What are the joys of Garmins?

I have a 205 and a 705. I only bought the latter when I thought I had left the other one in France one year, so I took the opportunity to upgrade when I bought the new one (I found the 205 some weeks later in the bottom of my bike bag.)

In my view, there is nothing the 705 does which the 205 didn't. The only difference is a bigger screen and the choice to have a different coloured border on screen ( big deal!).

I had used OS maps but found them impractical in our weather. Also, I wanted to be able to track where I'd been, keep count of the miles, monitor heart rate and see my current speed in real time and the best way to do this was with a Garmin. (Remember that this was before smartphones took off and Strava wasn't even a twinkle in its creator's hard drive).

I find the data on Garmin connect more accurate than Strava but what I like most is that I have a record of every ride I've done for the last 5 years, and I can compare rides, routes and performance over the years...and the features I get on Garmin Connect for free, I would have to pay for on Strava. Looking at all the data isn't isn't everyone's cup of tea, I know, but for a boring b@$+@rd like me, who has no friends, it's perfect. Ultimatelyl, though, I just get out on the bike and enjoy riding whenever I can. The tracking of the rides is simply a bonus activity afterwards.

The simple truth is:
1. know what you want to achieve, and then
2. use/buy the most suitable things to help you to meet those needs,
whether it be a smartphone, a map, a GPS device or simply nothing at all.

rostlr wrote:

Is a Garmin GPS really more accurate than a smartphones? I've had a google and can't find an authoritative article to support this assertion.

This is based on personal experience.

I have been on routes, riding side by side or in front of someone using a smartphone app, for the app to later report they were 10 seconds ahead.

You just have to look at some of the weird data they can produce. Tim has running world record time on strava! 52 second 1 Km split time on strava.... recorded off a smartphone! ( The world record is more than 2 minutes!) I have never had weird data like this from a garmin. If you cant trust the data....

rostlr wrote:

Is a Garmin GPS really more accurate than a smartphones? I've had a google and can't find an authoritative article to support this assertion.

This is based on personal experience.

I have been on routes, riding side by side or in front of someone using a smartphone app, for the app to later report they were 10 seconds ahead.

You just have to look at some of the weird data they can produce. Tim has running world record time on strava! 52 second 1 Km split time on strava.... recorded off a smartphone! ( The world record is more than 2 minutes!) I have never had weird data like this from a garmin. If you cant trust the data....

I have spoken to Strava regarding inaccuracies, this is usually a glitch that occurs when additional "sensors" are used to save battery. Therefore I would have to agree with whoever was saying surely they're all the same satellites.

I know of people riding side by side both using Garmins and there have been discrepancies.

I would also have to add that the differences we're talking about are boh minute and between different equipment. Ignore everyone else's and go with your own.

My Strava always puts my times as 4 seconds faster than the guys at the TT make it. It makes no difference as my improvements will always be the same.

X

Discrepancies on strava are more to do with the way that Strava works out your time for a segment.

They take the recording point nearest to the segment start and the segment finish and work with that - so in reality for your time that shows up on Strava you may have covered 50m less, or 50m more than the person you're riding with, and get a better or worse placing on the leaderboard accordingly.

So your GPS could be getting good accuracy to within 5-10m, but if the recording point is 20m away from the segment start/finish points then that is where the discrepancy comes from.

If you plug in the segment ID for Spring Hill in Little Staughton: 3721053 ( app.strava.com/segments/3721053 )

Into the leaderboard page here: veloviewer.com/NewLeaderboard.php

It shows that the KOM travelled 393.5m for his version of the segment, I only travelled 388.84m for the version that Strava matched when I did it on Wednesday, and there are some riders whose segment was matched to as little as 344m of their ride.


Although with a little snooping around it turns out the 344m value was recorded with a Mobile device - so maybe there is something in it!

to jane , so is that 9secs plus 4 , or does the 9secs include the 4 !!!! lol

My rationale is that the Garmin is a dedicated single purpose device designed to do GPS recording and calculate speed and distance as accurately as possible.
Smartphones are multipurpose devices, busy running all kinds of apps, talking to 3g towers, looking for wifi , polling your email or whatever else you have running on it!

I find the Garmin finds a GPS signal much faster than my phone and seems to update location much quicker..


However ... back to the original question Tony asked : If you have a great sense of direction or don't plan riding on unfamiliar roads or if you do, you don't mind stopping, taking your phone or map out and navigating, then the Garmin isn't going to offer a lot extra. All the other stuff like auto lap, virtual partner, tons of data, while good, is all just fluff.

For me, its worth it to be able to plot a route and follow it with confidence and not have to stop and check directions.

to crash, its just based on our strava times.

the st neots official times are 31:04 and 30:57, so I am on 7 seconds slower than you according to the club

Hi J the timekeeper is always right..i did a long 28.57 same night as you on my Garmin but i got a 29.4 about 7 secs slower...maybe its a good thing,if you are on a result sprint the last 200 mtrs..see ya geoff

Bit off topic but one thing to bear in mind is that planning a route on Garmin Connect needs a bit of caution as it tried to take us down a road that looked nothing more than a hardly surfaced farmers track yesterday !

Hi what a mess i arrived home after today's ride took off my 800 and it just froze,not from the cold but it just sat there doing nothing,,it would not even turn off..but on the gamin site it gave instructions how to unfreeze the dam thing,, doing as i am told,,it did,,but come on £400 for a toy,,what a farce,, looks good though and i have my street cred back ah aha Geoffrey . ...

I don't have any experience of them but the Bryton GPS range looks good value for money. The data can be uploaded and analysed like Garmin, they are supposed to be Strava compatible and ANT+ and the cheapest one in the range is less than £100.