Garmin Connect is *&%(($* rubbish

london-red

That is all.

Wigster

I used it for the first time tonight, worked a treat for me?

london-red

Tried to create a simple course. Crashed everything and the whole of Garmin Connect not available. Used Strava's new course creation tool instead, which is only in Beta, and it worked a treat.

Seriously, I've been using Garmin for a few years now on and off, and it really is a crap experience.

meanredspider

Yes - Connect is very poor and the new version is very slow. I really hope somebody will come up with serious competitor to Garmin because I get the sense that they've become "fat, dumb and happy"

rolf_f

meanredspider wrote:

Yes - Connect is very poor and the new version is very slow. I really hope somebody will come up with serious competitor to Garmin because I get the sense that they've become "fat, dumb and happy"

They already have but most people will only countenance a competitor to Garmin that has "Garmin" written on the box.

richk

Their recent upgrade has been so pitiful that I'm seriously considering moving all my rides to Strava. It's only dealing with all the commutes (currently private, which I'd want to remain that way) that is stopping me.

meanredspider

Rolf F wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

Yes - Connect is very poor and the new version is very slow. I really hope somebody will come up with serious competitor to Garmin because I get the sense that they've become "fat, dumb and happy"

They already have but most people will only countenance a competitor to Garmin that has "Garmin" written on the box.

That's a fair point but I don't think Mio or Bryton are there yet - they're just "me too" competitors. What we need is someone with disruptive technology (like Apple and Samsung did to the likes of Nokia/Sony Ericsson/Motorola) to reinvent the market. Garmin's development is just linear and their "ecosystem" (connect, express etc) is rubbish. Not only that but they're releasing products that are full of bugs and increasingly expensive.

menthel

No problem with the new connect for uploading and looking at data. Then again I also use strava and veloviewer or whatever its called. I never create routes with anything made by garmin- ridewithgps is so much more superior.

rolf_f

meanredspider wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

Yes - Connect is very poor and the new version is very slow. I really hope somebody will come up with serious competitor to Garmin because I get the sense that they've become "fat, dumb and happy"

They already have but most people will only countenance a competitor to Garmin that has "Garmin" written on the box.

That's a fair point but I don't think Mio or Bryton are there yet - they're just "me too" competitors. What we need is someone with disruptive technology (like Apple and Samsung did to the likes of Nokia/Sony Ericsson/Motorola) to reinvent the market. Garmin's development is just linear and their "ecosystem" (connect, express etc) is rubbish. Not only that but they're releasing products that are full of bugs and increasingly expensive.

They are a bit - but on the other hand, they mostly do what they need to do perfectly adequately and for less money. The only thing I wish they'd put more effort into is battery life which always seems inadequate when navigation is switched on.

But I'm not into gadgets anyway so I'm not exactly a discerning customer for this sort of stuff!

roger_merriman

At the moment garmin connect is mildly better than strava for Off-road routes, since it uses open source maps though that only really works for areas like the Surrey Hills, back in the quiet hills of wales it's patchy.

But strava is now useable off road though gives no indication of rights of way mind you neither does garmin terribly well.

The garmins I've seen have good hardware but their software is something out of a 80's Casio watch.

They really need someone to give them a shock.

meanredspider

roger merriman wrote:

They really need someone to give them a shock.

That's exactly it! As I said, they're Fat, Dumb and Happy. Strava have forced the to (try) to up their game relative to segments etc but the devices (firmware/software) are shabby

j_mcd

I've got one of the CatEye GPS computers. You folk don't know utter tosh until you've used their hardware and software.

Now rely on an old iPhone for recording straight to Strava. It's just a shame about the battery life.

notsoblue

The Sync plugin is way better, but I don't use anything else in Garmin Connect anymore.

holiver

The most frustrating thing for me when trying to plan routes through Garmin Connect is how small the map view is. The older version is much better in this regard.

apreading

I have been using Garmin Connect for the last 3 years and while it was a bit clunky, it had some great features and worked well. Planning on-road routes worked fine but others like RideWithGPS were better - Garmin Connect was good enough for most things though. Off-road route planning wasnt really possible, so used RideWithGPS or BikeHike for that. I use their goals as a huge part of my motivation to keep getting the miles in on a monthly and annual basis and love exploring an area for rides that other people have done - proper rides, not just segments...

The new thing is total trash - half the things dont work on the dashboard, the other half are not as good as on the old dashboard. Looks modern but I have gone back to classic and just hope they dont disable this any time soon. The new look also doesnt allow you to use all of your screen for route planning etc, like the classic mode does.

My fear that Classic will dissappear and horror at the new Garmin Connect forced me to look at Strava and to be honest, that is worse - the interface places the various different options in different places and it is really hard to understand where or how to access things, doesnt have many of the features I want and I dont care about comparing myself with others - just want to measure my progress against myself on whole rides, not silly segments.

itboffin

if you have an iphone this looks pretty good

http://road.cc/content/review/123319-wa ... e-computer

meanredspider

itboffin wrote:

if you have an iphone this looks pretty good

http://road.cc/content/review/123319-wa ... e-computer

Ooh - interesting - I wonder when/if DC Rainmaker is going to review it. It's something kinda like this that I hope someone with some money behind them will develop to beat Garmin up with.