Lezyne is saving their big product rollouts for later in the year, but were very, very excited to show off the new GPS Root program that lets you build a complete route with way points, notes and more. But first, a couple product updates:
Their Digital Drive hand pump line now has a complete selection for high pressure (road) and low pressure (mountain, gravel, cyclocross, etc.) applications, as well as a shock pump for setting up your suspension. The digital gauges are tuned for the application to improve accuracy no matter what you’re pumping up. Considering there’s minimal weight gain to know what your actual tire pressure it, it’s a nice (if slightly expensive) add on.
The Digital Alloy Drive is the newest one and goes up to 90psi (6.2bar, 173g, 216mm), Digital Road Drive to 160psi (11bar, 117g, 180mm), and Digital Pressure Drive to 120psi (8.3bar, 133g, 170mm). All three use their flexible hose that slides out of the handle and threads into the opposite end, and all three retail for $74.99. Behind the pump is the Digital Shock Drive for air suspension set up with a max 350psi (24bar). It uses a zero loss chuck that lets the valve’s pin seat before it threads off so you don’t lose any air when finished. Also $74.99.
The big news from their booth wasn’t even on display, but we got a personal demo of the latest features for GPS Root, which now appear to be live. The video above shows the overview, which lets you use a desktop browser to create a route, save it, then pull it up on the Lezyne GPS Ally v2 smartphone app. Sync your phone with one of their GPS cycling computers or watches and it’ll then give you turn by turn directions.
“So what?” you say, “lots of brands offer that now.”
Maybe, but what makes this one awesome is a) how incredibly easy and accurate it is to create a route, and b) you can add notes to the ride that’ll pop up when you reach that point. In the screenshot example above, I added a pin between waypoints where it’ll tell me to “Pedal Hard Here!” You can type in whatever message you want, like “good coffee shop at next intersection” or “city limits sprint over the next hill”. It’ll also sync with Strava Live Segments if you have a premium Strava account, or just sync your activity with Strava post ride if you want.
Two other killer features make GPS Root stand out. You can turn on live tracking and share a link with loved ones so they can see where you are, and you can save locations for quicker routing in the future. That latter feature means you can quickly navigate home, to work, a favorite bike shop or anything else you want directly from within the phone app, which means it’ll help you get somewhere. This also lets you just pick a starting and stopping point and let it calculate route options to help you ride new roads. And the maps are global, so you can use this anywhere in the world to make a route…or even just use it to navigate city streets.
It will also let you search locations within the app to find directions to somewhere new, on demand. At present, I’m seeing a few quirks with this on my app, but Lezyne’s rep said they’re constantly working on it and improving it. For example, I searched for a specific bike shop and it showed blank until I canceled, but then its street address was in my options of places to navigate to.
Future developments planned include letting you specify mileage and the letting it create route options, sharing routes with friends so you are all navigating on the same path, and exporting routes as GPX or TCX files to use on other GPS-equipped cycling computers, watches, etc. Yes, that means this totally free cloud based application from Lezyne will eventually let you create routes for other devices, too. Pretty cool. In the meantime, you can upload GPX/TCX files from others and add them to your saved routes list.
