Interested in these for when I get out and about during days on the hills, but when I saw it for real was disappointed with the screen size? How is it in actual use – big enough to navige with? Seems to me that if you have a route in it it’s probably fine, showing you the way to go at each place – what’s it like if you’re well off route, or didn’t have a preplanned one in there? Enough screen to decide where to go, or do you need an OS map as well?

You can navigate with it, but not on the move. The screen is so small you have to stop and have a good look round . It is much better with a pre-planned route. FWIW I don’t think any GPS has a big enough screen to use it on the hoof.

I don’t think any GPS has a big enough screen to use it on the hoof.

+1

It’s a great tool for road riding and recording heart, power, cadence and averages. I have plotted a few routes on the Garmin connect site and loaded it on to the 800 and followed the route and for this it’s perfect.

hmmmm. Just seems so much smaller than a smartphone – and one of those, second-hand, with cached maps and no sim card seems a good option. Esp with an external battery too. But the Garmin is neater.

I’ve stuffed my bike into trees, rocks, ditches and all sorts of bushes. Ridden in monsoons, snow, ice and behind flatulent riders. The Garmin has survived the lot and that is why I prefer them beyond smartfones

Another bonus over smart phones is the battery lasts a good 15hrs in use, using apps and gps on phones really kills them. Did the lady bower loop on my iPhone last summer and the battery was down to 2% by the time we finished

=1 garmin Oregon 450 here – bigger screen 🙂

How are you creating routes to follow? I’m still having trouble with my Edge 605 not following routes properly.

Creating them in Tracklogs, select as ‘saved ride’/navigate and many points are ignored and roads not followed. On sections where it works it’s great but it seems a bit random.

Following a ‘course’ is more successful in that the pink line follows the track better but then you don’t get turn instructions (and when i tried that off road it constantly beeped “off course” under trees and accuracy dropped off).

Hi Simon!

Only ever follow courses, routes are a disaster that should be avoided at all costs.

I’m with Dave. I have a 705 that I plot courses for, using bikehike, I then download them to my Mac. Drag and drop to my Garmin when needed and follow. It all seems to work very well, and has done for the last few years.

Being that i am a bloke, a gadget geek, and like shiney new things, I am thinking of selling the 705 and trying an 800. I have no idea why.

I used my edge 800 for navigation for the first time at the weekend on a 32 mile Ladybower / cutgate loop.

Really impressed with the accuracy of the off course beeps etc, makes it a different tool entirely from just a HR/route/speed/distance monitor.

I fell off hard (not the first time) yesterday, cracked 2 ribs, the garmin was 4″ down face first in gritty peat bog. Was perfectly fine. You need a screen cover though as the touch screen gets wrecked.

Hi Simon!

Only ever follow courses, routes are a disaster that should be avoided at all costs

Hi Dave – it’s been a while. I’m not happy with courses. The ‘off course’ message doesn’t give you any useful info on how to get back on it (ie a direction arrow – which you used to get with the old E-Trex along with a useful ‘how far off course’ number). That’s OK on road where it becomes pretty evident pretty quickly but not so great off road.

What I don’t get is that in South Africa I was given a 70km off-road ‘tracklog’ that navigated perfectly as a route. I can’t work out how to replicate it but it does seem that it’s possible for a route to work.