I’ve tried to find a really good ride tracking app, and I feel REVER is doing that for me.
I used to use Eat Sleep Ride, but that’s been discontinued, and it seems people have been pushing Detecht as its replacement. As nice as it is, I don’t feel it offers anything more than REVER, so I’m keeping REVER instead.
Both apps do tracking really well, and both apps do notifications to significant others really well, and both apps have crash detection software in them as well. But REVER is half the price of Detecht for pretty much the same features.
There’s not really much to be said about what REVER does. It’s a ride tracking and sharing app. I can jump on my motorcycle, click start, and record my ride for that day.
Better yet, I can also plan a ride and ride that route at a later stage. Standard accounts get an “A to B” route planner, which is a boring car trip-style ride. Pro users can also choose “Twisty” or “ADV” routing, giving us routes that are twisting (perfect motorcycling roads) or more advanced dirt and off-road routes. ADV isn’t really much use to me as I don’t live in America or anywhere major, but that doesn’t matter because I can make my own routes manually anyway.
There is a social aspect to the app, so people can see your rides, and they can even choose to ride those routes themselves.
Pro accounts can even export and import GPX files from the likes of Garmin and TomTom units, so you can even share them with users of other apps.
Turn by Turn, married with a headset and/or a CarPlay navigation unit, means you can follow the route easily with voiceovers and visuals. I have a cheap $100NZ CarPlay navigation unit on my bike, and it’s great to be able to navigate my way around while I’m riding unfamiliar roads. Even better when you download the maps for offline riding, as I inevitably will the deeper into the sticks I go on my rides. In fact, an upcoming ride will make this essential.
When I start my ride, Mrs Wookie gets a notification that I’ve started my ride and a link to my ride. This is where Detecht is probably better, as it provides a live feed, but Mrs Wookie also has an iPhone, so she just uses “Find my” for that anyway.
Pro cost me around $40NZ per year. That’s a very reasonable cost for such a handy app. Detecht is around $100NZ per year, so you can see why I prefer REVER.
I did find one thing that annoyed the hell out of me though. One recent ride saw me have to double back on myself for about 8kms after I realised that it wasn’t picking up that I was already on the route. It only wanted to carry on once I’d reached the start. So I had to go back to the start to trigger off the route and get turn-by-turn. It would be much nicer if it had the smarts to realise that I was past the start of the route and on the route and just carry on from where I was.
That’s a major niggle, but I can plan around that by only starting the route from the bit that I’m unsure about and not the stuff I already know.
You can set safe zones as well, so that people never find out where your house, place of work, school, etc., are. It creates a 5km dead zone around these areas when sharing your maps.
All in all, I recommend REVER for any rider in the world. Route planning is so much fun and so much easier when you use a desktop web browser. I love it so much and will continue to use it with a pro licence each year… unless they get greedy and up the price to match other apps.
