Why essential? The bike itself stores the current odometer reading, and battery state only.The app tracks all the interesting stuff including trip miles, pedal vs battery power used, average speed and cadence. And it shows history for today, week, and all time. But... that info is good only if the app is running every time you ride.Why essential #2... You need the app to change power profiles and see which one is active. The built-in profiles are a good start. Editing, naming and saving custom profiles is not hard. At 200 miles and a month owned, I’m testing profiles for decreased battery draw at medium speeds: good for exercise and battery life. App critical for that.There’s one BIG frustration. The app won’t work reliably in the background. When choosing bike routes with Google Maps, I must rely on voice prompts and can’t look at the map after I launch Gocycle app and connect to the bike. If I leave the app, I must re-connect on return. That often starts a new trip and related stats. No doubt programming to run in the background is hard but it must be done for the app to be its best.

Gocycle does say they are not done with this new version of the app and that is an understatement. While the dashboard of the previous version was not perfect at least it was there. This version has no dashboard. There are so many errors in this version they cannot be counted. Linking the app to your account and the bike the first time will require at least 3 reboots of the app. It freezes up. What is in the app provides so little value when it comes to actually riding the bike. The app will allow you to change the riding mode but the battery status indication does not update while you ride. The app does not keep your phone from turning off like previous versions. That not a big deal as the app now gives you no meaningful information while you ride. You will need a fitness watch or some other means to track your speed and distance in real time. Nothing like buying a product with a set of features and then getting a forced “upgrade” with a third of the features you had before. Maybe this is acceptable in the UK?May 5, 2024Version 9.2 is out and yes it has a dashboard. The app still does not work anywhere near as well as the one this new 9.X version replaced. I would not buy a new Gocycle until the app is fixed. It is buggy, incomplete and seems to be rich in features you really don’t need to ride the bike (like how to unpack the box).

Version 5.2 is working fine for me. When V5 first came out, I did lose my personal settings which for me was only a minor issue. At the time, Gocycle told me they were working on a solution for V4 customers and V5.2 seems to have corrected things now. I did have to contact techsupport with my frame number because I had already upgraded to V5. But they were quick to respond. Thank you Gocycle! I absolutely love this bike and the app is an integral part of that. The live dash is really cool. I appreciate the thought that goes into this bike and its app - everything is so well done.

Gocycle makes good bikes, but the iOS software is written incredibly poorly and for this reason alone I would not recommend buying the bikes at this point. I wanted to change a setting on the bike and for some reason the iOS software had lost my registration. It required me to step through the entire very lengthy registration process again, checking about 20 items that can’t be skipped, filling out various information which of the very poor network connection out in the Sierra Nevada took over half an hour. The iOS app is the only way to perform some bike functions, and I learned that simple operations like an iOS update can make it essentially inoperable unless you have a fast network connection. This is terrible design, please replace your iOS app development team!