Does anyone know if the Garmin Edge 200 will show current altitude? I know it hasn’t got a barimetric altimeter but GPS height is fine.

mine does.

it does? Thought it could only show how much climbing you’ve done?

No, think the bottom field can be switched between altitude, total climb and ….????…

It’s a great value bit of kit, just a bit of a shame you know it’s capable of so much more but artificially limited. For example, the time would be nice.

[edit] I’m wrong – average speed, total ascent and calories burned at the bottom. Really could have done with something more useful than the calorie estimate

So no altitude until I get home and plug it in? Bums.

I take it that you’ve bought it already?

I’d not be using GPS for altitude measurement, at least not as a navigation aid. Altitude accuracy is around 1.5x worse than horizontal accuracy, so you’ll be luck to get much better accuracy than 25m even with a clear view of the sky. And of course, 25m vertically is rather different to 25m laterally.

If you want accurate climb data from your GPX files, upload them to bikehike.co.uk or GPSVisualizer.com, either of which will resample the altitude data using a publicly available digital elevation model.

No, I’ve not bought one already but thought it was a good fit.

I don’t really need super-accurate height data on the trail, just to know where I am on a climb (was handy in the alps last week).

Might have a look at Bryton or MotoActv instead – any other recommendations for simple bar mounted gps computers?

Well before you buy, look here:

Edge_v_Forerunner by mark_penman, on Flickr

Left is a Forerunner track, right is the Edge – both taken at the same time.

That’s my 2nd Edge as I returned the first. Waiting to hear back from Garmin again as the performance is shit imo

Anyone got anything good/bad to say about the Bryton 35 GPS as an alternative?

I use GPS extensively whilst sailing, it rarely shows 0 for altitude which is quite amusing when you are on the sea (and yes I know the height of tide will make a difference but we are speaking of measurements like +/- 100m).