Garmin edge 800 or 810

forestnot1

Hi guys,

I'm the market for a garmin as want to start using heart rate to train and use the gps for navigation,as I am quite prone to getting lost!

Is the navigation package worth the extra or can you get free maps that are just as good?

And is the 810 worth the £80 or so more than the 800? I use a blackberry phone.

Opinions welcome

Flâneur

Can easily source premium navigation packages on the internet.

I'm happy with the 800, though at times I wouldn't mind the phone connectivity of the 810 for tracking some of my friends when I am late to an early start, but that would be the only reason I would upgrade.

Quick look at one of the big online retailers the 800 performance bundle is over £100 cheaper than the similar 810 package

littledove44

I am riding with a friend at present. I have an 800, he has an 810. We both spent years in to he IT industry and are pretty good with technology.

He hates his 810. The user interface is nowhere near as intuitive as the 800. And, he uses the same maps as me anyway.

On his other bike he has an 800. Yesterday the 810 almost went swimming. Not to mention that it threw a wobbly, turned itself off and ditched one of his rides halfway through. And it sometimes just refuses to do anything when plugged into the mac for downloading. It's just as if it wasn't plugged in at all, unlike the 800 which always connect.

Nice unit, but I suspect the software is buggy.

ovi

I just ordered the 800 as I only carry a basic phone on my rides and the extra cost is not worth it for me. I also charge up my Garmin via the computer so I just upload ride data via the USB anyway.

spankwilder

Garmin edge touring plus will do what you're after - you'll need to by an ANT+ hrm belt for it also, say another £25-45 should leave you some change over an 800/810

philbar72

the 810 seems more flaky than the 810. mine resets itself on long rides (when using the navigation feature) and as others have said its not as intuitive as an 800.

I'd get an 800 if i was in the market for a new gps in the future.

CiB

There are plenty of free maps about. This link http://www.scarletfire.co.uk/2012/11/fo ... -edge-800/ does the rounds and is quite popular, both for getting the maps onto the Garmin and setting it up properly.

From my reading the 810 is a bit flaky and prone to 'issues', whereas the 800 is quite robust once it's set up properly. If you follow ScarletFire (IIRC) on Twitter you might be lucky to catch a nudge from him to Amazon when they do their occasional offers. I picked up the 800 with performance pack for £208 just after Christmas, and that offer has been repeated at least once since.

slowbike

My wife has an 810 and I have an 800.

The only bit of the 810 that I'd like is the option for bluetooth phone connectivity - other than that I don't need it.

Annoying bits I've found are pause/stop/saving rides - the 810 can easily ditch your ride and it doesn't easily allow you to pause your ride (say for a cakestop) - not like the 800 where you just press stop, then start when you want to start again.
You _CAN_ do it on the 810 - press stop, then change the screen away from save/discard ride (why oh why would you discard from there?!) then, if you're lucky - you can resume the ride later - but more often than not it turns off and your next section is a completely new ride.

Maps - the free ones listed above are fine. The 810 came with OS maps - which are nice for off road trails as they're marked, but it's still a bitmap rather than vector map - so zooming in gets grainy ...

Hardware - I've had 3 800's now - the first two suffered from button failure - the first was water ingress causing corrosion of the start/reset buttons and the second suffered from power button failure (you couldn't turn it on/off via the button - or swap bike profiles, change the brightness or lock the screen). The 3rd is less than 1 month old ...

You can get around the start/reset buttons not working by using the autostart feature - but you have to remember to press yes to start recording.
You can get around the power button failure - turn it on by briefly plugging it into power and use auto-shutdown to turn it off. You can change bike profiles in the settings page - you can't change brightness or lock the screen though.
Pain with using auto-shutdown is that if it turns off then you can't power it back up without a power source. Same goes if it turns off for any reason mid ride - although it's been some time since mine has done that.

CiB

God post Slowbike. Re button issues, this is a known problem with them but is easily fixed by fitting a rubber cover. Only a few quid off Amazon etc but it keeps it dry.

slowbike

CiB wrote:

God post Slowbike. Re button issues, this is a known problem with them but is easily fixed by fitting a rubber cover. Only a few quid off Amazon etc but it keeps it dry.

I'd looked at those covers and assumed that any significant water likely to affect the buttons would still get under the cover and stay sat there ...

My first Garmin 800 that suffered from this failure was replaced on the "Out of Warranty" replacement scheme - costing me ~£75. The unit was 18 months old, so I was a little peeved, but took the hit anyway.
The second one (the one I paid £75 plus a non-working 800) started failing 3 months in and finally failed ~6months after getting it. My first contact with Garmin support via email resulted in them telling me I'd have to pay £75 (plus return the GPS) to get another replacement, but on phoning them (and one brief mention of the UK Sale of Goods act) resulted in a straight swap - the only cost to me was posting back the duff unit.

Needless to say I'm keen to avoid having to do another replacement too soon ...

Ah - one more thing on the replacement units - you lose all your data - or you do if you don't make a backup of the Garmin directory ... if you take said backup you can copy that back to your replacement unit and most of the settings will be there - along with all your ride history ...

damocles10

I have the Garmin Edge 800 and I think it is wonderful......It does need to be set-up correctly.

I took a risk and let it calculate the journey back from my sister's house in East Grinstead to Bethnal Green, normally a straight forward route down the A22 and A23 but there was heavy traffic and the roads can be narrow. I put in the locations and it calculated the route - I kid you not it took me up almost every steep B-road hill going towards London it was relentless and I was not prepared for the extra energy. It took me on a crazy route going in crying on the bike.