Garmin Edge 520 and upwards

mamba80

ZMC888 wrote:

If I talk about any of the flaws then you'll just trot out with 'other devices have those flaws too, so it's OK' line. So please don't bother with that defence strategy.

-You only get pathetic basic maps that are essentially useless. Loads of very good maps are free open source. But with a 520 you either have to risk putting your own on and bricking your 520 or pay loads of extra money to Garmin. It's basically only a Casio digital watch with GPS and costs $10 to make, so why do they need to charge extra? Greed.
the freeware maps work perfect well. i ve maps for southern france spain, alps and Mallorca plus devon and cornwall, just make sure that when loading the course the 520 has the that areas base map on it

-If you ride without a HRM it gets the calorie burn more than 120% wrong even though you told the thing your weight, height and age.
if it is that importance and you want a degree of accuracy, buy a HRM.....

-Often doesn't add ascent correctly.
never seen that unless in heavily wooded areas.

-It auto turns itself off without being told.
no it doesnt, check your settings.

-It's totally unreadable at night unless you press buttons every 20 seconds.
set display for always ON.

-The battery life is about 15 hours when you buy it, but it quickly drops to 12 hours after 6 months of hard use and 10 hours after a year.
is your longest ride 10hours?

-Doesn't auto pause at all. Screws up your average speed unless you stop it.
AP works brilliantly.

-Can randomly corrupt your rides, worse when you have a lot of data stored in old files. Could easily store more data at no weight and almost no cost penalty.
never lost a ride, clean up your old rides, easy to do and good practice if they are important to you. but agree on lack of memory

-Not tough, one accidental drop or crash, it's toast.
4 RR crashes this season, works fine, its down to luck but buy a shock proof case, as you would a phone?

-Garmin Express is a horrible dumbed-down program.
what do you expect? it syncs the device and thats about all

To be fair it works well with other devices and is pretty reliable.
this doesnt make sense given your previous comments.......

stevie63

ZMC888 wrote:

-Doesn't auto pause at all. Screws up your average speed unless you stop it.

It does have auto pause, in fact you can set the speed that you want it to trigger at (ie 0mph,1mph etc). BTW I'm not defending the 520. I think it is a fairly ok GPS but it is frustrating the way that Garmin have hobbled it to force you to buy one of their more expensive devices.

kingstongraham

stevie63 wrote:

ZMC888 wrote:

-Doesn't auto pause at all. Screws up your average speed unless you stop it.

It does have auto pause, in fact you can set the speed that you want it to trigger at (ie 0mph,1mph etc). BTW I'm not defending the 520. I think it is a fairly ok GPS but it is frustrating the way that Garmin have hobbled it to force you to buy one of their more expensive devices.

You do realise you aren't just paying for hardware.

Man Of Lard

Ok, if it is buildable for $10, then I offer a bounty of $100 plus material costs to anyone to supply me with a fully functional (let's use the published spec for the 520 as the benchmark for what constitutes fully functional) bicycle mounted GPS unit that pairs with ANT+ heart rate, cadence, speed & power sensors that has been built for $10.

ZMC888

philthy3 wrote:

Your whole topic is about the 520 not being as good as something the opposition can put out, yet it isn't fair to counter that the same opposition have the same flaws? :roll:

Your honour, you should find me not guilty, as other men have killed their wives and gotten away with murder'. Seriously? Someone else makes an error designing a cycle computer, and that makes it OK for someone else? :?:

Plenty of users have upgraded from the base maps without problem; maybe it's you that can't operate one correctly.

Personal attack! How to win an argument! Nice, really nice.
I've haven't even tried to upgrade the map get.

Supply and demand along with associated costs dictate why a device costs what it does. You'd have us believe it costs nothing to develop, design, manufacture, package and transport the product, as well as pay the staff and costs of running the premises where it all takes place, or that it can all be done for $10. :roll:

You're beginning to sound as though you might actually work for Garmin. Some serious kool-aid drinking going on here.

No device gets the calorie burn right and even with a HR monitor it will not be correct. Without doing specific tests to calculate your own metabolic rates, you will not be able to accurately monitor your burned calories.
Your device turns itself off without being told, others don't.
You can set the screen backlight to be permanently on which leads me to further suspect that it is you that doesn't know how to operate the device properly.
The rest of your "arguments" are all as ridiculous as the rest. You're making yourself look foolish and I refuse to be dangled on a hook by you anymore.

If you can't win an argument it just sucks to use personal attacks to try to win. Pretty bad.

OK on some points I may be wrong, but at least half of my points as to why a Garmin Edge is just mediocre are actually perfectly reasonable. It's your horrible inability to see any flaw whatsoever (other than stupid unnecessary touch screen) that makes you look like a troll.

ZMC888

-You only get pathetic basic maps that are essentially useless. Loads of very good maps are free open source. But with a 520 you either have to risk putting your own on and bricking your 520 or pay loads of extra money to Garmin. It's basically only a Casio digital watch with GPS and costs $10 to make, so why do they need to charge extra? Greed.
the freeware maps work perfect well. i ve maps for southern france spain, alps and Mallorca plus devon and cornwall, just make sure that when loading the course the 520 has the that areas base map on it
I haven't needed to use a map as yet so I haven't tried to add one.

-If you ride without a HRM it gets the calorie burn more than 120% wrong even though you told the thing your weight, height and age.
if it is that importance and you want a degree of accuracy, buy a HRM.....
I have a Garmin HRM, but if I don't use it the device thinks I burn 1200 an hour rather than 550, totally boneheaded. A little inaccuracy is fine, but over 100%?

-Often doesn't add ascent correctly.
never seen that unless in heavily wooded areas.
Sometimes it's waaaayyyy off compared to Strava. Was pretty accurate in UK, horrible in China.

-It auto turns itself off without being told.
no it doesnt, check your settings.
Will do.

-It's totally unreadable at night unless you press buttons every 20 seconds.
set display for always ON.
Will do.

-The battery life is about 15 hours when you buy it, but it quickly drops to 12 hours after 6 months of hard use and 10 hours after a year.
is your longest ride 10hours?
No, Everesting solid 19 hours including charging on the fly. Also some other 20 plus hour rides with wild camping.

-Doesn't auto pause at all. Screws up your average speed unless you stop it.
AP works brilliantly.
WIll check settings.

-Can randomly corrupt your rides, worse when you have a lot of data stored in old files. Could easily store more data at no weight and almost no cost penalty.
never lost a ride, clean up your old rides, easy to do and good practice if they are important to you. but agree on lack of memory
2 corrupted rides, one when memory a bit full, another not so much. Should be more clearly warned about this, maybe.

-Not tough, one accidental drop or crash, it's toast.
4 RR crashes this season, works fine, its down to luck but buy a shock proof case, as you would a phone?
They could so easily make it tougher
-Garmin Express is a horrible dumbed-down program.
what do you expect? it syncs the device and thats about all

To be fair it works well with other devices and is pretty reliable.
this doesnt make sense given your previous comments.......
Why? Connects with my cadence, speed and HRM devices perfectly.

mamba80

ZMC888, sell it and buy something else, wild camping and everesting will require an external charging source whatever you buy.
if is was ok in Europe at measuring ascent/descent but not in China and bearing in mind who supplies Glonass and GPS there might lie your answer........

for me, your only valid criticisms are lack of memory and battery life and tbh i reckon your on a wind up.....

ZMC888

mamba80 wrote:

ZMC888, sell it and buy something else, wild camping and everesting will require an external charging source whatever you buy.
if is was ok in Europe at measuring ascent/descent but not in China and bearing in mind who supplies Glonass and GPS there might lie your answer........

for me, your only valid criticisms are lack of memory and battery life and tbh i reckon your on a wind up.....

I'm not on a wind up. I think it's a 3.5 out of five product. Look at any review site, you'll see a string of 5 star reviewers and a string of one star haters. The 3-4 star reviewers are the ones that usually can see the most sense. Of course there are some exceptions like Campy Zonda wheelsets or Conti Gp4 2 tyres that are almost universally 5 star. A Garmin Edge 520 is not a 5 star product in design or value.

I use my 520 almost daily and have for about a year, it works reliably nearly all the time, I'm fairly happy with it.

The thing is, it's a long way from perfect, and I take issue with people getting wound up that their Garmin isn't perfect. It's flawed in many ways, and has many fairly minor niggles. I'm by no means the only person with this opinion. It seems sometimes contrary opinions aren't the problem, expressing them is.

stevie63

KingstonGraham wrote:

stevie63 wrote:

ZMC888 wrote:

-Doesn't auto pause at all. Screws up your average speed unless you stop it.

It does have auto pause, in fact you can set the speed that you want it to trigger at (ie 0mph,1mph etc). BTW I'm not defending the 520. I think it is a fairly ok GPS but it is frustrating the way that Garmin have hobbled it to force you to buy one of their more expensive devices.

You do realise you aren't just paying for hardware.

I do, but the fact is that hardware is perfectly capable of doing proper routing and maps, but Garmin have chosen to give the unit a paltry 100MB of memory when for a few pence more they could have fitted a couple of GB.

As another example if you take the Touring plus they have intentionally made it so that it can do ANT+ but it can't do Power. That would purely be set in the firmware as the hardware would be able.

The reality is that these are shrewd business decisions by a company who wants more profit. But I think we all would like to see a bit more choice in the market to help push prices down. And by more choice it needs to be a company that will give good regular ongoing support for the product unlike Mio and bryton. The other thing is I haven't complained about the price of the Edge 520 more that fact that it could be better still. Decent basic routing would be better than them rolling out support for 3rd party apps and radar lights that hardly anyone uses.

ZMC888

I do, but the fact is that hardware is perfectly capable of doing proper routing and maps, but Garmin have chosen to give the unit a paltry 100MB of memory when for a few pence more they could have fitted a couple of GB.

As another example if you take the Touring plus they have intentionally made it so that it can do ANT+ but it can't do Power. That would purely be set in the firmware as the hardware would be able.

The reality is that these are shrewd business decisions by a company who wants more profit. But I think we all would like to see a bit more choice in the market to help push prices down. And by more choice it needs to be a company that will give good regular ongoing support for the product unlike Mio and bryton. The other thing is I haven't complained about the price of the Edge 520 more that fact that it could be better still. Decent basic routing would be better than them rolling out support for 3rd party apps and radar lights that hardly anyone uses.

+1

ben@31

Problems I've experienced with my 520, even today...

- unsyncs with sensors after a software update
- 520 has suddenly decided to do what the fuck it wants and no longer sleep when stopped for more than 5 minutes (despite this feature being selected on). When setting off again the battery has ran down
- after creating a course on Strava and exporting it to the 520. Some turn instructions are displayed while some randomly are not, causing me to go past junctions and do a U turn, unless the 520s on the map screen.
- the ""live"" segs feature is a total marketing lie. There's nothing live about it when it only displays pre selected segs

What have all these software updates actually done? I'm guessing that their software team must deliberately allow flaws to exist to justify their jobs... If the computers were flawless they'd be no need to employ software engineers to keep on writing updates?

jgsi

Just to be clear.. I have had the 520 since Feb 2015.. it hasnt let me down out on the road.
I dont 'tax' it so much .. it just data gathers for Golden Cheetah.
I certainly would have not chosen it if I did umpteen audaxes with their 12,567 turns, but I dont.
It was just the process of firmware updates that did my head in.

alex222

ben@31 wrote:

- the ""live"" segs feature is a total marketing lie. There's nothing live about it when it only displays pre selected

How could they design it any differently, if it flashed up every Strava segment no doubt everyone would be complaining. Go through any piece of popular road and you have dozens of segments overlapping

kingstongraham

Alex222 wrote:

ben@31 wrote:

- the ""live"" segs feature is a total marketing lie. There's nothing live about it when it only displays pre selected

How could they design it any differently, if it flashed up every Strava segment no doubt everyone would be complaining. Go through any piece of popular road and you have dozens of segments overlapping

Quite. I can't imagine it being much use in Richmond Park if it selected one at random.

vinnymarsden

The wahoo may be good, unfortunately it looks hideous, like something from the 80s!
Looks might not be top of the list for requirements but for me personally an item going on my bike has to look good to make the grade, the Elennt just doesn't .

noodleman

VinnyMarsden wrote:

The wahoo may be good, unfortunately it looks hideous, like something from the 80s!
Looks might not be top of the list for requirements but for me personally an item going on my bike has to look good to make the grade, the Elennt just doesn't .

I actually like the looks. Not exactly elegant like a garmin but seems to suit my bikes. Having said that, like you mention, I couldn't give a fig how it looks because it works so well.

chris_bass

I have a couple of wahoo sensors, speed and cadence, I find them very unreliable, they lose signal all the time, would be interested to see what others think?

vinnymarsden

I agree Chris, I have the wahoo cadence and it's all over the place, compared to the Garmin, which was rock solid, smooth and consistent.
I have a Kickr, thankfully they appear to have that piece of kit totally dialled in

Websta24

In regards to the live segments, would you really want it to pick up every segment on a ride?!? There are hundreds and it would become a friggin nightmare!! Although, My 520 now seems to pick up random "popular" segments that i haven't starred on Strava, It also picks up the local MTB tracks...which is slightly annoying!

chris_bass

VinnyMarsden wrote:

I agree Chris, I have the wahoo cadence and it's all over the place, compared to the Garmin, which was rock solid, smooth and consistent.
I have a Kickr, thankfully they appear to have that piece of kit totally dialled in

i find with the cadence sensor if you mount it to your shoe, not the crank, it works much better, still not good but better.

with the speed sensor it works ok on the turbo, it is stopping and starting it seems to struggle with

feisty

But you can use garmin cadence sensors with the Wahoo elemnt so that's easy to solve

mamba80

Upgraded to latest f/w 9.00, no problem at all with update or sensor pairing, everything working as well as before..... tbh i m pretty concerned with these lack of issues and wonder if i should complain to Garmin Support?