Update: Services have recovered as of 2025-05-07 02:30 or so. Point still stands.

Bryton S510

I have a Bryton S510 and been using for a couple of months. Decent cyclocomputer if all you need is a heads-up display of your current statistics, a map (we’ll get to that later), and navigation. I guess this is positioned as a Garmin Edge 840 competitor and it’s got features of most other bike computers. There’s plenty of reviews about those functions.

I’m here to talk about some things reviews fail to mention:

  • The ability to create maps straight out of OpenStreetMap data.
  • Its reliance on cloud online services

Why? Because Bryton is experiencing a complete outage of their online services as of this writing and I cannot send a route to the bike computer even with a prepared route file on hand as a consequence. The route needs to be uploaded to Bryton Active through their app, which is completely unusable right now because it is down, be downloaded back to the phone, and then can be sent to the cyclocomputer.

I have half a brick and I can’t even keep both pieces. Unbelievable.

Maps

Use of OpenStreetMap data is billed as one selling point of the cyclocomputer. Whether Bryton intended to imply as having always up-to-date data, not stuck with paywalls, or other reasons, they failed to deliver.

If you were to create routes on their desktop webapp at https://active.brytonsport.com, map data is at least three years out of date. I can’t even grab a screenshot right now because it’s broken. Navigation using their Android app are updated because it uses Mapbox for map tile rendering and GraphHopper for routing.

How do I know their map data is badly out of date?

There is a footbridge crossing a river near my place. This bridge opened more or less last year. This was not in their map. There are points of interest for places which have gone defunct at least two years ago. Map files for Philippines in their map download site lists 2018 as its last update. Attempts to generate a new map using their Bryton Update Tool gives literally the same map tiles as their web interface.

Online services

As stated earlier, Bryton Active is…inactive. Broken. Down. Offline.

Consequences? Plenty.

No ride uploads (but you can still pull the files with a computer). No route planning. No prepared route upload to the bike computer.

Route planning and ride upload unavailability I can understand. The inability to send prepared routes to the bike computer caught me completely by surprise. This was functionality I expected to be fully offline. With their services down, I can’t send routes and there’s no known way to upload routes with desktop computers. It’s completely stupid. I don’t understand how that scenario was allowed to happen.

Conclusion

If maps and navigation are important to you, get something else. If all you need is something that tracks your rides and displays data, get a cheaper unit. I was willing to give this a chance and was very disappointed.

This is mostly a rant with a touch of review. Do as you see fit.