Hi all – I know the Garmin Edge 500 is great for training and the 800 is great for navigation, but how good is the 500 for providing turn by turn unformation from a pre-loaded route. Basically I just want to be able to load a route onto it and follow it and not worry about looking at a map. Will the 500 provide information on trail splits, directions etc? Is the an arrow or audible warning system?
Basically I think the 800 is a bit OTT for what I need I just want something to nudge me the right way when out on the trails.

Garmin site is a little vague on what the 500 offers on this front

Thanks in advance

It’ll give you a line to follow, once used to it, it’s not too bad.
You won’t see things like trail splits though, you’ll just notice that you’re veering off the line and need to bring it back.

As already said it gives you a breadcrumb to follow, you can add “track points” for junctions and turns if you save your route as a tcs file. The device will then give you a countdown in time/distance to track point and the action to tack (Left, right, straight on) it also gives you an visual and audio cue when you get to that point.

The 500 also gives you a audio and visual warning when you go off route.

One thing to note, track points can not be added through the Garmin Connect software available online, You can add them easily via bikeroute toaster for road rides, but I’ve not found a good solution for offroad rides…although to be honest I haven’t looked that hard.

Not sure I’d want to navigate a route off-road with the 500, on-road it’s OK but can still get confusing at some junctions, I imagine off-road it could be a real PITA

510 and 810 on the way soon…

As FW. I’ve used it a lot on the road, works fine, can be a little bit tricky if you have junctions/turns on top of each other (can be solved by changing the scale).

Off road, I probably wouldn’t bother, there’s a lot more scope to go wrong as it’s not detailed enough.

Probably handy as a quick reference assuming you already have a decent idea of where you should be heading.

Breadcrumb thing sounds ok but in practice how difficult would it be to follow if you we’re really somewhere completely unfamiliar I wonder?
I did look at both 510 & 810 but 510 doesn’t seem to offer much that the 500doesnt in this regard.

Also the price of the 500 now means I might just be able to afford one but don’t want to splash the cash if it is useless in trail directions.

Use mine for navigation on the road all the time. It’s fine. Can be a little confusing for some complicated junctions – but you’ll get where you’re going.

I’ve a 705 with maps too, but pretty much always use the 500 on road.
Not sure I’d want to use it off road, but I can’t imagine it would be all that bad.

I use mine off road quite a lot. It’s quite good for it and works well, but as other have said sometimes you veer off and have to turn back.

The only limitations are it isn’t really detailed enough to direct you to hidden singletrack etc, and if you veer off course a lot it’s sometime quite hard to re-find your route

I was looking at a 500 today and wondering the exactly same thing as the OP. I currently have a subscription to getamap and so do all my planning online then print an A4 OS map/s with the route marked.

I would guess it would be fair to say that I would still do this and take the map but at any of the points that are a bit more confusing on the 500 you pull the map out your pocket and double check?
Can’t be worse than always having to get the map out and check at every trail junction.

Breadcrumb mode is great and doesn’t take much getting used to.

Navigated from Blackpool to Paris using a Garmin 200.