Garmin 800 users........or cheaper alternative?

bails87

I hope to do some longer rides on and off road, and I can't rely on my phone's battery to last more than a couple of hours, so I'm thinking of buying a dedicated GPS.

Halfords have got the Garmin 800 with trail package (1:50,000 OS maps) for £340. i'm tempted to just blow the cash and go for something good, rather than buying something as a halfway house solution, then upgrading in a years time anyway.

So, obviously the OS Maps will be good for off roading, but what about for on road? What does the 'basemap' look like?

Cadence and HR can be added later for not much £££, but what I want for now is something that I can use to track rides then upload to Strava and Endomondo without worrying about battery, something that I can put rides on beforehand and then follow, and something to use as a 'you're this far behind the last time you rode this route' tool.

So, just splurge on the Garmin 800? spend the extra for the package with full Euro road mapping and HR/cadence monitors? I'm unlikely to be needing any kind of navigation in Europe, and I'm more likely to need navigation/full mapping off road rather than on road.

Or is there a Holux/other alternative thats close to the Garmin 800?

Or is the 800 not worth it? Should I just go for something like the 200/500/705/Holux 260?

meanredspider

You could get everything except the navigation bit on a Forerunner 305 for around £100. You can upload and follow routes without a map showing (basically you can see your position relative to a dotted trail) - it's very basic functionality but works.

10 hour battery
"Virtual Partner"
Will take cadence, HRM and even a power meter
Etc etc

I've had one for several years - they are cheap as chips and incredibly reliable. Unless I was doing a long (LeJog style) route, would I consider navigation. You can always use your phone briefly for the "where am I" questions if you get lost.

iPete

I love the 800 Navigation. Its fantastic doing a new route and never having to stop.

Do buy a protective screen cover, for some reason Garmin sell a touch screen device with a screen made of cheese, I found this out too late.

notsoblue

iPete wrote:

Do buy a protective screen cover, for some reason Garmin sell a touch screen device with a screen made of cheese, I found this out too late.

Really? I've had mine over a year and its been ok. What happened?

I'd say the Garmin 800 is worth the price tag. If you wanted to save cash you could get the maps and navigation "elsewhere".

Tricycleboy

I've got a bryton rider 50. It's much cheaper than the 800 and gives you a map to follow plus all the functionality you're after. It's not an OS map, and personally I've not used it off road but it should be fine.

Mines been great for a year or so now- I bought it as a stop gap thing but haven't felt the need to upgrade.

optimisticbiker

There is nothing close to the 800 on the market that does all you want, particularly the 'virtual partner'. Battery life depends on how you set up the screen brightness/timeout but I get 12hours+ out of mine. Had it 18months now and no real problems, none with the screen.

The base maps are fairly useless, main arterial routes only. The OS is good but its 1:50000 so lacks some detail in built-up areas, but is good value in the bundle. You can add the City maps for more detail but they are expensive, however there are the free Open Street Maps (OSM) which work well (I use these). Details of how to download and install are on several websites, but copied here for info:

Installing Free Open Street Map data

Some people purchased an Edge 800 for cheap because it didn't come with Garmin's City Navigator maps installed. This is fine, because there is a complete and comprehensive set of free maps (wikipedia style user-generated maps) from the Open Street Maps project. You can install these maps on a microsd card, and then use your Edge 800 like normal. Better instructions will follow, but here is the gist.
1. Choose a mapset from this link- Since I am in North America, I use either Mantlik's contoured maps or Dave's
2.You have to enable data recording on the SD card by changing the settings: Settings > Data Recording > Record to memory card.
3.Place a blank SD card in your Garmin, turn it on and then start the timer. This will create the proper directories on the SD card automatically.
4.Stop the brief activity you just started.
5.Feel free to revert the "Record to memory card" setting once you have started then stopped the timer.
6.Plug your Garmin into your computer. Depending on your computer, you will probably be prompted to open a folder to view the files on both the main unit and the SD card. Otherwise, navigate to the drive/folder your computer assigned to your SD card.
7.After downloading, copy the IMG file to the SD cards "GARMIN" folder that was created earlier.
8.The SD card can have multiple IMG files on it and you can choose between them in the Edge 800 configuration menu. I kept my names descriptive, "osm_western_us.img". VERY IMPORTANT: keep the name short and free of spaces or odd punctuation - underscores are OK for spaces.
9.Once the file is copied, safely remove (right click on the icon in the lower right of screen for Windows users) the SD card from your computer.
10.Insert the card and power up the Garmin.
11.Go to the configuration menu, then System -> Map -> Map Information, and select the map type.
12.Enjoy!

bails87

Thanks all, so....

The Bryton: What are the maps like? Do they only show roads? Bridleways? Contours?

The 800: Does the device route using the OS Maps? Or does it need a different map layer? I think the roads shown on the OS map are 'routable'.

The Edge 305 seems to have been replaced by the 500, I'm not sure the 500 is so hot on the navigation, seems to be a standard bike computer that uses GPS rather than a wheel magnet, unless I've got it wrong?

Canny Jock

A second hand 705 would do all you need for a lot less money?

optimisticbiker

bails87 wrote:

The 800: Does the device route using the OS Maps? Or does it need a different map layer? I think the roads shown on the OS map are 'routable'.

Yes they are. It will do 'get me there' routing with them, or if you have loaded a GPX route file with waypoints it will route between the waypoints - though the routing might not be what you intended if the waypoints are too far apart. See here for more info about different ways to route with the 800.

mudcow007

Ive got an Holux GPSort 245, its been updated with the GPSport 260 which has built in wireless hrm

only thing it doesnt do is follow routes (i dont think)

Clicky

it is only £100 though

prawny

Get an 800, I tried to get a cheap halfway solution but in the end wasn't happy when I had a play with my mates garmin, plus only garmins are supported by strava and ride with gps.

The open maps are ok, most of the fireroads on the chase are on there, I went exploring in the snow in the dark over the winter and didn't get lost despite all the landmarks being covered up and I had no idea where I was. That was fun.

iPete

notsoblue wrote:

iPete wrote:

Do buy a protective screen cover, for some reason Garmin sell a touch screen device with a screen made of cheese, I found this out too late.

Really? I've had mine over a year and its been ok. What happened?

I'd say the Garmin 800 is worth the price tag. If you wanted to save cash you could get the maps and navigation "elsewhere".

Think I chucked it in my back jersey pocket with my iPhone briefly, fortunately you hardly notice it with the screen on.

whitebait01

I've got a Holux GPSport 260 Pro, it does ANT+ HRM and cadence, logs your route, doesn't do maps although I think it can tell you to follow waypoints - I haven't tried it though). The bundled software allows you to export rides as .GPX files (although this strips the cadence and HRM data as far as I can tell) so you can upload rides to Strava etc. Mine was £70, I think the price has gone up a bit now but it's been rock solid, picks up satellites quickly and hasn't ever caused me any issues.

notsoblue

iPete wrote:

notsoblue wrote:

iPete wrote:

Do buy a protective screen cover, for some reason Garmin sell a touch screen device with a screen made of cheese, I found this out too late.

Really? I've had mine over a year and its been ok. What happened?

I'd say the Garmin 800 is worth the price tag. If you wanted to save cash you could get the maps and navigation "elsewhere".

Think I chucked it in my back jersey pocket with my iPhone briefly, fortunately you hardly notice it with the screen on.

Must have been your iPhones diamante cover.

I've found my garmin to be pretty rugged all in all. I've hiked around with it in my pockets or in rucksacks with other stuff and there are no visible scratches on it.

rolf_f

bails87 wrote:

Thanks all, so....

The Bryton: What are the maps like? Do they only show roads? Bridleways? Contours??

I only have the base maps on my Bryton 50 - they are supposed to also have Navteq maps but my unit was a free sample with the wrong maps activated so I don't. But apparently the Navteq maps are barely better than the base maps. They are supposed to be getting the option for the OSM maps soon so that should improve things.

But anyway, even the relatively crude basemaps are actually perfectly fine for road riding. Off road and cycle paths require manual plotting which isn't great but really it's spot on for road navigating.

The unit is a bit bulky - bulkier than the Garmin 800 but even the 800 is far larger than I'd want on my bike all the time. For less than an 800 you can get a Bryton 50 and the very neatly compact Bryton 40 for the 95% of the time when you probably don't need proper mapping.

lostboysaint

Memory Map Adventurer 2800. Full OS mapping, good touch screen. Not as user friendly as the Garmin but half the price.

meanredspider

bails87 wrote:

The Edge 305 seems to have been replaced by the 500, I'm not sure the 500 is so hot on the navigation, seems to be a standard bike computer that uses GPS rather than a wheel magnet, unless I've got it wrong?

Dunno if that was in response to my Forerunner 305 comment - the Forerunner is a multisports watch but has a bike-specific mount. I think you are going to want more navigation than the Forerunner can offer. I navigated the Strathpuffer route just by downloading somebody else's route onto the Forerunner than then you just follow the "dots" on the screen. It's a very similar function to the "Get You Home" function that allows you to track your route back the way you've come. I've tested it before and it's accurate to within a metre or so. It comes with HRM strap. You can set 3 different screens up with up to 4 measures on each page. You can also set cadence & HR alerts. I've toyed with the idea of the 800 but, unless I was touring, I can't see that I'd get value from it. The only other advantage of the 800 is its barometric elevation capability but, TBH, I've found the Forerunner accurate enough for my needs.

Worth checking Handtec's prices on the 800 - they are often amongst the best for Garmin.

bails87

Sorry, yep, getting my Edges and Forerunners mixed up.

The dot on the screen might work, and obviously the £200 change isn't to be sniffed at, but......shiny shiny shiny

I'll mull it over, Handtec do have decent prices, but the 20% off at Halfords makes them even cheaper (I think). The Handtec 800+cadnce+HRM bundle is the same price as the Halfords 800+ uk 1:50k OS maps bundle. Maps are more important to me, in the immediate future, than HR and cadence, and are a lot more expensive to add after buying the unit.

bails87

Oh, and what does the 800 do that the 705 doesn't? Or is the 800 just the new version of the 705?

mossychops

Edit: Oops missed OptimisticBikers post and typed in the same info.


I am thinking of upgrading to the 800 and selling my 705 with or without european road maps, the cadence sensor, both mounts, box and hardly used heart rate strap (I have a polar HRM I use instead) Does anyone know what they are worth as new condition or the best place to sell stuff like this? I am starting hill walking so OS maps would be good for me as I will be using them along side actual paper OS maps.

Tricycleboy

The navteq maps are a fair bit better than the base maps on the Bryton IMO. I've found them perfectly good at showing enough detail to follow a route without knowing where you're going- even in cities. They aren't particularly pretty looking maps but they are decent.

I've found Bryton's tech support to be really good too. constant function updates- really good help the one time something did go wrong (to do with settings on my mac rather then the unit)

I'd recommend it. I'm sure the 800 is better, but for something that does almost exactly the same thing at half the price, i've been happy

optimisticbiker

bails87 wrote:

Sorry, yep, getting my Edges and Forerunners mixed up.

The dot on the screen might work, and obviously the £200 change isn't to be sniffed at, but......shiny shiny shiny

I'll mull it over, Handtec do have decent prices, but the 20% off at Halfords makes them even cheaper (I think). The Handtec 800+cadnce+HRM bundle is the same price as the Halfords 800+ uk 1:50k OS maps bundle. Maps are more important to me, in the immediate future, than HR and cadence, and are a lot more expensive to add after buying the unit.

If you plan to use only the OSM maps then the cadence/hrm bundle is the better value. To help in your decision here are some screen shots I just took. The top two are the OS 1:50000 maps at the default 200m/cm and also a 120m/cm view and the bottom two are the same using the OSM GB+Contour maps. I always use the OSM maps now because for navigating on road they are less cluttered and you can see the contours easier (and therefore know how much pain is coming, but some might argue thats a bad thing ) I don't go off road much but even then they have a fair amount of detail. What they dont always have is the stuff like church spires and power lines, useful if you're navigating by compass I suppose but less so on a satnav.

bails87

Thanks OB, that looks interesting, I'll have a look at the OSM maps when I get home, to get an idea of the 'wilderness' coverage. Though I'm sure anywhere I'll be riding will be pretty well trodden anyway.

optimisticbiker

bails87 wrote:

Thanks OB, that looks interesting, I'll have a look at the OSM maps when I get home, to get an idea of the 'wilderness' coverage. Though I'm sure anywhere I'll be riding will be pretty well trodden anyway.

The thing about the OS maps is that they are just a bitmap image with some vector data laid over them, so however much you zoom in the detail gets fuzzier and the road names are only whats in the vector data. Whereas the OSM maps are the full dataset, every street is named and the detail is finer but it may not be as accurate on absolute positioning.

Of course you're limited by the screen size as well...

Here's an area I ride a lot on the OSM site, with and without the cycle route layers at the 200m resolution.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.75 ... 4&layers=M
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.75 ... 4&layers=C

Because the data is extracted and then given a template for display what ends up on the satnav looks different. The site I get my mapping from, talkytoaster, uses a particular template. he is also offering an experimental OS 'look and feel' one.

bails87

Thanks.

A couple more 'noob' questions.

I assume that I can ride to work, sit on my backside for 8 hours, then turn around and ride home, and the device* will save the two rides? How much 'history' can it store, surely it isn't just the most recent ride?

*I'm thinking of all of them here, it seems like a basic thing.

And secondably, does it save lots of routes on the memory, or do you just have to pick/load one from your PC before you head out?

meanredspider

bails87 wrote:

I assume that I can ride to work, sit on my backside for 8 hours, then turn around and ride home, and the device* will save the two rides? How much 'history' can it store, surely it isn't just the most recent ride?

Yup - it's an interesting question in fact. I don't know exactly how the 800 works but the Forerunner will consider it a continuation of the previous "event" unless you either download or "reset" the previous run. This is great for commuting but can be a pain if, for instance, you do a ride in Scotland then do a ride in France. It will combine the data (and, on Google Earth, will link the end and next start with a long straight line).

Data storage is normally HUGE. This is actually an issue with Strava because it seems to look at every record before deciding what to upload and this step seems to crash occasionally. Again, in the Forerunner, you can delete records older than a month (or some other time period). Equally, I can imagine you can store a large number of routes (as there's less data in a route than a ride - no HR, Cadence, speed, etc)

HTH

optimisticbiker

meanredspider wrote:

bails87 wrote:

I assume that I can ride to work, sit on my backside for 8 hours, then turn around and ride home, and the device* will save the two rides? How much 'history' can it store, surely it isn't just the most recent ride?

Yup - it's an interesting question in fact. I don't know exactly how the 800 works but the Forerunner will consider it a continuation of the previous "event" unless you either download or "reset" the previous run. This is great for commuting but can be a pain if, for instance, you do a ride in Scotland then do a ride in France. It will combine the data (and, on Google Earth, will link the end and next start with a long straight line).

Data storage is normally HUGE. This is actually an issue with Strava because it seems to look at every record before deciding what to upload and this step seems to crash occasionally. Again, in the Forerunner, you can delete records older than a month (or some other time period). Equally, I can imagine you can store a large number of routes (as there's less data in a route than a ride - no HR, Cadence, speed, etc)

HTH

Basically, the process I use is this...

When I start in the morning, or evening, turn it on, wait for maps to load and satelllite lock (about 10secs). Hit 'Start Timer' and I'm off.... If I forget it beeps and says "movement detected, start timer yes/no" so I lose the first 10-20m of the ride.

When i get to work its 'stop timer', then hold 'lap/reset' while it counts down 4.3.2.1.reset. At that point the data is definitely stored. Early firmware sometimes corrupted the data if you turned it off before doing that. the later firmware seems OK.

If you don't do the 'reset' thing then next time you 'start timer' it picks up from where you left off, with no break. Turning the unit off is the same as 'Stop Timer' so in theory you can turn it off when you get to work and turn it on again when you leave, pressing 'Start Timer' and it'll record the two as one trip (this is what i do on club runs when we stop for breakfast and/or lunch, tho i tend to always stop it before turning it off).

If you press 'lap/reset' briefly before 'Stop Timer' then it'll record the two journeys as one but with 2 (or more) laps. I never got the point of doing that so I never do, but some websites will allow you to import the data from one such journey as multiple journeys split at the lap points.

There is nearly limitless space... the whole of last year, all 5000-odd miles took less than 16Mb on the internal storage, and there's about 80Mb free as standard. The 186 miles I rode this weekend took just under 500k and thats 13hours of recording including HR, cadence and temperature.

bails87

The GF keeps asking if I've bought the 800 yet! I'm not even going on about it!

chiefinspector

I bought the Edge 800 about a year ago and have been very happy with it. I do epic rides all over Scotland and have found the 800 to be very accurate. I also use it for the daily commute where you can try and better your time after each trip.

Garmin connect is also very good as you can store all your rides onto the website and then delete from the unit so the memory never gets full. You can also store up to 3 different bikes on the unit as well (although i do often forget to change).

As mentioned earlier, the screen can get a bit fuzzy if you zoom in too much but i find that you don't have to zoom right in to see all the detail in the map anyway. i also have a screen cover as the screen did mange to get scratched although i'm not sure how. Battery life is good and it is very user friendly. This is the first GPS unit that i have bought but it has been a great tool and i wouldn't go without. now.

bails87

Thanks chiefinspector....sir

Is that with the Ordanance Survey or OSM maps?

handful

Hi bails87. I'm going throught he same process at the moment as you and starting to lean towards the performance bundle and just use OSM. Just for your info if you decide to go the same route, the cheapest places I've found for the 800+HRM+cadence is here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garmin-Touchscreen-Computer-Performance-Bundle/dp/tech-data/B00424LN5G/ref=de_a_smtd/277-7039313-5860936

You can actually knock a few quid off getting it from bike-discount.de but probably not woth the hassle.