Another one about Garmin

ugo.santalucia

Never thought about one, but the price of these stuff has come down to the point I am considering getting one.

Being only interested in the GPS and GPS related functions, rather than the power/cadence/performance nonsense, am I right in thinking that the best bang for buck is the Garmin Edge Touring plus? It seems to have all the functions of the more expensive 1000 minus the performance ones...
Anything I am missing?

menthel

Don't think so. I use an 800, which is similar to the touring but does all the stuff you don't want too. The touring should be absolutely fine for mapping and ride recording.

cougie

Do you want it for planning routes on beforehand ? If so the Garmin 500 with its breadcrumb trail should suffice. Slightly cheaper.

t4tomo

Yes, but not the 810 is out, you might find a garmin 800 without the sensors (perfromance pack) for less than the edge touring.

I was same as you dimissied it as too expensive but took the plunge on a 800 recently. very pleased with it.

Don't buy any maps with it - open source maps are free to down load and better than the garmin ones you buy- you just need a 16gb mini sd card - google for instructions

diy

You can get the 800 for very little more and then get free maps from talkytoaster. Hantec is normally the cheapest.

http://www.handtec.co.uk/garmin-edge-80 ... 99-01.html
http://talkytoaster.info/ukmaps.htm

You then have the option of cadence and HRM in the future if ever you see the light.

apreading

Edge touring for £170 various places
Edge 800 is £216 at Handtec right now
Edge 810 is £226 at Amazon

Personally, I would have the 800 but that 810 is a good price and yes, the touring is a significant saving. Cheaper 800s keep cropping up though - I got one from Amazon in the last month for £166.

Or you could get the 800 refurbished by Garmin with 12 months warranty for £162 http://www.handtec.co.uk/garmin-edge-80 ... oCKIPw_wcB

ugo.santalucia

Edge touring is 145 £ at Bikediscount... same price of the 510 in the UK, which seems a hell of a lot inferior.

I am really not interested in any power/cadence stuff... I got into cycling nearly 25 years ago and passed the "how fast can I go?" phase probably 15 years ago... it's not coming back, if I have a mid life crisis it won't be a carbon bike... more likely to be a Harley... so I am pretty sure the Touring is what I need, unless it doesn't do something which I might need it to do

lostboysaint

A Harley? Call yourself Italian!!!

kingstonian

Other than £10, what actually is the difference between the 800 and the 810 anyway?

apreading

810 has bluetooth/wifi which allows live tracking (if you want to drain the battery of device and phone) and wireless uploads of rides (pointless because you have to plug it in to charge anyway). It also has even more confusing menus (if that was possible) and had (maybe still has) buggy firmware and had (maybe still has) worse battery life.

letap73

apreading wrote:

810 has bluetooth/wifi which allows live tracking (if you want to drain the battery of device and phone) and wireless uploads of rides (pointless because you have to plug it in to charge anyway). It also has even more confusing menus (if that was possible) and had (maybe still has) buggy firmware and had (maybe still has) worse battery life.

The wireless upload is useful because the 800 connection port can corrode (poor design) which allows you to charge but not upload.

Bar Shaker

Ugo the only two sensible options now seem to be the Touring or the 1000.

The Touring is perfect for your needs and your budget.

ugo.santalucia

Bar Shaker wrote:

Ugo the only two sensible options now seem to be the Touring or the 1000.

The Touring is perfect for your needs and your budget.

That was my thought too...

StillGoing

apreading wrote:

810 has bluetooth/wifi which allows live tracking (if you want to drain the battery of device and phone) and wireless uploads of rides (pointless because you have to plug it in to charge anyway). It also has even more confusing menus (if that was possible) and had (maybe still has) buggy firmware and had (maybe still has) worse battery life.

Going to pick you up on all of that as pure conjecture.

Livetracking doesn't drain the battery on my 810 and I use every ride including the 100+ milers.
Wifi useless because you have to plug it in to charge anyway? You plug the charger into the wall and don't need to plug the device into a PC to charge it.
Menus confusing? If you're a simpleton maybe.
Buggy firmware? Nope. It suffered with the same issue every Garmin device that had bluetooth connectivity did and meant Livetracking and phone connection was intermittent or non-existent. That has been resolved many months ago.
Battery life is not worse than the 800. The link below shows the 810 to have 2 hours longer battery life. In practice my 810 has never died before my ride buddy's 800.

https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/catalog ... duct=69043

Bobbinogs

cougie wrote:

Do you want it for planning routes on beforehand ? If so the Garmin 500 with its breadcrumb trail should suffice. Slightly cheaper.

Nope. I reckon the routing option for the 500 is pretty rubbish. It wasn't so bad when bikely would allow one to edit the warning distance (so that the TR/TL warning comes up 100m early, etc.) but the current routing function will only typically give a beep after the turn, particularly if you are whizzing along. I also got regular "Off route"..."On route" warnings that drove me mad.

I didn't buy the 500 for routing and therefore was not too disappointed to write this function off.

ugo.santalucia

I think pound for pound the 500 is clearly no longer good value... when you can get better for the same money or a couple of tenners more. Happy to live with a colour display that uses more battery, I'm unlikely to do 24 hours rides or similar... recharging it once a week doesn't seem a big deal

northpole

Ugo the only two sensible options now seem to be the Touring or the 1000.

That's what I call weird logic - the 1000 is still finding its feet in terms of reliability. The 800/ 810 have reached a stable point (at least my 800 has after months driving me nuts) and I'd leave the likes of the 1000 well alone for the best part of another year to give Garmin a chance to complete their pre-launch product development - a concept which always seems to cause them no end of confusion.

Peter

apreading

philthy3 wrote:

apreading wrote:

810 has bluetooth/wifi which allows live tracking (if you want to drain the battery of device and phone) and wireless uploads of rides (pointless because you have to plug it in to charge anyway). It also has even more confusing menus (if that was possible) and had (maybe still has) buggy firmware and had (maybe still has) worse battery life.

Going to pick you up on all of that as pure conjecture.

Livetracking doesn't drain the battery on my 810 and I use every ride including the 100+ milers.
Wifi useless because you have to plug it in to charge anyway? You plug the charger into the wall and don't need to plug the device into a PC to charge it.
Menus confusing? If you're a simpleton maybe.
Buggy firmware? Nope. It suffered with the same issue every Garmin device that had bluetooth connectivity did and meant Livetracking and phone connection was intermittent or non-existent. That has been resolved many months ago.
Battery life is not worse than the 800. The link below shows the 810 to have 2 hours longer battery life. In practice my 810 has never died before my ride buddy's 800.

https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/catalog ... duct=69043

Livetracking MUST require battery draw on the 810 to transmit data - basic physics
Livetracking MUST require battery draw on your phone to receive and retransmit this data - basic physics
Plugging into a wall rather than a PC makes no difference to me as I use my PC all the time anyway
OK, I must be a simpleton along with the masses of other people who are all confused and muddle their way through the menus on the garmins of all types
Just need to look on here or elsewhere on the web to find that the 810 was VERY buggy for some time
Dont get me wrong, I dont think battery life is significantly worse on 810 than the 800 but as I see no benefit from the extra features and prefer the menus on the 800, I would rather the older model. And if you believe the specs on that Garmin comparison are anything other than just marketing hype, I would be surprised. I have seen loads of comparisons saying that battery was worse, although these were probably all with earlier firmware.

keef66

I'm possibly of a similar vintage to you, and went through the same thought process. In the end I went for the Touring Plus, just because I was interested in recording HR too. If you're not bothered about HR the vanilla Touring will be fine and save you some cash.

It comes with Garmin's version of Open Streetmap for the whole of Europe preloaded, and it will keep updating the maps if you let it when it's connected to Garmin Express on the pc. Takes a while though.

Recording a ride seems pretty simple / reliable. Stats downloadable and viewable on garmin Connect. The round trip routing is quite useful; you tell it how far you want to go and it suggests 3 circular routes. You can look at their maps and elevation profiles before you decide which to follow. After that it gives you turn by turn directions like a car sat nav but without the voice (bleeps and close-up views of the junctions with arrows). In between turns you can have it set to display various things; I have speed, distance and HR on mine; these only disappear briefly when it's telling you what to do at a junction etc, and reappear once you've turned.

Occasionally mine has tried to take me down a path; apparently it's a 'feature' of the way Garmin fails to classify some of them. And a couple of times it's just decided to head for home in the middle of a ride; maybe I mashed a button by accident... It does have a tendency to suggest cycle paths, and seek out bits of the NCN, but I have discovered some pleasant routes following it.

I've yet to try uploading a route to the device and following it, or indeed creating a route on the device directly. I'll let you know.

Apart from it's occasional bout of odd map-reading, the biggest problem I can see is battery life. The internal battery cannot be swapped out, so unless you do shortish days and recharge it every night, it would be a bit useless for proper touring. It's fine for my 1-5 hour excursions though.

ugo.santalucia

Thanks Keef... that's exactly what I needed... don't ming going down paths... I normally know my way round roads, the knowledge of paths is very interesting indeed...

freezing77

I have had over the years an etrex H, non mapping. Etrex legend hcx and now have a 800 and an etrex 30.
I suspect that either the etrex 20 or 30 will fulfill all your needs .

http://www.handtec.co.uk/garmin-etrex-20-010-00970-10.html?gclid=CjwKEAjw77OhBRCJ7Onfp_HNtwYSJACZqHAWTQKGqBLeRutW3wFA_Ef9jOtBy570XaXyXvpYVAldBBoCccvw_wcB

ugo.santalucia

I did think about a non specific one... the downside is that it won't fit in a mount, maybe?
Is it possible to upload a particular route? One of the reasons to get one is to be able to enter Audax and events which are not signposted without having to carry a map

freezing77

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I did think about a non specific one... the downside is that it won't fit in a mount, maybe?
Is it possible to upload a particular route? One of the reasons to get one is to be able to enter Audax and events which are not signposted without having to carry a map

There is a bike mount for these, I have it fitted on my stem.These devices have better navigational set ups than the edge series as they can differentiate between gpx tracks and gpx routes. The edge series treats them both the same and converts them to courses.

Most gpx files downloaded from websites are gpx tracks. These devices can use both.

These devices also record your current track.

A friend used hers to navigate from London to Rome.

Some screen shots

ugo.santalucia

What's the drawback, if any?

StillGoing

apreading wrote:

philthy3 wrote:

apreading wrote:

810 has bluetooth/wifi which allows live tracking (if you want to drain the battery of device and phone) and wireless uploads of rides (pointless because you have to plug it in to charge anyway). It also has even more confusing menus (if that was possible) and had (maybe still has) buggy firmware and had (maybe still has) worse battery life.

Going to pick you up on all of that as pure conjecture.

Livetracking doesn't drain the battery on my 810 and I use every ride including the 100+ milers.
Wifi useless because you have to plug it in to charge anyway? You plug the charger into the wall and don't need to plug the device into a PC to charge it.
Menus confusing? If you're a simpleton maybe.
Buggy firmware? Nope. It suffered with the same issue every Garmin device that had bluetooth connectivity did and meant Livetracking and phone connection was intermittent or non-existent. That has been resolved many months ago.
Battery life is not worse than the 800. The link below shows the 810 to have 2 hours longer battery life. In practice my 810 has never died before my ride buddy's 800.

https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/catalog ... duct=69043

Livetracking MUST require battery draw on the 810 to transmit data - basic physics
Livetracking MUST require battery draw on your phone to receive and retransmit this data - basic physics
Plugging into a wall rather than a PC makes no difference to me as I use my PC all the time anyway
OK, I must be a simpleton along with the masses of other people who are all confused and muddle their way through the menus on the garmins of all types
Just need to look on here or elsewhere on the web to find that the 810 was VERY buggy for some time
Dont get me wrong, I dont think battery life is significantly worse on 810 than the 800 but as I see no benefit from the extra features and prefer the menus on the 800, I would rather the older model. And if you believe the specs on that Garmin comparison are anything other than just marketing hype, I would be surprised. I have seen loads of comparisons saying that battery was worse, although these were probably all with earlier firmware.

Without wanting to hijack Ugo's thread:
The points I'm making are that Livetracking has no adverse effect on battery life which is how your original post reads to me.
I made no comment on the battery life of a phone it is synced to. That's an issue with the phone and not the 810/510/1000, but the last 2 smart phones I've had never got to the point of seriously draining the battery life even on 6 hour rides.
Because your 800 has to plug in to a PC to upload and you therefore choose this method to charge it, doesn't make the wifi function of the 510/810/1000 pointless.
Where Garmin fail with their devices is through the lack of an instruction manual. The guide provided on the forgot web is how Garmin should have done it, but I've yet to encounter anyone who can't fathom out how to operate one when the menus are pretty straightforward. Admitted some of the how to secrets are a mystery but that applies to all models.
I can fully understand that some of the additional features are not wanted by some and would therefore choose the 705/800 over the 810 or 1000. It doesn't make the newer devices a waste of money though.
Garmin like all companies have to stand by their boasts otherwise they are making false claims on the performance of their product and risk legal claims. There may well be an accepted tolerance either way, but it isn't going to be any worse than the 800 in this regard.

There are plenty of people who are dissatisfied with Garmin devices, but many of them have buggered their device themselves or haven't done something correctly. Yes they're always releasing new firmware as Beta versions and use us as the test bed, but then that corporate monster Apple is just the same in using owners as the guinea pig.

freezing77

ugo.santalucia wrote:

What's the drawback, if any?

Depends how you define drawbacks, slightly heavier and bulkier than the edge series. Does not have the training "features" of the edge series. Cannot easily set up multiple bike profiles.

Uses bog standard AA batteries, can be changed without losing current track info so I see this as a plus. I suspect a lot of audaxers using this type as opposed to the edge series due to battery life.


http://www.aukadia.net/gps/lw3_4.htm

ugo.santalucia

freezing77 wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

What's the drawback, if any?

Depends how you define drawbacks, slightly heavier and bulkier than the edge series. Does not have the training "features" of the edge series. Cannot easily set up multiple bike profiles.

Uses bog standard AA batteries, can be changed without losing current track info so I see this as a plus. I suspect a lot of audaxers using this type as opposed to the edge series due to battery life.


http://www.aukadia.net/gps/lw3_4.htm

How many hours of use do you do with a pair of good batteries, say Duracell?

freezing77

Depends on how you are using it but about 14 hours. This is with nimh rechargeables, I suspect with non rechargeable slightly longer.
The unit can adapt to different battery types and has this function built in.


http://www.tramper.co.nz/?view=topic&id=2156

northpole

I don't know the answer to this but I presume that there are power packs now available which can hook up with the garmin USB port to provide power supply on very long ride days ie 10+ hours if the Garmin battery loses the will to continue? A bit of a pain to carry but at least it would ensure complete record of your day in the saddle - assuming it is available!

Peter

freezing77

northpole wrote:

I don't know the answer to this but I presume that there are power packs now available which can hook up with the garmin USB port to provide power supply on very long ride days ie 10+ hours if the Garmin battery loses the will to continue? A bit of a pain to carry but at least it would ensure complete record of your day in the saddle - assuming it is available!

Peter

Garmin do one but from what I can gather people have had mixed fortunes with both garmin and non garmin external battery packs.

menthel

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I did think about a non specific one... the downside is that it won't fit in a mount, maybe?
Is it possible to upload a particular route? One of the reasons to get one is to be able to enter Audax and events which are not signposted without having to carry a map

That is what I use my 800 for. The route sheet usually comes before the event so I will make a tcx track from it using something like ridewithgps and then put it on the garmin. Quite a few audax organisers are supplying tracks for use with these devices now anyway.