What are the joys of Garmins?

The lurch towards my 40th draws nearer and my lovely wife is asking my present ideas. I like the idea of a Garmin but other than being able to follow a route and the sensors, what does it offer that say, Strava on a smartphone doesn't?


TIA

Tony.

Its not just GPS, HR, Cadence, Navigation etc. But a Garmin is also a better cycling computer in terms of just showing the bog standard Speed, Distance, Time etc. data than a standard cateye strada or whatever - mainly because you can customise it to show you more data on one screen, and you can choose which data you want to be shown on that screen.

I guess the main advantages over a phone are:

- you don't have to worry about battery life
- its not stuck in your back pocket if you need to pause it or whatever
- HR, Cadence, more accurate GPS, Navigation etc.

If you're still on the fence though this website has really in depth reviews of all the models including the new 510 and 810: www.dcrainmaker.com/product-reviews/garmin

Before i got my edge 500, i was considering getting the wahoo ant+ dongle and the speed/cadence sensor, but i really didn't like the idea of strapping a £400 iphone to the handle bars, just felt it wouldn't come out well in an accident!!

As previously mentioned as well, battery life would be an issue, using GPS, and displaying data on the screen, i couldn't see an iphone lasting more than a couple of hours, don't know the stats on the garmin, but i'd imagine you'd get at least 25 hours use without a charge!!

Garmin 900 is due mid summer this year by all accounts and allegedly solves the concerns people had when they upgraded from the 705 to an 8-series (800 or 810).

By all accounts the backlighting, robustness and battery life are better on the old model and Garmin have worked to improve these on the 900 back up to 705 levels.

Drawback on the 705 is that it will only do directions if you transfer the routes as a particulary file format and it won't handle a large amount of waypoints (which I found out on the sportive).

Personally if you can live with the battery life "concerns" of the 810 then try to wait until the 900 comes out as 810s will drop in price.

Advantages of a bike computer vs Strava on a phone I think Alasdair has already covered pretty well.

I don't have a recent reference point, having only used a Garmin Edge since the 205 appeared, but I can comment on battery life. My ancient Edge 205 still gets about 5/6 hours of charge and my Edge 800, purchased July 2011, still had about 60% charge remaining after a 6 hour ride on Monday.

I've experienced zero issues with visibility or robustness.

Think about what you want from it, too. Navigation may seem like a luxury, but I love to go exploring so it's something I rely on. Not draining the charge in my phone is also important when I'm 50 miles from home. Cadence/speed sensors are vital if you intend to use a turbo trainer. The virtual partner could be a handy tool if you plan to ride the TT.

-- Andy Mc

hi tony
dont bother get a map and stick it in your pocket,use a simple computer like a cateye and buy some nice wheels instead ?

gaddy wrote:

hi tony
dont bother get a map and stick it in your pocket,use a simple computer like a cateye and buy some nice wheels instead ?

Your starting to sound like Geoff ....mid life crisis Gaddy ????

The best part ab out having a garmin is it allows me to accurately measure my year on year. Deformation in fit ess due to not actually riding a bike

iI have an 800 - a brilliant piece of kit. Apart from the above, a couple of good points. Firstly Garmin Connect is the online cloud website where your data is saved to and routes can be shared/uploaded/ modified or devised. You can also analyse your stats and export them to Excel etc.

The other big benefit of the 800 is that unlike most computers, the speed sensor is fitted to the rear wheel. You can therefore have full functionality on the turbo.

The 800 also allows different profiles for each bike and if you have the OS maps then it works well for off-road too.

The "virtual partner" feature allows you to monitor your progress against your previous best and/or that of others.

Jason does have a point of course. a map doesn't need batteries or GPS signal and better wheels might make you faster - the 800 can't do that!!

I use Strava on my Samsung S3 and it uses about 12% battery per hour as the S3 shuts down on peripheral apps when Strava is active and although it shows actual time when recording when it collates the results it shows rolling time. Because it constantly records and then takes out static time you dont get the 'Garmin didnt restart' annoyance and lose large swathes of routes. Ive used it for 8 months and only once has it had a GPS blip where it jumped to Brighton and back.
It depends if you like to see the numbers while you ride and I suppose that relates to how serious you ride.
With regards to the route again depends if you ride familiar roads or not, I prefer to plan at home and then just follow my nose (in my line of work i can recce roads etc between jobs too). Or just use road signs, its what they're designed for...

Tardus wrote:

a map doesn't need batteries or GPS signal and better wheels might make you faster - the 800 can't do that!!

I used paper OS maps when I had my Edge 205. Guess how much fun they were in a storm?

Jason does make an excellent point, though, and it really comes back to what we actually need/want out of our bike computers. Maybe time to make a list of the features you want, Tony, and see how many of them your phone already provides?

-- Andy Mc

From memory Tony got himself some wheels recently so that point might be moot.

Andy, with regard to battery/backlighting, most of the commentary I've seen are from 705 users who upgraded to the 800 and were underwhelmed. Same as a discussion I think we had about going from 800 to 810 perhaps? Minimal feature creep between those particular generations?

Dave, your warp speed to Brighton and back was likely down to phones using wireless access points partly for their location accuracy before firing up wireless. Likely you passed somewhere with the same SSID as a place listed in the database as being in Brighton. Used to have similar with my tablet as a wireless access point/modem, no matter where I was in the UK for a while my phone always thought I was in Sunbury. then would bounce back and forth on the map swapping between fine GPS fix and coarser wireless ap fix.