Sigma 1609 review

Major storm blew through this weekend. I'm glad I wasn't riding Vicky's 300k brevet up in San Luis Obispo. I hope her riders did OK. I have about a foot of snow outside my house right now so I will be using my Schwinn recumbent stationary bike today. I'm gearing up for a fleche (360km in 24 hour team ride) in two weeks. Meanwhile here's my review of my new Sigma 1609 bike computer.

I just mounted my Sigma 1609 and went for a 200k test ride. My initial impressions during the installation process and initial ride are very positive.

The Sigma is replacing an ancient Cateye Enduro that finally failed after more than 10 years and 50,000 miles of service. Two thumbs up for the Enduro, but Cateye's current Enduro doesn't seem as durable so I switched.

I did not install the cadence feature. I've been riding long enough to know when my cadence is in the zone or not. The mount can be rotated so you can install this on the bar or the stem. Wires are plenty long enough (I have a 62 cm frame and had about 6" of wire to spare). The sensor mount uses an o-ring which means it works even on the most aero forks. It took me about 15 minutes to install the computer, some of which was spent removing the old one.

The 1609 has a very large readout (great for those 50+ year old eyes on bumpy roads). The main display is always speed and the second display is one of a a long list. You change the second display with the top right and bottom right buttons that scroll through the list. One of the the secondary options is temperature which, while not incredibly important, is one of the few things missing from my Garmin Edge 705 so the two complement each other to some extent.

Resetting the 1609 involves holding the top left button for a few seconds. Moving into and out of Set mode requires you to hold the bottom left button for a few seconds. I like that the display indicates that you are about to reset or set data while you are holding down the buttons. This helps prevent accidentally resetting during a long ride.

I dislike bike computers that try to do everything with one or two buttons. It's too difficult to remember the magic sequence of button presses required to, say, recalibrate the elevation. The 1609 uses the four buttons very consistently so I don't have to carry the instruction manual with me if I want to correct the wheel size or something.

Talking about the wheel size I notice that even though I chose the wheel size for 700x23 the speed is reading 1.8% too high. Fortunately that's an easy fix.

You can carry over total mileage from a prior computer if you want to. Nice touch.

The backlight is also well designed. It toggles by pressing two buttons together. When it's turned on it lights up the screen whenever a key is pressed. However I could see not realizing it was on during the day and losing battery life as a result. I don't think there's any indication on the readout to let you know it's on. An ambient light sensor would be a great feature for controlling whether key presses activate the backlight or not -- hint, hint.