Vodafone Curve bike light & GPS tracker

The Vodafone Curve bike light & GPS tracker has the potential to be an impressive piece of hardware, but is let down by a lack of predictability and an app that needs improvement.

The idea of a GPS tracker for bikes isn't new, but it still hasn't really caught on. There are a number of reasons for this, mainly because there are some significant design challenges, chief among them the need for it to be both easy and difficult to access; you don't want a thief to be able to just take it off, but you do need to be able to get to it easily enough to charge it.

To get around this Vodafone has come up with an interesting solution. The GPS unit sits around the seatpost and is securely bolted in place; then, a light element connects to the unit by clicking into place and turning.

This in itself is an interesting approach as it secures the GPS tracker in a subtle enough way that most bike thieves wouldn't recognise it.

But the GPS unit also draws power from the light if the tracker is below 40%; this means you can remove the light and charge it away from the bike, then use it to charge the GPS tracker when it is connected.

The GPS unit can also be charged directly with a USB-C charger, so if you have access to a power outlet, both elements can be charged separately.

This is the best approach I have seen for powering the GPS unit, and it also allows the light to control some of the GPS functionality without needing to use the app.

For instance, rotating the light turns on GPS tracking, and if the GPS unit is on 'security mode', putting the light back on turns that mode off. As I will discuss later, not needing to rely on the app is important.

Battery life

The claimed battery life of 4.5 days on standby and 7.5 hours of tracking seems about right and should be good enough for most uses. For my commute of about an hour each way, I needed to fully charge the tracker and light twice per week. With my regular lights I would only need to do this roughly once a week, so given the added GPS functionality this isn't too much of a price to pay.

The only downside is that there were a few times where I found I had plugged in the light to the GPS unit in the morning, only for the GPS to have drained the light by the end of the ride, so I needed to charge the light again to use it as a light on the way home.

Light

As a light, it is fairly good, with a simple one-button operation to cycle through the three modes – flashing, bright, and dimmed. Its output of 25 lumens – 40 lumens when braking, more on that in a minute – was more than adequate for my needs.

Battery life is quite difficult to gauge, as the majority of the time I was using it it was also charging the GPS unit. The claimed battery life is up to 7.5 hours; it would generally last for a couple of days before I needed to charge it again. You get a broad idea of the battery level from an LED at the top of the light that shows green, orange, or red depending on levels.

Brake light and impact detection

The Curve includes a brake light function, which I found – like every single light I have ever used with this 'feature' – doesn't work very effectively. It's fine if you're slowing and stopping gradually, but a lot of braking on a bike is short and sharp, which isn't really conducive to a brake light based on an accelerometer – the reaction time is generally too short for it to be of any real use.

Another feature it offers is impact detection, where an SMS is sent to a chosen contact if you don't get back on your bike and start riding again.

App: improvements needed

Although Vodafone has managed to create an impressive piece of hardware, there are elements of the app and tracking that leave a little to be desired.

Top of that list is that its ability to find a GPS signal is unpredictable; the majority of the time when I clicked 'refresh' on the app it wouldn't be able to find the signal. I asked Vodafone about this and was told it was due to weak signal – but if I can't get it to work properly in central London, is anywhere else in the UK going to be better?

Even when you do have signal there can be a significant delay in controlling the GPS unit. For example, turning on the light, playing a sound, or turning security mode on or off took a minimum of 15 seconds. Written down that sounds like very little time, but if you're trying to react to somebody stealing your bike while you're in the office, it feels like a lifetime.

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Testing the alarm by setting it off deliberately, I sometimes wouldn't get an alert for 30 seconds, which is more than enough time for a half decent bike thief to get away.

This delay was also a bit irritating when I wanted to unlock my bike and didn't have the light with me, because I needed to wait for the app to turn off the security mode.

Having both an app-based SIM card and Bluetooth connection would solve this issue easily, but SIM-only means that controlling the GPS unit, even when right next to it, takes longer than I would have liked.

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Using the app is relatively simple, but there are elements that could benefit from more or clearer documentation. For instance, to find out what security mode does I had to turn it on and try it out, because the documentation doesn't tell you (essentially, it arms the device so that if the bike is moved the alarm goes off and you get a notification).

Ride tracker: limited

A better element of the app, which promises more functionality in the future but at the moment is a bit lacking and, again, unpredictable, is the ride tracking.

The idea is that it tracks and records your rides, which you can then see on a map within the app in Ride Insights; anybody who has used Strava, Garmin Connect or basically any GPS bike computer will be familiar with the concept. One of the benefits of those systems is cross compatibility, so I can ride using my Wahoo bike computer, which automatically uploads the ride to my Wahoo app, which I can then send on to Garmin or Strava or wherever I want that data to go. Vodafone has the first bit sorted, and I can clearly see a map of my ride, but I cannot do anything else with this data at the moment. In the modern cycling world this is a major omission.

This functionality also suffers from the unpredictability of the GPS, with some rides recording fine, others partially, and a few not at all. One ride, despite being through central London, had the first 15 minutes missing entirely.

It's clear what Vodafone is aiming for here, but with the lack of predictability combined with the inability to upload the data anywhere else, it just seems a bit pointless at the moment.

Value

The Curve costs an initial £79, but then requires an additional subscription of either £3 a month for 24 months or £4 a month for 12 months, so an extra £36 or £48 per year.

There isn't really anything on the market that we can directly compare it with, but we have tested a couple of GPS trackers before, such as the Eye On My Bike that I looked at in 2016, which cost £69.99 but lacked the battery capacity and is no longer available. Stu also tested the Tail it last year, which costs £83.89 but doesn't have half the capabilities of the Curve.

Conclusion

I have mixed feelings about the Curve. There is no doubt that the hardware has been done really well and genuinely looks to solve some of the biggest issues GPS trackers have faced in the past. The design is good, the charging method is innovative, and it securely attaches to the seatpost for security. However, the software seems almost like an afterthought; it is awkward, unpredictable, and often frustrating to use.

Vodafone has managed to create something that could solve the issues that have plagued GPS trackers ever since I can remember, but it needs to work on the app and fix the usability issues before this can reach its full potential.

Verdict

Great hardware hampered by unpredictable signal and an app that needs work