Garmin

scannings

Looking to buy a Garmin for the bike. I'm away from home quite a bit so like the idea of having a map for wherever I am so I can get out and back again from where ever I'm staying.
Any body out there got any advice about what's good etc
Ta
Steve

Hornetto

If you want map functionality then you're probably looking at the Edge 605 or Edge 705. There are quite a few other threads on these forums which discuss them - have a go on the search facility near the top of the page on the right.

Edit: like this one:
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12587130

andrew_s

There's also the Etrex HCx models (Vista or Legend).
They aren't marketed for bikes, and don't have heart rates or cadence, or "race yourself" games, but are somewhat better on the navigation front (been out a lot longer, so properly debugged), and take AA batteries rather than built-in rechargeable.

dag_on_a_bike

I got the Edge 705 a month ago and just returned from 6 days riding in the Pyrenees Orientales.

I was amazed at just how much data you get. And I've hardly scratched the surface of what it can do yet.

One of the best resources I've found is http://frank.kinlan.co.uk/?page_id=920.

Not once have I regretted my decision.

willbevan

i love my 705, but a peice of advice if I may (which is covered on the link from a previous thread but as fair way down)

They don't all come with decent maps, the base map that comes with all units is shocking!

You would need to make sure you got maps with it if you dont want to be disapointed (you did say you wanted it for navigation), and I would advise you don't get the maps on an micro SD card, get them on a DVD and buy a cheap 2 GB micro SD card to load them onto from the PC as well.

Reason being if you have them on DVD you can use mapsource on your PC to plot routes that go via places, which is much much hareder on the device.

i.e. (be it an unrealistic one)

I want to go from Cardiff to London but want to go to edinburgh on the way

You would need to ask it to go to Edinburgh first, then, reroute to go to london, which is a faff. On the PC you could set that up and download it.


Reason for an SD card, you can load the maps onto the devices memory itself, I put on all the area around me for about 200mb so leaving over 300 i think for routes, history etc but personally i would like to know all the space is there for my history (I also back my history and garmin files onto the SD card as there is plenty of space, back it up online as well, would hate to loose all the data!)

You can get the SD card version downloaded and working in mapsource, but its a faff (and not everyone seems to get it right if you look on the motionbased forum)

dag_on_a_bike

Wholeheartedly agree.

705 + City Navigator NT 2008 on DVD.

Plan routes on the PC - I used Mapsource - then upload to the device.