Not sure if this is OT or not to be honest, but will ask here anyway.

As I understand it, the 705 comes with basemaps that people seem to generally suggest are pants. However if one was to get this bundle (with UK & Ireland road maps) does anyone have any indication of how improved the mapping would be? Would there be any off road mapping on the basemaps or do you need something else? (Topo??) Really confused and going round in circles with my internet researching 😯

The maps will still be pants. I gave up on the Garmin maps and just use the openmtb maps. Much better and free. Also can edit the maps to add detail once you figure out how to use JOSM.

Ditto.

JSOM?

Also, there's a purple line on my screen from ny current location going off the screen, presumably heading somewhere. Without trying to find my manual; what's that supposed to tell me?

Oi! Get your own thread! 😉

How do the openmtb maps work then? How do they compare to OS maps? Do they show bridleways and other "off road features"? Would be interested to hear your thoughts, cheers.

i gave up on trying to get the free mapping stuff to work, it's enough faff trying to get the unit working let alone faffing with conversion programs and tile builders and other such nonsense

I use City Navigator europe for the road and if i want more detail off road i'll carry an OS map or print out from tracklogs

ditto the openmtbmaps, they are great. Its user generated though, so download mapsource and try them out first as they might not be great where you intend to use them (though you can improve them).
http://openmtbmap.org/download/#map-downloads-by-www-domainbox-de

Topo is terrible, the only thing accurate about them is the contour lines, and you can get them free anyway.

The road mapping works well though, but is only useful on the roads, obviously.

Go to frank to frank kinlans site for the lowdown on the edge

Also on the purple line have you tried

Menu
Where to
Stop navigation

Also I plot on mmi don't see what use too much mapping is on a two inch screen the base maps will have enough info to get you home

openmtbmaps?

download, extract to a folder somewhere, run the batch file to register it with mapsource, then use it like any other garmin map.

the specific link is this:
http://openmtbmap.x-nation.de/maps/mtbgreat_britain.7z.zip

Thanks all, very interesting – now all I need to do is save the pennies and get an actual 705 I guess 😉

FWIW I found the road map bundle acceptable, I navigated 350 odd miles across Scotland without referring to a map last year.

Cheers for that, every little helps.

A little research suggests that Handtec are the cheapest, anyone had any experience of them? They're out of stock right now but presume they do get stock in.

Also, any ideas if the 705 is likely to be discontinued or superceded any time? The 605 seems to have been discontinued (or out of favour) on the Garmin site. If either are being discontinued I presume prices could fall?

I got the 705 in a package with UK maps (not the road). TBH they are pretty pants but I'm not using it for any serious navigation so it doesn't really matter.

IMO the 705 is a training tool with additional GPS facilities as opposed to a GPS with HRM etc.

The Topo maps are pretty dire (mine came with them as part of a bundle), they're OK for route following but no where near as clear as OS maps for actually navigating on the fly. The City Navigator maps are worth paying for if you do road riding to, much less cluttered than the Topo maps.

OK – so I got impatient and bought a 705 and have now installed opensource maps from here http://talkytoaster.info/ukmaps.htm. They seem pretty good for free, am I missing any tricks here? Anything better out there?

Also, I thought I was going to have to buy a MicroSD card to "install" (ie. copy over) the map to but noticed that the onboard flash memory was plenty. Presume there's no problem there?

Lastly, is it possible to save more than one of these maps to the device? The file has to be called gmapsupp.img so presume you can only have one of those in the "Garmin" folder?

Thanks for help on this, pretty pleased with it up to now!

I've got most of Garmin City Navigator Europe 2009 (road mapping) and all of Topo GB on a 8gb microSD card (yes a microSD larger than 2GB will work if you're using firmware 2.9 or later). Although the maps are transfered to the card at the same time I still get the option on the 705 to select one or the other.

You can try the Garmin mapping, on the Garmin website, to check out the level of detail.
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=1359&pvID=2646#coverageTab

Cheers, however for now I am concentrating on the free options…

recently brought one of these and am very impressed.didnt bother with the maps as i also downloaded of talkytoaster
absolutely cracking bit of kit
one question though
if i am out on a ride say from home and i want to record a time for a certain section is there a way of doing this rather than saving the two rides seperately please??

if i am out on a ride say from home and i want to record a time for a certain section is there a way of doing this rather than saving the two rides seperately please??

Just press the lap button to start a new lap and then lap again at the end of the section. You will be able to review the stats for that specific lap in Connect or Training Centre afterwards.

Just playing around with the 705 and found (wasn't hard) open source maps for France here however when I overlay a few GPS traces for Morzine from last year there's no offroad tracks on the mapping. Anyone know if there's any French open source maps about that have offroad detail on them?