Garmin advice

Rodders30

I was thinking of getting a GPS cycle computer and guess garmin is the way to go?

But im confused over garmin edge 810, 810 with performance and navigation package etc...

I thought the 810 was a navigation device, so why would I have to buy a navigation package at an extra cost?

Then im thinking the 510 and use the course function to ride planned routes, do I really need the navigation aid, but I like toys

patrickf

The navigation pack will come with maps on a microSD card. The stock Garmin 800/810 won't come with any maps (the base map is so useless I can't count it as a map).

That said, I have bought a blank microSD card and installed the free Open Street Map on it.

The performance bundle will come with speed/cadence sensor and heart rate monitor.

I'm not sure if the navigation bundle comes with the sensors.

gaddster

Go for a 500 with cadence, heart rate, it's all you need.

patrickf

Only the OP can decide whether the trail on the 500/510 is enough for following a course or if he wants/needs mapping with turn-by-turn.

Personally I opted for the 800 with full mapping and its made me discover many great cycling routes.

That said, if you don't need maps go with the 500/510.

ellotreacle

gaddster wrote:

Go for a 500 with cadence, heart rate, it's all you need.

+1
Like you I also like my gadgets, but couldn't justify spending he extra on the 800, and got myself the 500 with cad and hr. and I have to say for once I made the right choice, and its not often that happens, I plan my route on garmin before I go out and follow the bread crumb route, the only diffrence I can see is the 800 would have told me the name of the road I was on or any detours I could take??

If I was buying now, knowing what I know I would go for the 510 over the 810, but that's just personal preference.

Hope you make the right choice. :?

socistep

I currently have a Garmin 310XT (with a bike mount) as initially I wanted a GPS device that I could use for running/walking, the reality is that I very rarely use it for those activities and its probably 98% cycling use, however am finding its not fully meeting my requirements for a couple of reasons

- ease of transfer of activities/courses - I sit in front of the computer all day and I'm quite impatient, having to boot up the laptop at home to transfer to/from the device is something I would prefer to be easier
- ability to follow courses - the 310XT has courses you can follow but it is the line only and I have often found that I go off course easily which if I don't know the area ends up in me stopping and using maps on my phone to navigate back on track

So with those 2 bugbears I'm really tempted by the edge 810 given connectivity via phone and also the routable navigation it has, also would look into further Garmin connect sync with Strava to auto upload there, however the problem is price....

Rodders30

Well im starting to do longer rides now, 60/70 miles and we were making it up this weekend and ended up going down wrong roads a few times. The 810 would help solve this.
But yes the 510 i could pre plan routes, but you dont always know what the road on the map is like until you get there. Then any course changes it will not modify the route for.
Hmmm...then you think does the extra money really justify it? I dunno....lol.

adr82

Rodders30 wrote:

Well im starting to do longer rides now, 60/70 miles and we were making it up this weekend and ended up going down wrong roads a few times. The 810 would help solve this.
But yes the 510 i could pre plan routes, but you dont always know what the road on the map is like until you get there. Then any course changes it will not modify the route for.
Hmmm...then you think does the extra money really justify it? I dunno....lol.

If I were you I wouldn't bother with the 810 over the 500. I had a 705 for a couple of years and virtually never used the full navigation functionality. I did at first, but it started screwing up all the time. The last straw was a ride when it got mixed up literally before I got to the end of my street and started beeping at me to make u-turns at every bloody junction for the next few miles while I waited to see if it was going to reset itself and start following my route properly. I used it one more time after that, got a few miles into a ride, missed a turn because I wasn't paying attention and despite turning back a few seconds later that was enough to send it off into a seemingly endless bout of "Recalculating...". When it eventually stopped working (some USB problem) I replaced it with a 500 and that does everything I need. If I want to check where I am and where I need to go I use my phone + offline OSM. Bigger screen, faster to zoom/scroll around and no need to pay anything for it.

AchillesLeftKnee

I have an 800 with OS 1:50k maps and love the thing. I don't use turn by turn navigation as my sense of direction and ability to remember routes is pretty good. I also don't like the idea of mindlessly following a set route, and satnavesque turn-by-turn directions irritate me. However, having the mapping available has really helped on a good few occasions, especially when it comes to finding odd turnings into country lanes that aren't signposted to anywhere. Off-road it's God's gift* to not wasting time hunting for stuff. Have had it over a year now and not once failed to find a road / trail / PROW that I was looking for in that time.

* Depends on the mapping used, clearly.

Rodders30

I have zero ability to remember a route and make it, lol. But i like the idea of an offline OS map on my phone and go with the cheaper 500/510.
I think also like someone mentioned, ill use it (810 maps) for a while, then it will slowly stop.

smithy05

The performance pack for the 800 is down to £270 on amazon now. I bought mine from cycle surgery yesterday, they price matched amazon. Bought a blank SD card and have downloaded the OSM for free. I am told that you can also torrent the full garmin maps if you know how to do it

Rodders30

Found some good offline maps for my phone, so that bit is sorted. So i can plan routes on the 500/510 and use phone if i go off course.

Next question, 500 or 510?

thefd

Rodders30 wrote:

Found some good offline maps for my phone, so that bit is sorted. So i can plan routes on the 500/510 and use phone if i go off course.

Next question, 500 or 510?

Have a look at this thread!

Rodders30

Hi. Saw that thread. But the 510 is the latest tech with more features.

Rodders30

Ignore

deadhead1971

I've read of many people experiencing major bugs on the 810, and they've gone back to the more reliable 800.
I'm not aware if the 510 has similar issues? Anyone?

StillGoing

Graded from the 705 to an 810 and other than an issue with it not being compatible with windows vista on my lap top, I haven't had an issue. The LiveTracking is very useful for the other half and me as she has the garage open on my return with a recovery drink in hand. The mapping function is handy for route following and where I encounter road closures and rough resurfacing/gritting to take an alternative route without going down some dead end or miles off course. The functionality of the 810 easily outweighs the 510 for me.

Rodders30

Not sure if my phone would last the duration of a ride with the internet connection on. Would drain the battery fast and make the live tracking fail.

StillGoing

On 60 - 100 rides it doesn't drain my battery. You do lose Livetracking if someone calls you during the ride though and have to reset it.

Rodders30

No one phones me, i have no friends lol.

Swaying for the 510...

Jono6690

i had the same dilemma two days ago as i get lost and cant remember routes at all. I ended up going for the 800 with the performance and navigation pack. I compared the two and there isn't much difference in them. They are both the same size have the same screen. The only difference was really the bluetooth capability but why do you need that when it take two minutes to hook it upto a laptop. i paid 340 for that where as a new 810 was nearly 500.

Stupid-death

All depends on what you're gonna be doing, pre-planned rides use a 500/510 plot out ride on bikeroutetoaster.com and put on Course point warnings and it'll tell you to turn left/right/straight on. I've been doing that with my forerunner 405 until I got an edge 500. If you want to go out and do a spontaneous random ride or touring and 800/810 may be the way to go, but you'd need to get the extra maps. I always have my phone with me, so always have a map to fall back on if need be.

Rodders30

I have off line maps on my phone now for if i get lost. I thinl thats the best way to go for me, money v usage and the extra expendature...

One thing i dont get is you can get speed/cadence sensor, but wouldnt speed be more accurate off gps? Or is the sensor faster reacting?

Stupid-death

The speed cadence is very handy for on the turbo.

adr82

Rodders30 wrote:

One thing i dont get is you can get speed/cadence sensor, but wouldnt speed be more accurate off gps? Or is the sensor faster reacting?

Most people think GPS is this incredibly accurate thing, but it isn't! It can become significantly less accurate if you do something as simple and commonplace as riding under some trees. Or in between high buildings. Or if you're in a deep valley and the receiver can't see enough satellites to maintain a proper fix. Some of the information you can usually get from a GPS receiver includes the level of uncertainty in the current position, eg "You are here +/- 10m", there must be phone apps that will show you this if you're interested. Also depending on the receiver you might only get an update once every second (or less).

On the other hand when you've got the speed sensor on your wheel there's not a hell of a lot that can go wrong with it other than it falling off. All you have to do is make sure the wheel size is correct and it's easy for it to do the rest. It has distance (the circumference of the wheel) and time (between sucessive passes of the sensor) and from those two values you can calculate speed trivially. Of course it might not do things quite like that, it might give you an averaged reading over the last 5 or 10 rotations or something to avoid the reading jittering too much, but there's not much else to it.

Rodders30

Ok, that clears that up

So, no speed sensor the GPS calculates your speed and if you have a speed sensor, you set the unit to display the speed from that and ignore the GPS? What about distance, will it stick with your GPS route, or will the speed sensor and programmed wheel diameter calculate the distance (like a normal cycle computer)?

I want to get away from the latter, becuase my current computer (polar) is rubbish at distance. It keeps loosing signal and displaying 0mph and therefor not clocking the miles. I sent it back, but they said nothing is wrong with it. I got out on rides and its never the same as anyones elses, and theirs all match.

wongataa

Rodders30 wrote:

So, no speed sensor the GPS calculates your speed and if you have a speed sensor, you set the unit to display the speed from that and ignore the GPS? What about distance, will it stick with your GPS route, or will the speed sensor and programmed wheel diameter calculate the distance (like a normal cycle computer)?

If you have a speed sensor the Garmin will use that for speed and distance info it shows on the screen. This data is also written into the log files along with the GPS position information. 3rd party software/websites that can read these log files may or may not use the data generated from speed sensors and only rely on the GPS information. Speed sensor info is only accurate if you have the wheel size properly entered. The Garmin units can calculate it for you but that can be inaccurate due to GPS inaccuracies.

Rodders30 wrote:

I want to get away from the latter, becuase my current computer (polar) is rubbish at distance. It keeps loosing signal and displaying 0mph and therefor not clocking the miles. I sent it back, but they said nothing is wrong with it. I got out on rides and its never the same as anyones elses, and theirs all match

Sounds like you have an issue with your Polar. I've never had that with my Garmin 800. If you are getting different numbers to other people when your Polar is working then you most likely have different wheel sizes in the different devices.

Rodders30

I've done my wheel size as accurate as I can. Flatest bit of road, engineering square so I know the valve is dead upright. Roll along and use engineer square to make it as close to one revolution as possible and measure to the closest mm. It still doesnt seem to be right, although they say it is. I dunno...lol...maybe being an mech engineer im trying to be too accurate?!

Could be talking myself out the 510 and just sticking to what I have and save the £££ for some wheels or something.

wongataa

Maybe your wheel size is correctly entered and evryone else is wrong then :-)

Rodders30

Hehe...maybe. Im more concerned over it just stopping working, but then if GPS loses signal, does it loose its distance count, or can it account for it if you analyse your route after?

Or am i being too anal again lol?

adr82

Rodders30 wrote:

I've done my wheel size as accurate as I can. Flatest bit of road, engineering square so I know the valve is dead upright. Roll along and use engineer square to make it as close to one revolution as possible and measure to the closest mm. It still doesnt seem to be right, although they say it is. I dunno...lol...maybe being an mech engineer im trying to be too accurate?!

What do you mean by "doesn't seem to be right"? Have you tried riding a known distance (maybe a mile or two along a road you know the length for already) and seeing how well it matches up? If you want mm level accuracy for rides lasting miles you're going to be disappointed in any case I'm afraid!

Rodders30 wrote:

Hehe...maybe. Im more concerned over it just stopping working, but then if GPS loses signal, does it loose its distance count, or can it account for it if you analyse your route after?

Or am i being too anal again lol?

If it loses signal the device has no way of knowing which way you actually went. It just won't record any location data. On the other hand it will still happily calculate your distance/speed/time based on the non-GPS sensors. What happens when you upload the ride depends on the website you're using to display it, but often you'll just get a straight line between the point where the signal was lost and where it was regained. That can mess up your ride stats in some cases, but it shouldn't happen very often at all unless you like to ride through tunnels or something.