Garmin 305 vs 705 - Is the 705 worth it?

RC21

Has anyone upgraded from a Garmin 305 to a 705 and thought it was worth it? The only extra features I can see that are worth it is the colour screen and the ability to see maps which I have heard aren't very good anyway - is this true?

If you were going to buy one outright and didn't have any, which one would you get?

Garmin 305 (with H/R) ~ £140
Garmin 705 (with H/R) ~ £250

Thanks
RC

magliaceleste

I'll only consider the Edge 705 when it is supported by Tracklogs and fully sported by Sportstracks. Until that time it doesn't offer anything useful to me and I'll stick with the 305.

a_n_t

with decent maps it offers proper sat-nav, ie, finds postcodes and navigates to them, re-routes if you change course etc, just like your car one. dont think the 305 does that?

pware

No the 305 only displays routes you have already programmed in.

There is no addresses on the 305, or maps... its only draws a "where you have been" map on the screen, which you can then convert to a route or course later.

305 = GPS recording

705 = Routable Colour Maps (but you have to buy the *good* maps!)

magliaceleste

That's correct the 305 does not. I can't see that much use for finding somewhere based on a postcode on a bike, unless you are a courier.

However being able to plot a course on an OS map is essential (especially for mountain biking but also useful for road riding). As far as I know without one of the mapping systems (Tracklogs, Memory Map etc) you can't easily plot a route on an OS map and download it to the Edge 705.

I'd happily be corrected if someone knows how to do this.

willbevan

magliaceleste wrote:

As far as I know without one of the mapping systems (Tracklogs, Memory Map etc) you can't easily plot a route on an OS map and download it to the Edge 705.

I'd happily be corrected if someone knows how to do this.

I use memory map, and gps to course (free application) to create the route as a course, and then ride it on my 305.... use it for trails in the forest of dean...

Its not one click , but is easy enough after a couple of times

a_n_t

magliaceleste wrote:

That's correct the 305 does not. I can't see that much use for finding somewhere based on a postcode on a bike, unless you are a courier.

or you dont already have one in the car!

magliaceleste

willbevan wrote:

I use memory map, and gps to course (free application) to create the route as a course, and then ride it on my 305.... use it for trails in the forest of dean...

Its not one click , but is easy enough after a couple of times

Err..yeah I know a 305 will work OK. Tracklogs will talk directly to an Edge 205/305 without the need for intermediate software, but not a 605/705 yet (they are working on it).

keith57

I've used a 305 with HR and Cadence for about a year and changed it a few weeks ago for a 705. Bought mine from http://www.sportsgpsdirect.com/ who offer great service.

Some of the differences:

Bigger screen - easier to see the numbers at a glance.

Will do proper mapping. I have City Navigator I bought for another GPS as well as Topo UK. I've unlocked City Navigator for the 705. I haven't bothered much with the moving map when riding at home on familiar roads. However - I spent last week pedalling in the Pyrenees on roads I didn't know at all and it was brilliant for navigating from one place to the next. I didn't create a route beforehand - you can't do this on the unit itself - only on a computer beforehand, but who uses a car GPS like this? All I did while out on the road, (on the side of the road), was move the cursor to the next place I wanted to go to, click on the joystick and tell it to take me there. It can't currently search just for towns and villages like my other GPS which is a pain...

A very unexpected bonus is being able to read the layout of the road ahead on the moving map - especially the hairpins on a steep climb. On the Col de Mantet for example I knew exactly where I was and could count down the bends to the top. Is this cheating I wonder? The City Navigator is surprisingly accurate with road detail in this respect!!

For MTB I imagine the UK Topo would be similar on paths and the like. I only use UK Topo for sea kayaking on a larger GPS and the coastline detail is simply amazing. However - I don't bother creating routes before-hand (it's not the way my brain works!) but it is an extremely flexible tool for navigating on the fly - ie you can change your mind and go somewhere else if you want to. I have taken it along once or twice when winter mountaineering on the Ben in Scotland and there was plenty of contour detail and paths when zoomed to the right scale on the screen.

There is more internal memory in the unit than the 305 so track detail will be kept longer - I lost detail on older tracks on the 305 when riding I the Alps for 2 weeks last year. I didn't bring a laptop with me to download the data as I went. I don't know yet what the limit is on the 705 before track detail is lost. Also - with a 2gb micro sd card I can load road detail for most of Europe on the thing - and it will work as an in-car GPS just about as well. The whole of the UK Topo will fit on a single 2gb micro SD Card.

For biking the biggest difference is it will measure POWER with the right kit on the bike.... might mean spending £1000 on one of these sometime...

http://www.quarq.us/Spiders/CinQo.html

Downsides: when the unit was navigating for me and I was looking at the map screen it crashed a few times for the first two days in the Pyrenees and to reset It I had to switch it off. This upset the recorded track, which is a pain. I have heard this reported on other forums too. After this I used navigation sparingly. I don't think it crashed looking at the map screen when not navigating.

The resulting tracks are a bit weird - on the Mac version of Garmin Training Centre the whole route isn't displayed on the screen, on the PC version it is and height gain is reported differently. They display fine in SportTracks but height gain and time are slightly different again!! SportTracks doesn't seem to remove time when stationary from the overall time even when set to do this in the preferences. Does anyone know about these kinds of things? I don't yet! The logs are just plain text files really so if I knew the format, etc I guess I could correct them??? The 'non-crashed tracks' on the following days are fine.

One other bonus is the device mounts as an ordinary USB drive on my Mac desktop and all your history is viewable as individual files which is very handy for fiddling about with in other programmes. They are .tcx files and load fine into SportTracks running in Parallels on my Mac, Google Earth after a bit of translating, etc.

Any .gpx file can be drooped into the right folder on the SD card and can be followed as a route. I've downloaded the Fred Whitton Challenge as a GPX file from the web and it's sitting on the 705 waiting for me to ride it!

You can create routes as .GPX files with Garmin Bobcat on the Mac if you have Garmin maps, Mapsource on the PC of course. I guess all the other mapping software will do something similar - I don't use them myself.

I believe this site will do routing for free, haven't used it yet
http://bikeroutetoaster.com/
So no need to buy things like Memory Map?

You can have a look at some of my Pyrenees tracks here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fachwen/se ... 521871445/
View at full size to see the detail.

Finally - it's Black not Grey - so matches my bike better than the 305 ;-)

numplumz

which folder do you drop the .gpx files into the GPX folder, or the subfolder called current.

I've gone up from 305 to 705 and the increased memory is great, loaded an old navigator 4 map set up for whole of UK and europe to street level and still plenty of internal memory left before buying an sd card.

Hopefully the 705 will have better battery life.
The lack of being able to view your saved history on the map is a step backwards, at least the 305 let you view the breadcrumb outline.

The crashing while track following is still there...thats not good, they should have sorted that out by now.

magliaceleste

Great post Keith57

If you're using the latest version of Sportstracks, take a look at the smoothing preferences. If you wind them down to zero you'll get the same distance/height data etc that Training Center reports. You should also be able to change the stopped values, can't recall a the moment.

If you could tell us where to drop the GPX files on to the Edge, that would be great. Glad to see it works on the Mac.

MarkMcp

Hi Keith 57 great post.

Maybe you can help a fellow Mac user. I have a 305 and mapmyride.com don't do downloads from the 305 to a map on a mac. Also it doesn't seem to work when i transfer my data from the 305 to motionbased either. I'm not really after much just want to see my rides on mapmyride or sopmething similar. I think i need to get familiar with GPX files. Any tips/hints for the technological illiterate ?

owenlars

If you have a 305 already can you use the existing cadence and speed sensors fitted to your bike and the e3xisting HRM with the 705 or do you need to buy a whole new bundle?

keith57

Here goes with some replies:

gpx files go in the root/garmin/gpx folder on either the internal memory or the SD Card. On the Garmin Bobcat on the Mac all I can export is folders of routes so the file on the 705 can contain more than one route, not a problem really - it just you can't delete individual routes on the 705 itself - only the file that holds them all. You can have more than one file though if you want.

I'm using all of my existing 305 sensors - they work fine!

Thanks for the tips on SportTracks - I'll have a fiddle at some point!

Exporting from 305 using a Mac - you can export from the 305 to the Garmin Training Centre and that's almost it I think Trouble is you can then only export your whole history from the Mac Training Centre as a TCX file. It is possible to then load this into SportTracks on a PC and export individual rides. If you have Parallels and Spprttracks I used to be able to export individual tracks directly from the 305 to the Mac with the USB lead. This is why it much easier on the 705 as each ride ends up with its own individual tcx file you can move anywhere you want to.

A workaround could be to relocate your personal Gamin Logs temporarily so they were 'empty' (they are in user directory/application support/garmin) so when you did import a ride Training Centre would only hold one ride as would the resulting export.

BTW I can't import directly into Garmin Training Centre on the Mac when I connect the unit - software reports an error. it's simple though to go to the file menu and manually import the ride data. Strange as all the other Garmin software can 'see' the 705 without any problem!!

Kafka\'s Doll

What's the problem with uploading routes to the 705? Draw them on Bikely (or similar), save the gpx, hey presto turn-by-turn directions on the go.

The route planning function is useful too. You shoot off up a country road because it looks like good riding. You turn left, then right, then a double left...or was it right? Click 'take me home' on the 705 and you get directions from where you are.

pingpong

I have mapped a audax for this sunday on map my ride and tried to down load it to my 705, now when it is connected to my pc the gpx file shows up in the 705,s files and the sd card memory, trouble is I can't get the file to open on my gps. I am very sure that I am missing something somewhere, al very frustrating to say the least. Can anyone throw some light on my problem...thanks :?:

Kafka\'s Doll

pingpong wrote:

I have mapped a audax for this sunday on map my ride and tried to down load it to my 705, now when it is connected to my pc the gpx file shows up in the 705,s files and the sd card memory, trouble is I can't get the file to open on my gps. I am very sure that I am missing something somewhere, al very frustrating to say the least. Can anyone throw some light on my problem...thanks :?:

Has to have fewer than 100 waypoints, but it should otherwise appear in the history section of the 705.

pingpong

Cheers, I think I will start from scratch again :?

keith57

pingpong wrote:

I have mapped a audax for this sunday on map my ride and tried to down load it to my 705, now when it is connected to my pc the gpx file shows up in the 705,s files and the sd card memory, trouble is I can't get the file to open on my gps. I am very sure that I am missing something somewhere, al very frustrating to say the least. Can anyoneHav throw some light I my problem...thanks :?:

Simply make sure the .gpx file goes in the right place on the SD card or the internal memory, no need to do both. It doesn't go in the history folder. Checkout my previous post for the correct location

MegaCycle

my 705 doesn't find postcodes.

...does it?

Kafka\'s Doll

MegaCycle wrote:

my 705 doesn't find postcodes.

...does it?

Yes. At least, it does if you've bought maps with it.

keith57

Kafka\'s Doll wrote:

MegaCycle wrote:

my 705 doesn't find postcodes.

...does it?

Yes. At least, it does if you've bought maps with it.

Sorry to start sounding like a know it all ... the 705, like my Garmin 60Cx knows about post codes but can only search for them if the mapping is 'the right sort'. It definitely doesn't search for post codes with Topo UK or City Navigator Europe 2007. I have asked Garmin about this and apparently (with the 60Cx anyway) if I had their other City Navigator product (NT apparently) it would be able to search.

This is a nuisance as searching without using a post code it tricky at best and sometimes impossible. You have to enter Region, City, Number and Street Name to then select a match. If it doesn't find a match you can't do anything. You only have to get the spelling slightly off and you are stuffed. You can usefully ask either to find the nearest petrol station, bank, lodging, etc, which does work quite well as they are presented in a list, nearest first. The 705 at the moment can't do search on a City.

Kafka\'s Doll

Keith57 wrote:

Kafka\'s Doll wrote:

MegaCycle wrote:

my 705 doesn't find postcodes.

...does it?

Yes. At least, it does if you've bought maps with it.

Sorry to start sounding like a know it all ... the 705, like my Garmin 60Cx knows about post codes but can only search for them if the mapping is 'the right sort'. It definitely doesn't search for post codes with Topo UK or City Navigator Europe 2007. I have asked Garmin about this and apparently (with the 60Cx anyway) if I had their other City Navigator product (NT apparently) it would be able to search.

This is a nuisance as searching without using a post code it tricky at best and sometimes impossible. You have to enter Region, City, Number and Street Name to then select a match. If it doesn't find a match you can't do anything. You only have to get the spelling slightly off and you are stuffed. You can usefully ask either to find the nearest petrol station, bank, lodging, etc, which does work quite well as they are presented in a list, nearest first. The 705 at the moment can't do search on a City.

Okay. For the record, my City Navigator UK, which I bought on MicroSD for about forty quid, does postcode searching.

keith57

That's right - if you get the version pre-loaded on SD cards it does do Post Code Searching, but that gets expensive if you but lots of them. The DVD covers the whole of Europe. At least the cards can be used in any GPS.

Kafka\'s Doll

Keith57 wrote:

That's right - if you get the version pre-loaded on SD cards it does do Post Code Searching, but that gets expensive if you but lots of them. The DVD covers the whole of Europe. At least the cards can be used in any GPS.

Sure, but you'd have to be doing an awful lot of cycling to need to buy lots of countries without overdraft-recovering gaps.