Garmin....DCR now seems fed up with them

redvision

I know the Garmin lovers will ignore this or argue otherwise, but DCRainmaker has written a great piece criticising Garmin for the constant bugs and apparent inability to fix them.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/com ... ility.html

paulwood

I love my Garmin.

I would love a new 530.

But there is no way i am getting one for 18 months, I just don't trust the software

slowbike

yup - but not fed up enough to ditch them ...

I generally found that my Garmin 800 was stable - once it updated from the first couple of firmwares (where it'd suddenly freeze mid ride) it's been totally reliable. My 3 reasons for replacing it were 1) The connector was starting to wobble making data transfer dodgy, 2) The battery was starting to degrade and 3) They had a silly price offer on the 820.

On the 820, again, that's been stable - not done enough rides yet to worry about it. The slight niggles are
a) When I press stop on a ride I don't want a sensitive touch screen inviting me to save/discard, I'm just "pausing" the ride.
b) Bluetooth does drop out meaning that it doesn't always sync when I've saved a ride and I have to open the Connect app on my phone to get it to start again - usually having to wait for the Garmin watch to finish it's sync first - but that's not an issue with the unit -it's an issue with the app on the phone.

I haven't yet had it freeze or lose a ride for me - but it's still early days...

On the plus side - I like the battery save mode - I don't need it most of the time, but doing a long ride with the display off for the majority saved a lot of battery.

meursault

A bit suprised by this, I thought he was sponsored by them. Good, objective article though.

norvernrob

oxoman wrote:

Of the 2 Garmin I've had they're were both crap. Let me down with various issues, powering off mid ride, freezing, not downloading, corrupted files, stopped recording rides etc. Will stick with android based apps for now. Why oh why can't they get it right, my car one and my old walking garmins always worked.

On the flip side, I’ve had 3 that have all been nigh on perfect. A 200, a 520 (still got it) and a 130 for my son. I put every update on them and the only issue I’ve ever had is the 520 freezing up once whilst loading a route. It reset itself about 5 minutes later. I put open source maps on and off it for when I use it abroad and again it doesn’t skip a beat.

Maybe ive just been lucky :?:

dodgy

I still can't forgive them for the fact that these things turn on when you remove the charging cable.
So then you immediately have to power them down again, no wonder on some devices the power button ends up breaking.

Darius_Jedburgh

dodgy wrote:

I still can't forgive them for the fact that these things turn on when you remove the charging cable.
So then you immediately have to power them down again, no wonder on some devices the power button ends up breaking.

If you leave them alone they will power down automatically after a couple of minutes. My 520 does. Think it's three minutes of inactivity in a non recording mode. Not a problem.

surfercyclist

Five words for ya : Buy a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt.

mugensi

I've had my 520 for nearly 4 years now and not one issue in that time. When it was new it came with Software version 3.X.

I updated the software last month to 13.0 purely because the constant prompts to do so annoyed me, Its been fine since and hopefully will continue that way but I am noticing that battery life is starting to suffer but I'm still getting approx. 8 hours from a charge which does me a few days.

cougie

I've been lucky with my fenix. Apart from one week when it would burn through its battery in a day - it's been faultless.

StillGoing

paulwood wrote:

I love my Garmin.

I would love a new 530.

But there is no way i am getting one for 18 months, I just don't trust the software

I'd read the more recent reports from DC Rainmaker and Shane Long if I were you. The new features on the 530/830 don't actually work without a lot of pre-amble and certain conditions re the routes.

meursault

SurferCyclist wrote:

Five words for ya : Buy a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt.

That thing isn't going on my bike on looks alone.

wongataa

SurferCyclist wrote:

Five words for ya : Buy a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt.

No. Can't make custom maps for my preferred schema. Also, I haven't had any major issues with my Garmin units.

Ben6899

I have an ancient Garmin 800. It's fine. I can upload routes and follow the line plotted on the very detailed maps. It gives me all the data I need to analyse performance.

That's probably jinxed it now!

joe2008

I'm sticking with my trusted 500 which I've had for 10 years, and it has been completely reliable - I've never bothered to update any software on it.

surfercyclist

meursault wrote:

SurferCyclist wrote:

Five words for ya : Buy a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt.

That thing isn't going on my bike on looks alone.

Well I can't say aesthetics was the clincher when I got mine but what's wrong with the looks? And also supposedly "aero" if you believe the blurb, although not relevant to me.

keef66

oxoman wrote:

Stand by my view above, mine was the edge touring. Mine was never used with preloaded route and was supposedly on latest update. Also as I previously reported on recent C2C myself and 2 others using edge touring all had issues within short period of time. 1 Freezing on turn by turn mode but still recording, 2nd frozen completely and killed battery with whatever it was trying to do. 3rd switched itself of then froze for a bit on powering back up, although this one picked up from stop point. All units purchased at different times and differing places.

Although that was one of the reasons I bought it, I've given up on TBT with my Touring Plus.
So I've been experimenting with just following the coloured line on the map. So far, so good. Battery life is improved, and it reliably records the ride. Just need to venture out to my local Area 51 where in the past it's twice powered itself down for no apparent reason. If it survives that, I'll stop thinking about splurging more money on a 530 or an Elemnt

david7m

I had the forerunner watch, now demoted to MTB only as fed up of it locking up and tracking not working.
Bolt on road bike has been faultless!

trek_dan

The Garmin 500 was excellent. Seems like since then they've continued to add gimmicky features to drive sales while shortening battery life and worsening reliability. Plus I hate that most of the newer units are glued together so you can't replace the battery yourself.

de_sisti

redvision wrote:

I know the Garmin lovers will ignore this or argue otherwise, but DCRainmaker has written a great piece criticising Garmin for the constant bugs and apparent inability to fix them.

Bizzarre. He seems to be raving about the 530 in this review.
https://youtu.be/CbeX_ruKt3k

@12:27
@13:12 in the video.

PhilipPirrip

I've been a Garmin Edge user, without problems, for the best part of 15 years going back to the 305 and I find it a fair article.

It's subastantially larger market share is bound to over-state the problems when viewed as a raw number rather than a percentage but I'll concede to his knowledge of the organisational structure and how it's hampering addressing the problems that do arise in a timely manner.

I don't use LiveTrack so haven't experienced the problem he talks about but I do use bluetooth on its own and had no problem connecting to the phone.

davep1

SurferCyclist wrote:

Five words for ya : Buy a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt.

Or 8 for you - "Or a Giant Neostrack for half the money"

de_sisti

I have a Garmin Edge Touring Plus. It gives audible turn-by-turn alarms for tcx courses.
It will produce a coloured line to follow for gpx tracks/courses. Mine has only let me
down once (due to cold weather running the battery down quicker than I would have
liked.

[edit. gpx instead of tcx]

kingstongraham

redvision wrote:

I know the Garmin lovers will ignore this or argue otherwise, but DCRainmaker has written a great piece criticising Garmin for the constant bugs and apparent inability to fix them.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/com ... ility.html

I think it hits the nail on the head. I'm happy with my 820, because it does the bits I want to do and has never let me down. Same with my Forerunner 230. The bits that seem to consistently cause problems are things I don't do, but clearly if they don't work, they shouldn't be marketed.

Also, I think the issues some people have must be down to inconsistencies in build quality - where some units don't do the basics right, like a touchscreen that doesn't work.

timothyw

trek_dan wrote:

The Garmin 500 was excellent. Seems like since then they've continued to add gimmicky features to drive sales while shortening battery life and worsening reliability. Plus I hate that most of the newer units are glued together so you can't replace the battery yourself.

The Garmin 500 was fine, but is a long way from excellent (especially by modern standards).

I replaced mine with a 520 late last year and there isn't much to call between the two reliability wise - I lost the occasional ride with the 500, I have lost occasional rides on the 520 (thankfully only commutes!)

But I also made the occasional wrong turn with the 500, because the breadcrumb was slow to update and with no map complex junctions were hard to navigate.

The Edge 200 is the only Garmin I've had that was actually flawless, but it's no good for me because I want to see and record my power and heart rate data - I have a mate that swears by his and just rides to feel, never uses his 500, bought an 820 a few months back and hasn't bothered to open it yet...

Anyhow, I think the DC rainmaker piece seems pretty reasonable - we'd all like if our Garmins were that bit more stable & reliable.

joe2008

TimothyW wrote:

trek_dan wrote:

The Garmin 500 was excellent. Seems like since then they've continued to add gimmicky features to drive sales while shortening battery life and worsening reliability. Plus I hate that most of the newer units are glued together so you can't replace the battery yourself.

The Garmin 500 was fine, but is a long way from excellent (especially by modern standards).

I replaced mine with a 520 late last year and there isn't much to call between the two reliability wise - I lost the occasional ride with the 500, I have lost occasional rides on the 520 (thankfully only commutes!)

But I also made the occasional wrong turn with the 500, because the breadcrumb was slow to update and with no map complex junctions were hard to navigate.

The Edge 200 is the only Garmin I've had that was actually flawless, but it's no good for me because I want to see and record my power and heart rate data - I have a mate that swears by his and just rides to feel, never uses his 500, bought an 820 a few months back and hasn't bothered to open it yet...

Anyhow, I think the DC rainmaker piece seems pretty reasonable - we'd all like if our Garmins were that bit more stable & reliable.

The only reason you'd lose a ride with the 500 is if you didn't reset 1-2-3 the file before uploading it.

trek_dan

TimothyW wrote:

trek_dan wrote:

The Garmin 500 was excellent. Seems like since then they've continued to add gimmicky features to drive sales while shortening battery life and worsening reliability. Plus I hate that most of the newer units are glued together so you can't replace the battery yourself.

The Garmin 500 was fine, but is a long way from excellent (especially by modern standards).

I replaced mine with a 520 late last year and there isn't much to call between the two reliability wise - I lost the occasional ride with the 500, I have lost occasional rides on the 520 (thankfully only commutes!)

But I also made the occasional wrong turn with the 500, because the breadcrumb was slow to update and with no map complex junctions were hard to navigate.

The Edge 200 is the only Garmin I've had that was actually flawless, but it's no good for me because I want to see and record my power and heart rate data - I have a mate that swears by his and just rides to feel, never uses his 500, bought an 820 a few months back and hasn't bothered to open it yet...

Anyhow, I think the DC rainmaker piece seems pretty reasonable - we'd all like if our Garmins were that bit more stable & reliable.

The trade off for slightly better mapping being significantly more cost and significantly less battery life, especially with directions turned and the backlight on...

StillGoing

De Sisti wrote:

redvision wrote:

I know the Garmin lovers will ignore this or argue otherwise, but DCRainmaker has written a great piece criticising Garmin for the constant bugs and apparent inability to fix them.

Bizzarre. He seems to be raving about the 530 in this review.
https://youtu.be/CbeX_ruKt3k

@12:27
@13:12 in the video.

That predates the subsequent reports on the 530/830.

The only reliable Garmin I've had was the 705. Every unit i've had since has had problems with the firmware updates, plus the 820 touch screen was woeful. As DC Rainmaker alludes to, I am one of those that got fed up with the unreliability of Garmin and moved to Wahoo.

timothyw

joe2008 wrote:

TimothyW wrote:

trek_dan wrote:

The Garmin 500 was excellent. Seems like since then they've continued to add gimmicky features to drive sales while shortening battery life and worsening reliability. Plus I hate that most of the newer units are glued together so you can't replace the battery yourself.

The Garmin 500 was fine, but is a long way from excellent (especially by modern standards).

I replaced mine with a 520 late last year and there isn't much to call between the two reliability wise - I lost the occasional ride with the 500, I have lost occasional rides on the 520 (thankfully only commutes!)

But I also made the occasional wrong turn with the 500, because the breadcrumb was slow to update and with no map complex junctions were hard to navigate.

The Edge 200 is the only Garmin I've had that was actually flawless, but it's no good for me because I want to see and record my power and heart rate data - I have a mate that swears by his and just rides to feel, never uses his 500, bought an 820 a few months back and hasn't bothered to open it yet...

Anyhow, I think the DC rainmaker piece seems pretty reasonable - we'd all like if our Garmins were that bit more stable & reliable.

The only reason you'd lose a ride with the 500 is if you didn't reset 1-2-3 the file before uploading it.

Yeah, or because the unit crashed while I was doing the reset 1-2-3 - or just never started recording, or crashed mid-ride (usually while trying to load a different route as I recall)

I'm not saying such occurrences were common, but they did happen.

slowbike

I do find it best not to jump in on the first release of pretty much any product - especially electronics. Product testing is rarely exhaustive and it's fairly frequent occurrence for new users to discover "new features".

So, sorry - I let you lot do the testing - then usually buy when it's EOL .... as that's when it's at its most stable!

joe2008

TimothyW wrote:

Yeah, or because the unit crashed while I was doing the reset 1-2-3 - or just never started recording, or crashed mid-ride (usually while trying to load a different route as I recall)

I'm not saying such occurrences were common, but they did happen.

Really, wow I've never had a single issue with my 500 and I've had it 10 years, about 70,000 miles.

I have never used 'routes' though.