Specialized User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience11.5% of reviews
Neutral21.3% of reviews
Negative experience67.2% of reviews

~ Based on 61 written reviews from the US App Store.

Is Specialized Safe?

Specialized - Mission Control has mixed safety signals based on user ratings. AppsHunter Safety Score for Specialized is 52/100.

This assessment is based on 167 user ratings, with an App Store average of 2.5/5.

Safety Analysis

26.3% of ratings point to a safe experience
14.4% of ratings suggest some concerns
59.3% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 167 App Store ratings for Specialized.

Is Specialized Legit?

Specialized - Mission Control is no longer available in the App Store. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Specialized is 35/100.

Based on 35 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Score capped because this app is no longer listed.

Top reviews

Love it but…

Love it but could you have an option to have bigger font size? Is it fair to say that most people with this bike are over 50 and might need to view while they’re riding?
Also, have an option to physically input the number (heart rate) instead of using your finger to scroll the numbers and let off you even pick it. Never is the right number.
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Need to change some settings

One thing I hate is when apps want to track me all the time. I have to turn on always allow tracking in order for the software to track my rides. It won’t if you try to set on ‘track only while using the app’. I’m tired of stuff like this draining my battery tracking all my moves. I only want to track my rides. Not where I live and shop. Selling my data? Sheesh. Other than that gripé I’m happy with what it does track. And seeing ride results.
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Great Idea - Flawed Execution

Mission Control has a logical, easy to use interface, has an excellent mapping system, and allows customization of the ebike’s power settings. However, there are a some significant problems that absolutely ruin the app: 1) The app requires Location be set to “Always” each ride. If you forget to turn Location off after riding, it will contribute to drain the phone’s battery. The developers need to make the app work when Location is set to “While Using.”. 2) The app requires Display and Brightness - Auto Lock to be set to “Never” so that the map remains active while riding. Again, if you forget to return Display and Brightness to its prior setting, it will continue to drain the battery. 3) The app reads the battery capacity (viz., %)at the start of the ride, but doesn’t change during the ride, rendering that feature useless. 4) Since applying Apple’s latest security patch, Mission Control no longer saves My Rides in history.

Come on Specialized, hire some competent iOS programmers!
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Needs Work

Here’s what I’d like to see:
A setting that allows me to tune how much assist I want when starting from a complete stop tied to each assist level. E-bikes are heavy and while I may not need much assist while actively peddling, some extra power while starting would be helpful sometimes.
Apple Watch & Health Integration. Recording a cycling workout on my Apple Watch produces results more in line with riding a regular bicycle. Recording an e-bike ride on Strava gives me heart rate and other metrics, but no information from the bike. Recording a ride on the app and importing to Strava means no heart rate. Having an Apple Watch companion app that allows me to record metrics both from my watch and the bike would make this much easier for the user.
The app should be able to “wake up” the bike for tuning. Also, under the specific scenario, the lights wouldn’t need to come on.
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Pure Garbage, App and Customer Service, a Disrespect to their Customers

Before I relay the issues I’m having with the app, let inform, in case you don’t know already, that Specialized’s customer service is pathetic. You call customer support, but are never able to speak to anyone. You’ll on hold for years until you hang up. Now to the app. This app is junk, and Specialized is not putting much effort to fix the problems. A few of the issues I’m having: - When charging, the screen either show the SOC at 0% or 1%, no matter what the actual SOC actually is; - I set the charging limit to 80%, but it charges to 100%. Sometimes setting the limit works, sometimes it doesn’t; - I set my personal preferences, say for screen layout, cadence, but then, eventually, it changes back to factory default; - sometimes the screen comes on when charging, sometimes it doesn’t. Go figure. One would think a giant company like Specialized would care about the quality of their products and customer satisfaction, but that’s not the case. Either don’t know what they’re doing or they don’t care. Or both.
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Could (and should) be better.

My Specialized Turbo Vado is a great bike that’s a pleasure to ride, but this app leaves so much to be desired, it’s a disappointment from a company as innovative as Specialized.

Aesthetically it’s fine; it’s on-brand and looks like you’d expect. That’s nice. But it’s lagging in the features and content you’d expect from a premium brand like Specialized, and their competition is getting ahead.

For me, the most glaring omissions: The map still doesn’t offer turn-by-turn navigation, and your recorded rides still can’t be exported to Apple Health or Apple Fitness.

I get the impression Specialized can’t figure out what they want this app to be. It insists on having always-on location data and staying in the foreground during a ride. I get the reasons behind that, but it’s lacking too many features to be a true “ride companion” app.

More detailed maps with layers for trails, bike lanes, and turn-by-turn is a starting point. I’d like to see integrated audio playback controls (similar to how Waze did it) so I don’t have to switch apps so often. And I really don’t understand why there’s still no ability to sync Health and Fitness data. Strava does it. Peloton does it. Get with it, Specialized. Your bikes are great, but your software is lagging way behind.
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Covers the basics but...

As others have noted the app requires that your location services are set to "always". This is ridiculous and absolutely should not be necessary to function. I also use the Strava app and it works perfectly fine in "while using" mode. I suspect the developers that created Mission Control are either not capable of threading that needle, or (more likely) want it set to "always" so they can sell your data. It drains the battery and unnecessarily tracks you when you're not actively using the app. I had to create a macro to get to the settings to easily turn this on and off.

The app would also benefit from a little bit of fine-tuning regarding the menu structure and where functionality is within the software. getting to some settings seems very non-intuitive.
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Lots of great features but where’s the Watch app?

There’s a lot to like here, like over the air bike updates and setting up your own three specific motor tunes. I have no idea why Specialized don’t have it linked to the Apple Watch so I can use that instead of bringing my large and heavy $1,300 iPhone 14 on the trails? I have the Apple Watch specifically with the cellular service feature so I don’t need to bring my iPhone in case of emergency.
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Has some glitches

I have had similar issues as the previous reviewer. The app will not allow you to use it unless tracking is set to Always. Developers need to allow setting of While Using App. And you must set your iPhone to Never for locking the screen. Drains the phone battery. I have ended up using Map My Ride which has no such problems when the screen goes dark. It’s early spring and I haven’t ridden my Turbo Creo since the fall. The app will not recognize my login, password or my bike. This app isn’t working for me now at all.
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Good but should be better by now

The app overall has nice features and it’s cool to be able to track your rides tweak your settings etc. I can’t understand that after all the versions, they still haven’t listened to the comments that all say the same thing. The tracking only seems to work when Always On is selected. If you choose only when using app, it doesn’t seem to register. This is an ongoing flaw that you’d expect to be fixed by now.
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Needs Work

It’s nice to be able to do some tweaks and lock the bike. But I would never use it to track a workout as it’s just too clunky. The constant nagging about wanting location on all the time is also a significant barrier on my end. I’m not going to let it just run down my phone battery.

Oh. And you can use the phone’s GPS to gather altitude data but you can’t set the time on the bike from the phone? Seriously? Yeah it’s minor but it’s so minor that it’s assumed. I LOVE MY BIKE. This app sits on my phone for the rare occasion that I lock it up. That’s it.
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Location tracking is aggressive and unnecessary

I do not use the app to track rides and I never plan to, I only use it to check the status of my bike charge, for firmware updates, to change settings, or to lock the motor. It is extremely irritating that the app requests always on location access every single time I open it. ‘Keep turned off’ doesn’t seem to mean the same thing to Specialized that it does to me. Stop asking for my location.
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Location services always on?

This is the only app I have this issue with if you select location services while using the app it will keep asking you to turn on location services. The screen also shuts off while using the app another pain that needs to be updated.

Specialized Turbo Levo

I own a Levo and can attest to the garbage app that Specialized put out — it never works. Useless updates that makes app even more useless. Specialized — fire your app dev team and farm this out. It’s not rocket science.

Past rides processed and uploaded after the latest update

Been waiting for a few months for the update that would fix the processing and uploading of rides. Looks like today’s update fix that and prior rides are now updated :-)

Too many warnings

With you latest update I am forced to comply with a safety warning each time I connect to the bike

UNACCEPTABLE!

I accepted that stupid warning when I agreed to purchase the bike!
Worse yet, once the warning is accepted, the gps connection is dropped and I have to restart the app, which issues the prompt, etm
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Very nice

I already had a turbo levo. I bought a new generation just to get this display and app. This is one of those rare apps that continues to improve. Thank you!

Crap since the update!

Ever since the last major update this app turned to crap and has been pretty much worthless to me. I’ve lost data so many times trying to record rides, I’m ditching this app and just using Strava from now on.

Location services needs to be always on

The app requires location services to be always on - why? It’s only needed when the app is running. No need for this.

Suggestion for developer

I use this bike for commuting and often just get on and go without starting the app first. It would be nice if the onboard computer would sync with my phone the next time I use the app with the bike. My phone shows a much lower number of actual rides than my onboard computer shows. The logs should be even between both devices after sync.
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