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Varia App: Is It As Worthless As It Seems?

I did my second ride with the RCT715.  This one was nearly 40 minutes, with the new 128GB card installed.  The 103UNSVD directory has 81 videos, and I used nearly 7GB of space again.

I tried looking at a couple of the video files using the Varia app.  A half minute of video took more time than that to begin playing, and I experienced several pauses during playback.  The quality of the picture seemed good to me; I recorded at 1080P.  It also had audio of the rear derailleur clicking away as I coasted.

I tried to replay it for my wife, and it ran even slower, with pauses that seemed to last forever.  The second one I tried to play was just as balky.

This video showed me riding off my driveway, and up to the end of my cul-de-sac street.  I can envision myself spending a couple of days to actually watch the video of my ride.

Question:  What does the app setting for Video Clip Length do?  It has a default value of 1 minute 30 seconds, and can be changed in 30 second increments up to a maximum of 5 minutes.  I have it set to five minutes, so why are all the videos roughly 30 seconds, both when recording, and when viewing them?  Does the setting do anything?

When I read about the RCT715, with radar, a light, and a camera, I envisioned it as a way to look at a ride.  The radar seems somewhat pointless to me, since I've been riding for 40+ years without one, and I'm still here.  But Garmin seems to treat the video as providing critical information in case of a crash, or in case of a hit by a motor vehicle, and of little or no value for any other purpose.

Considering that I had to buy the unit, then buy a saddle rail mount kit, and then find one of my bikes that had round metal rails on the saddle just to get it mounted, did I buy a $450 brick?

  • It is designed to let you know of vehicles behind you when cycling on a road, do you need a radar on a bike path? Maybe one day it will have sufficient intelligence built in to be able to distinguish between only traffic approaching when you are not on the cycle path but if I am only riding on a cycle path I don't use the radar.

  • my daily training is 50 km on roadand 5 km bike path. I didn't turn it off. I did the right thing. It gives false signals and takes many photos/ videos . I can't trust him.The 180 ° is too wide. It feels the vehicles on Highway 15 meter away from me.

  • No need to remove SD card just plug usb c cable into varia and other end into your phone, mine's a Samsung s24 and it's added as a storage device and just look through the files in the applicable folder.  It's dead easy.  Never used the app once it's configured and any firmware updates.