Review on 🚴 Garmin Varia RTL515 Cycling Rearview Radar with Tail Light | Visual & Audible Alerts Up to 153 Yards | 010-02376-00 (One Size) by Tarrance Man

Impressive accuracy but battery life could use some help. I road bike in west-central Wisconsin and mostly in the country but some city/highway at the beginning/end of a ride. The last 35 years have relied on Spiegel (exclusively Mirrcycle) with good results. Postponed purchase of Varia until Prime Day deal was worthwhile. Use with a Forerunner 945. One of my doubts was that it turned out that this device was mainly designed for specialized bike computers and the optics on the watch wouldn't be that great. Although I haven't compared the watch to a dedicated bike computer, the image on the watch is quite reasonable. The clock is mounted on the steering wheel and I can easily see the visual notification on the left side of the clock and I can usually hear a ping (no vibration for obvious reasons). The radar detects cars exactly as they appear in my mirror, so that's correct in my experience. Sometimes there's a traffic jam when I'm driving along a lane or driveway along a side road, but it's not too uncomfortable. He didn't let cars through (except maybe that state cop, do they have anti-radar masking screens?). On a few short trips, the radar has replaced my mirrors as my original vehicle location. Additional information such as speed and driving errors are determined via mirrors. My only complaint is that the battery life seems short. I can only get about 6 or 7 hours. I know Garmin doesn't promise more and the lifespan is about the same as my taillight, but I feel like the battery life could be improved. One final note: I also use the MyRadarTraffic data screen available on the ConnectQ store. Initially it didn't show the date, but after a few uses and some fiddling it finally did. The instructions aren't the clearest (I never knew what a .fit file was, so that might have been my problem). The data now appears in my Connect app on my phone.