There’s no shortage of bike computers out there that you can use for navigation, real-time stats display, and performance monitoring. Nearly everything we’ve seen are designed to mount on the bike’s handlebars, allowing you to see the display with a quick glance without taking your eyes off the road. It works great. If you’re the type who likes to mount various accessories on your handlebars, though, then it can get pretty crowded. In that case, maybe you’ll appreciate something like the CoreCap.
Instead of mounting on the handlebars, it’s designed to integrate on top of your bike’s steerer tube, so you can still check it with a quick glance, all while freeing up your handlebars for other uses. Finally, you can mount two headlights, a bike bell, and a bike bag in your handlebars without the bike computer getting in the way. Or something like that.
The CoreCap is a bike computer with a round 1.3-inch black and white screen that, in all honesty, looks like a smartwatch for your bicycle. It has a 240 by 240 pixel resolution with a display layout you can customize using the companion app, with the device able to keep five screen layouts at a time that you can switch to on the fly using the rotating dial control. When designing the screen layout from the app, you simply combine multiple widgets in one layout, then save it on the bike computer, making the whole process simple enough even for less tech-savvy individuals.
What widgets are available? There’s speed, average speed, top speed, trip distance, total distance, clock, trip time, total time, stopwatch, relative altitude, max altitude, current altitude, turn-by-turn navigation, smartphone notifications, Strava logs, Komoot navigation, heart rate, and cadence. Do note, while the device has the onboard sensors for most of those readings, it requires separate BLE sensors for both heart rate and cadence.
The CoreCap automatically turns on when it detects you on the bike, then records riding metrics immediately as you ride, making it very convenient to use. It comes with a durable and weatherproof aluminum casing that, the outfit claims, should allow it to withstand the challenges of off-road riding in any weather condition. Since there’s plenty of room inside the steerer tube, it comes with a huge battery that allows it to run for up to 80 hours between charges.
The device comes with three sizes of bottom bolts for installing on forks with steerer tubes between 15cm to 30cm. According to the outfit, this range should allow it to fit any mountain bike in the market with no special tools or modifications needed. Simply remove the standard nut on the tube, pop this in, secure it with a screw, and you’re good to go. Since it doesn’t look like a fancy bike computer with the screen turned off, it shouldn’t attract any attention when you park it in public, making this a potentially safe bike computer to actually leave on the bike.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the CoreCap. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at $255.