to three out-and-back routes. I tried this on the Somerset Levels and was impressed.

You can set up to three different bike profiles, either on the S800 or in the app. The device comes with Road, Indoor and MTB as defaults.

For each profile, you can set up how many data pages you want to see and what data you want on each, with a maximum of eight pages and 10 data fields per page.

Disappointing battery life

Less impressive is the battery life that says up to 36hrs but is significantly lower at full brightness.

And that brightness is needed, as the whole feel of the display is somewhat dull, certainly compared to the Garmin Edge 1050.

It’s also a little slow to respond and the screen crashed a couple times when I tried saving the ride.