Edge 800 useless for anything it's designed for...

sdalby

Hi,

I saved up for a while to buy an Edge 800 having read pretty much all raving reviews on the technical training and navigation abilities of the device.

Having used it since christmas I must say, I'm very disappointed.

Each time I attempt to use the 800 it causes nothing but trouble. On general use, I let it find signal about 10 minutes before my journey. Even when I have full signal, I cycle away, go past a tree and loses reception, and then I have to stop for another 5 minutes for it to find the satellites again. Today, I had full signal, and yet it didn't pick up where I was or measure the speed or distance travelled. On the odd occasion that it seems to have worked reasonably, I upload the activity to Garmin Connect and find that the route on the map looks like it's been drawn by a 3 year old trying to trace the roads. i.e. a straight line looks like a sine wave, the overlay is inches away from the road I was actually on etc.

Do I have a bad one? Or is this just how it is? It has already had a hard reset which was recommended, but that doesn't seem to have done anything. It will be going back to the shop tomorrow for a new one. And if the new one is the same, then i will be getting a refund. I'm not paying £300+ for something that doesn't do what it is made to do.

TakeTurns

Seems to be faulty. Mine has worked perfectly fine. I've ridden all over the UK and in London where you could argue there is plenty of potential interference. I've also recently used it abroad for the first time in Majorca. No problem. It's a roadie's best friend.

Dess1e

Sounds faulty to me. Haven't experienced any of that with mine in the 14 months that I owned and used it.

sdalby

Hopefully Evans will do the good deed and swap it for another one then.... And fingers crossed that a new one will be much better. I really hope so because it has so much scope for being fantastic.

TakeTurns

I'm pretty sure they will. Having had previous experience working there, you should get an immediate refund/replacement if it's still under 30days of purchase. If not, then they may have to send it to Garmin in order for them to confirm it is 'faulty' and then receive a replacement. In which case, may take time.

From my experience, Garmin are extremely helpful. Instead of going to the retailer which I bought mine from. I directly contacted Garmin. This obviously helped to speed up the process by cutting out the middle man. They immediately replaced my faulty H/R monitor without a fuss.

Froomes Edgar

Dess1e wrote:

Sounds faulty to me. Haven't experienced any of that with mine in the 14 months that I owned and used it.

That's because you've not found the battery charger

Dess1e

:-)

Thanks PT.

VTech

I have to say that mine is similar although once ive found a signal it seems to keep i but mine cant find addresses, at furst I was upset at not getting postcodes but when I cant find an address it really does mean the unit is useless.

thegreatdivide

VTech wrote:

I have to say that mine is similar although once ive found a signal it seems to keep i but mine cant find addresses, at furst I was upset at not getting postcodes but when I cant find an address it really does mean the unit is useless.

To you maybe - and from what I gather you're currently using open source maps which don't run post code search. To the tens of thousands of other riders who are happily pedaling along, it's doing a grand job. If it was useless I'm sure Garmin would have stopped making it.

For what it's worth, I loaded my new 800 with Garmin's own UK maps and tested it out with a post code. It worked straight away.

VTech

I wasnt refering to the whole of garmin, as i have stated previously, i have other garmin items that work well.
I just cant help thinking that for a retail price of £399 the item should do all of the things the £99 item can do.
Im really not asking for much !

flasher

VTech wrote:

I wasnt refering to the whole of garmin, as i have stated previously, i have other garmin items that work well.
I just cant help thinking that for a retail price of £399 the item should do all of the things the £99 item can do.
Im really not asking for much !

But you're not using Garmin maps :roll:

VTech

It didnt come with any, thats my point.
Well, it comes with the basic ones, im not sure what they are called but i think its major roads only.
Surely I cant be the only one who wonders why you can buy a garmin road device with euro maps, post codes and all the bells and whistles for £79 when for £399 you cant find many side roads ?

Secteur

Mine has never lost signal, even once in 2 years, and it gets a signal even in my garage within 10 seconds or so.

I'd say yours is faulty?

smoggysteve

I have never used one but was wondering about the gps signal problem. I have a Nike+ GPS watch I use for running and I have to periodically connect it to a computer to update the satellite data to make it find a signal quicker. If I don't do this at least once a week it stuggles to find a signal and I have problems with its accuracy. Does the Edge 800 work in the same way? or is it meant to work out of the box with no computer setting up first?

NewTTer

SmoggySteve wrote:

I have never used one but was wondering about the gps signal problem. I have a Nike+ GPS watch I use for running and I have to periodically connect it to a computer to update the satellite data to make it find a signal quicker. If I don't do this at least once a week it stuggles to find a signal and I have problems with its accuracy. Does the Edge 800 work in the same way? or is it meant to work out of the box with no computer setting up first?

Useless irrelevant post as usual

OP yours is faulty by the sound of it, let us know how you get on getting it changed and how the replacement performs. Mine has always been great even when used in London, as mentiined by others

smoggysteve

NewTTer wrote:

SmoggySteve wrote:

I have never used one but was wondering about the gps signal problem. I have a Nike+ GPS watch I use for running and I have to periodically connect it to a computer to update the satellite data to make it find a signal quicker. If I don't do this at least once a week it stuggles to find a signal and I have problems with its accuracy. Does the Edge 800 work in the same way? or is it meant to work out of the box with no computer setting up first?

Useless irrelevant post as usual

OP yours is faulty by the sound of it, let us know how you get on getting it changed and how the replacement performs. Mine has always been great even when used in London, as mentiined by others

I was inquiring to how it works. See you still trolling along as usual. I thought is was quite relevant to see if its anything like another GPS device on the market that requires a GPS signal update occasionally. If it is not then it can be discounted. Until then don't just pop in and out of posts gobbing off in your usual caustic manner.

thegreatdivide

VTech wrote:

It didnt come with any, thats my point.
Well, it comes with the basic ones, im not sure what they are called but i think its major roads only.
Surely I cant be the only one who wonders why you can buy a garmin road device with euro maps, post codes and all the bells and whistles for £79 when for £399 you cant find many side roads ?

The Edge series are small multiple function training computers. The 800 just so happens to have an added function where you can follow a map (and it's touch screen and colour). A £79 sat nav is just a £79 sat nav. It might get you to a post code (no idea why you need this on a Garmin tbh) but that's about it.

I hope you didn't pay £399 for yours btw. It can be found for £240 new.

flasher

VTech wrote:

It didnt come with any, thats my point.
Well, it comes with the basic ones, im not sure what they are called but i think its major roads only.
Surely I cant be the only one who wonders why you can buy a garmin road device with euro maps, post codes and all the bells and whistles for £79 when for £399 you cant find many side roads ?

Well get the £79 one, strap it to your bike and see how you get on............

Brakeless

Flasher wrote:

VTech wrote:

It didnt come with any, thats my point.
Well, it comes with the basic ones, im not sure what they are called but i think its major roads only.
Surely I cant be the only one who wonders why you can buy a garmin road device with euro maps, post codes and all the bells and whistles for £79 when for £399 you cant find many side roads ?

Well get the £79 one, strap it to your bike and see how you get on............

Quality reply

VTech

Its a daft reply because for £79 you get a unit that comes complete with city navigator yet when you need city navigator upgrade for your 800 it costs £79.
I cant help but truly believe that many of you guys in the cycling world just roll over and accept that your being shafted.
I cant accept that your all multi millionaires with endless bank account balances and have no issue with paying vastly inflated sums for items you get for a fraction of the cost in other walks of life.

bernithebiker

VTech wrote:

Its a daft reply because for £79 you get a unit that comes complete with city navigator yet when you need city navigator upgrade for your 800 it costs £79.
I cant help but truly believe that many of you guys in the cycling world just roll over and accept that your being shafted.
I cant accept that your all multi millionaires with endless bank account balances and have no issue with paying vastly inflated sums for items you get for a fraction of the cost in other walks of life.

Have to say, there's some truth in that. The 800 has always been expensive, even though the price has now dropped due to the 810 coming out. But the 810 is even more expensive for not a great deal more features.

I use the 500, but I see no point in getting the (overpriced) 510

Brakeless

Does a £79 Sat Nav

Record Speed
Record Heart Rate
Record Cadence
Let you downloads routes once ridden
Let you upload pre planned routes.
Operate off its own rechargable power source
Is it waterproof
Is it Light and Compact

rich164h

VTech wrote:

It didnt come with any, thats my point.
Well, it comes with the basic ones, im not sure what they are called but i think its major roads only.
Surely I cant be the only one who wonders why you can buy a garmin road device with euro maps, post codes and all the bells and whistles for £79 when for £399 you cant find many side roads ?

I can sort of see what you mean, but I think you need to not think of the edge 800 as a sat nav in the way that they are used in a car. It is much much more than that and the mapping is not really designed to be used in the same way. Yes there is the ability for it to calculate a route to a point (or postcode if you've got the right maps installed) but that capability is only really there because it can be, not because that's the main way that people use the devices. I can only think of one occasion in the last 2 years of having mine that I've got the device to calculate a route to a point that I've defined and I really don't think that I'm unusual in this.

The thing is that if you want all that functionality and map detail you can buy it from Garmin in the bundle that includes the city navigator maps. From what you've said, you didn't buy that and you've bought that bare-bones package that only comes with the basemaps. Nothing wrong with that of course (it's what I did as well) but one would normally only buy that package if you had other maps that you were intending to use already such as OSM and therefore don't want to pay out extra for the city navigator maps bundle when there's no advantage from that dataset in the way that I use the device. Garmin don't know what sort of riding you do, where you ride, or how you use their device or which features are important to you, so they offer a range of products via these bundles to accommodate different people's needs. It sounds like you simply bought the wrong package, that's all. It's not such a problem though as if you really do need postcode navigation you can buy the city navigator maps separately and install them on your device, otherwise the OSM maps are perfectly fine for cycling, and in someways better that city navigator or the OS mapping that garmin offers. The fact hat OSM doesn't support postcodes is a weakness of OSM, not the garmin devices themselves.

just a quick comment on the maps themselves, the sort of mapping available in £79 car satnavs is a much simplified version of the complete dataset from which it is originally based. It only needs to include the features that are relevant for car travel so things like cycle paths, bridleways etc are more often that not completely missing. As a car driver that's a good thing as it means that the maps sizes are small, the calculation that the device has to do are simpler and therefore faster, and the "simple" task of getting you from A to B is all it has to worry about. I guess you could transfer that same mapping to a bike navigation device but I think you'd really struggle to do routes that you'd find acceptable (i.e. not being routed onto dual carriageways etc) and many of the bike accessible routes would quite simply be missing. That said, should garmin supply the basic car maps instead of the utterly useless basemap? I'd have to agree that this would be a huge improvement as the basemap is quite simply unusable. No one could realistically navigate anywhere with it so I can only assume it's provided so that you can see that device works etc before you upload a better mapping solution. Even then though, you'd want to change the car solution to something like city navigator or OSM anyway so perhaps it doesn't matter that the basemap is supplied.

VTech

Brakeless wrote:

Does a £79 Sat Nav

Record Speed
Record Heart Rate
Record Cadence
Let you downloads routes once ridden
Let you upload pre planned routes.
Operate off its own rechargable power source
Is it waterproof
Is it Light and Compact

Of course not but that has and never will be my argument.
The 800 is sold as a unit that does what you quote plus is a gps sat nav device but the simply fact is that it really isnt up with the £20 sat nav kits on the market for the likes of cars etc.

Then, to add insult to injury, I can buy a sat nav for my car for £79 complete with the software Garmin want to charge me £79 for !!!

Come on guys, please dont say im making no sense.

Omar Little

VTech wrote:

Of course not but that has and never will be my argument.
The 800 is sold as a unit that does what you quote plus is a gps sat nav device but the simply fact is that it really isnt up with the £20 sat nav kits on the market for the likes of cars etc.

Then, to add insult to injury, I can buy a sat nav for my car for £79 complete with the software Garmin want to charge me £79 for !!!

Come on guys, please dont say im making no sense.

You can get city navigator maps for the UK and Ireland for about £20, whole of Europe for under £40

Strith

I would say the 800 is overpriced, at least at £399. Nobody pays that much though ssurley? Problem is in a market with no real competition then Garmin can effectivley charge what they wish.

I do use my 800 a lot but imo the software is absolute shite and the screen is only just adequaqate.

Garmin have been lazy with the 810, but they have other higher priority markets to think about. Now would be a good time for another manufacturer to try to muscle in on their market.

As for the 800 being useless for anything it's designed for, I would say it's actually the best that is currently available. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

rich164h

Strith wrote:

I would say the 800 is overpriced, at least at £399. Nobody pays that much though ssurley? Problem is in a market with no real competition then Garmin can effectivley charge what they wish.

I do use my 800 a lot but imo the software is absolute shite and the screen is only just adequaqate.

Garmin have been lazy with the 810, but they have other higher priority markets to think about. Now would be a good time for another manufacturer to try to muscle in on their market.

As for the 800 being useless for anything it's designed for, I would say it's actually the best that is currently available. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

All of this is absolutely true.

The software isn't as good as it could be at all and there are some things which are just plain stupid - such as the turn-by-turn notifications being switched off by default for new routes, but actually I think that this is really a case of Garmin having a different approach to the like of apple etc which is what people are used to now. Just because the logic doesn't conform to how other software vendors work doesn't mean it's poor, just a bit unfamiliar and it requires a bit of time to get used to the logic that has been applied. I find the same thing when I use Macs. I'm used to using windows/linux so everything just seems in the wrong place on a mac (or android in the case of mobile devices) and just "wrong". It's not of course, I'm just not tuned in to the logic that apple for instance has applied. I think the same is true of Garmin devices. That's not to say that they couldn't be improved, clearly they can, but a lot of people struggle to understand the mindset that garmin has, and hence they appear hostile. It just takes a bit of time to get used to that's all.

Yes the screen isn't great, but it's adequate as said above, and if that results in a longer battery life then I'd prefer not to have a better one. Again, if all someone is doing is 1 hour routes then they'd say the opposite! It's trying to be a device for 1001 different people and 1001 ways of being used, and ultimately that means that some people at the extremes will be disappointed with the choices that Garmin have made.

John.T

To the OP. You have definitely got a faulty unit ( or are doing something really wrong). If the shop will not change it then get on to Garmin UK support and they will sort it pdq. I had a minor problem with the sounder and they changed the unit within a week. I got a complete new one still boxed with charger and mounts.
RE mapping. It is true that OSM maps do not support post codes but they work just as well with address'. It works fine as a standard sat nav unit. I have put in address' and it has routed me to them fine. Not right to the door but pretty close. Once when a cafe was closed I just went to 'cities' on 'where to', scrolled down until I found a village I knew had a cafe and told it to take me there. It found the shortest route which as I had not told it to avoid off road was down a quite interesting bridle path section of the National Cycle route. These are on the OSM maps but not on City Nav ones. IMO the OSM maps are far superior to City Nav and for most cycling activities the OS versions too. Also free and updated fairly often.

sdalby

Thanks all for the replies....

It has indeed gone back to Garmin today as the guy in Evans said they didn't have any more in stock. It's not a problem waiting for it as it's not really useable in it's current capacity.

I really hope that another unit will work as I'd hoped, as it is capable of doing everything I wish to use it for.

tiredofwhiners

VTech wrote:

Come on guys, please dont say im making no sense.

I'll say it then. You're not making any sense;)

You're displaying classic 'needy' behaviour of expecting the world markets to bend to your particular needs. You expecta device made for one market (cars, with power supplies, in a warm, non-shocking environment) to cost the same, and perform the same as a device sitting on a handlebar, for hours on end, recording data yadda yadda yadda .....

You can of course, just use a car satnav - all you need is a 12V battery on the pannier rack and you're sorted. Apart from the recording, the weather proofing etc, but hey, you don't want to pay for those bits.

VTech

tiredofwhiners wrote:

VTech wrote:

Come on guys, please dont say im making no sense.

I'll say it then. You're not making any sense;)

You're displaying classic 'needy' behaviour of expecting the world markets to bend to your particular needs. You expecta device made for one market (cars, with power supplies, in a warm, non-shocking environment) to cost the same, and perform the same as a device sitting on a handlebar, for hours on end, recording data yadda yadda yadda .....

You can of course, just use a car satnav - all you need is a 12V battery on the pannier rack and you're sorted. Apart from the recording, the weather proofing etc, but hey, you don't want to pay for those bits.

Your totally not getting the point, and in that case there is no need for me to try and explain further.