Should I buy a Garmin Edge 500 for £40?

Felipe2105

I fancy some sort of Garmin device for my road bike, mainly to use for navigation as I'm not massively familiar with the routes near me just yet.

I've been offered a used Garmin Edge 500 for £40 from a family friend and don't know whether to go for it or not. A friend bought the Edge 810 from Aldi when it was £180 and it looks really nice, but it's 4x more expensive!

I've been looking at reviews online but first hand experience of using the Edge 500 for Nav would be appreciated

What do you think?

joe2008

Great device, very reliable, loads of data fields, works with heart rate and power.

It won't crash/freeze like the 510/520 have been known to do. Only issue I've had is that you must press reset 3-2-1 at the end of a ride to close the file, otherwise, occasionally, it doesn't save the file. Once I knew this I've had no problems with either of mine, I've had one of them for 5 years.

However, I rarely use the 500 for navigation. There are no maps, just a bread crumb course, which will tell you when you go off course. But It's really annoying to use because sometimes, no often, when you are on course, it loses GPS for a split second, beeps (this can be turned off) flashes the message then re-finds the course.

I'll give your friend £40 for it

wongataa

The 500 is not really suited to navigation. You can have it show a breadcrumb trail to follow but that is it navigation wise.

trek_dan

Perfect for general use, battery life being a big bonus over the newer models. Not great for navigation if you don't already kind of know where your going, ie. useful for turn prompts but no substitute for a map.

thomasmorris

The 500 is still a fantastic GPS bike computer. The newer editions (510 and 520) add some nice to have features, but as a data logging / training tool the 500 has everything you need.

For £40, I'd say it would be worth buying for pretty much any cycling enthusiast who doesn't already have a GPS computer.

However, if you're buying for navigation you will be disappointed. It's possible, but not easy and takes some pre-ride planning. If you're using it once or twice a year for navigation then it's OK. But if your reason for buying is navigation then this isn't the device.

We have a 1000 and 500 in the house, and I choose to use the 500 nine rides out of ten. The 500 has all the ride logging / training features I need without the bulk of the 1000. I only really pick up the 1000 when exploring unfamiliar areas.

kingstongraham

It gives a breadcrumb trail and tells you when you are off course, but that is about it. Really good device, and for £40 to record data, it's a good deal. I used it for course navigation for years with no problem.

I upgraded mine to get Bluetooth connectivity and proper turn by turn navigation, but like you say, an 820 is a lot more money.

mw22

Agree with most of the comments.

I ran a 500 for a few years and it was faultless for data logging and info on a ride.... BUT whilst you can use it for Navigation, I only found it useful for routes I kinda new, so the garmin was back up.
My main issues were the map would regular go blank - so you'd have your little pointer but with no breadcrumb trail. Also if you go off course, finding where you should be to rejoin was a pain.

I upgraded to a 520 and I wouldnt say this is ideal for any trips where navigation is key... BUT it always displays the map/route without any blackouts and it feels easier to get back on track when you go off route - with having a map of roads to follow back to the course you had plotted.

So 500 great device - dont buy it if you really want to use it for navigation though, you'll be frustrated.

Mike

mugensi

For £40 you couldn't go wrong. Buy it and try it out and if you find its of no use for what you want then sell it again, you'll easily get your money back if not more on ebay/classifieds.

daniel_b

I had, but no longer use a 500, and it was faultless.

I used it for navigating of sorts - used to create a ride route on gpsies, and then transfer it across.
It's perfectly usable for navigating, the key point is that you need to zoom in far enough, IIRC thid was something like 200ft, so you could discern which turn you were meant to take, as it will only show you the route you have plotted, and none of the surrounding roads.

Occasionally it will not update quickly enough, orientation wise, and if you are at a somplex road juntion you may take the wrong exit, but then you just turn around - and to be honest with my 1000 I have experienced the same thing, where the map does not update in time, and as a result I took the wrong exit - on a busy roundabout junction, so once committed to the exit, that was it, but just had to turn around and retrace - no biggy.

On the 500 you could always zoom even further in if you see a complex junction coming up anyway.

ben-----

The 500 is the computer I use all the time. It is *NOT* faultless when it comes to navigation, but, with a bit of, I dunno, various things: tweaking, getting used to it, etc. navigation works, in a manor. I use it to navigate long unknown routes. Pretty much without any problems now. Country roads generally though. Expect much frustration, near hopelessness, in towns/cities with many turnings/road options close together though.

Personally, ignoring the fact that bread crumb style of navigation doesn't allow for generating new routes out and about, on the fly, I think the bread crumb system is actually quite good - when it's implemented well. It's simple.

But the 500s implementation of bread crumb routing is a bit broken - has a number of implementation bugs which Garmin never bothered fixing. The 200's implementation was better. Less broken. I upgraded from 200 to to get HRM ability. When doing that I assumed I'd be getting the same thing as a 200 plus HRM. That wasn't the case. The navigation was a step backwards, because of the 500s further problems. So I was quite fed up about that.

But I use the 500 all the time, regularly doing long new routes with it. On country roads (that is, with long gaps between turnings). Fine. After some tweaking and getting used to.

ben-----

Daniel B wrote:

and to be honest with my 1000 I have experienced the same thing, where the map does not update in time, and as a result I took the wrong exit - on a busy roundabout junctio

Yes I seem to remember having the same problem when I had an 800 briefly. So I guess that kind of problem is not at all restricted to breadcrumb style.

On the 500 you could always zoom even further in if you see a complex junction coming up anyway.

But once off route, the 500's routing becomes absolutely useless. Pretty much stops working, routing wise, until you're back on course. And it will not help you do that. In fact it will hinder you. Generally it freezes/goes haywire when off route. That was one thing the 200 did quite well and the 500 is useless on I've found.

daniel_b

ben----- wrote:

Daniel B wrote:

and to be honest with my 1000 I have experienced the same thing, where the map does not update in time, and as a result I took the wrong exit - on a busy roundabout junctio

Yes I seem to remember having the same problem when I had an 800 briefly. So I guess that kind of problem is not at all restricted to breadcrumb style.

On the 500 you could always zoom even further in if you see a complex junction coming up anyway.

But once off route, the 500's routing becomes absolutely useless. Pretty much stops working, routing wise, until you're back on course. And it will not help you do that. In fact it will hinder you. Generally it freezes/goes haywire when off route. That was one thing the 200 did quite well and the 500 is useless on I've found.

I've never had that issue when it went off route, it would alert me with a beep, and I could see my original route, plus a dotted line with where I was going.
For example on one route I plotted, unbeknown to me it went through some private land that was not accessible, so I had to zoom out, and then could see what turnings I had to take to get me back onto the desired route, added an extra mile or so.
I initially had a lot of issues with the breadcrumb trail dissapearing, which I suspect we may have discussed in the past, but my solution was to use gpsies, and to use the advanced option to set the navigation points evenly, not quite worded as that, but it was a while ago now, but anyway, saving the file like that, and then letting the 500 convert it to a .fit file, solved that issue permanently.

ben-----

> I've never had that issue when it went off route, it would alert me with a beep, and I could see my original route, plus a dotted line with where I was going.

That's what the 200 did. Yup, and it's quite good. Good enough. On the, or my at least my, 500 not so. I guess it's maybe an issue of firm/software. Different versions behave in different ways. I'm just not going to get into that though. (I'm using the most recent I think.)

> I initially had a lot of issues with the breadcrumb trail dissapearing, which I suspect we may have discussed in the past, but my solution was to use gpsies, and to use the advanced option to set the navigation points evenly, not quite worded as that, but it was a while ago now, but anyway, saving the file like that, and then letting the 500 convert it to a .fit file, solved that issue permanently.

Yup, that's part of what I do, that's some of the tweaking I was referring to.

> solved that issue permanently.

Per route that is though. And I do find the route disappears still sometimes but not for so long and not so often; not really an issue anymore using that process.

daniel_b

ben----- wrote:

> I've never had that issue when it went off route, it would alert me with a beep, and I could see my original route, plus a dotted line with where I was going.

That's what the 200 did. Yup, and it's quite good. Good enough. On the, or my at least my, 500 not so. I guess it's maybe an issue of firm/software. Different versions behave in different ways. I'm just not going to get into that though. (I'm using the most recent I think.)

> I initially had a lot of issues with the breadcrumb trail dissapearing, which I suspect we may have discussed in the past, but my solution was to use gpsies, and to use the advanced option to set the navigation points evenly, not quite worded as that, but it was a while ago now, but anyway, saving the file like that, and then letting the 500 convert it to a .fit file, solved that issue permanently.

Yup, that's part of what I do, that's some of the tweaking I was referring to.

> solved that issue permanently.

Per route that is though. And I do find the route disappears still sometimes but not for so long and not so often; not really an issue anymore using that process.

Yes agreed, when I say solved, it did occasionally dissapear for a second or two, but nothing to cause an issue, and nothing like the perhaps minutes without the adjusted course creation routine.

Felipe2105

Cheers Gents! As most of you have advised, I may as well take it as it's a good deal, try it out for a few months and see what I think. I suppose it will be handy to learn all the stats and things anyway.

I always take my phone with me so if i'm super lost I'll resort to that. Getting lost adds to the fun anyway....well sometimes

Man Of Lard

You are never lost on your bike - merely exploring alternative routes for the future