I’m thinking of upgrading from my Edge 200 to a 510 or 810, does anybody have anything good/bad to say about them or would you recommend one over the other?

I find my edge 200 to be a bit lacking in features and also the accuracy isn’t great for really tight/twisty trails. Works great on the road bike but wouldn’t mind some of the more programmable features that you seem to get on the next models up.

I’d appreciate your help before deciding which one to buy, or if you have any other suggestions.

Cheers

I changed my 200 for a 510 with HR and cadence and love it. Running the 3.28 beta software and it works well with courses, giving basic turn by turn nav and the bluetooth sync is great, I don’t need to plug in to the PC to upload. It does live track on segments too but I’ve not tried that yet. Garmin Connect isn’t the greatest but now auto syncs with Strava too.

Only downsides I can think of is size – it’s a good bit bigger, but not massive. Battery life not awesome. There are quite a few reports of bugs/faults on line but mine has been great for 30+ rides now.

DC Rainmaker website has ridiculously in-depth reviews on this sort of thing if you can be bothered to wade through them! http://www.dcrainmaker.com/product-reviews

I have a 200 and an 800. They are both great in their own way but I rarely use the 200 now. A 500/800 will be cheaper than a 510/810 as they are older and lack the mobile-phone connectivity (which may or may not be important to you).

The 500 is basically like the 200 but more accurate with more features/more customisable. The 510 lost the plot in a way as the unit is physically bigger (like the 800/810) but without the mapping (which is what makes the 800/810 really good).

If money is not a problem I would say get the 810 otherwise the 500 would be a great buy. Plenty of deals around on the older kit plus last year Amazon & Garmin themselves had big discounts on the whole range in the run-up to Christmas so might be worth holding on a while in case they do that again.

I went with the 510 and big seller for me was Glonass support, i.e. it uses Russian satellites on top of the US GPS. The 810 doesn’t have this. The 810 however does have maps.

The Glonass bit is sold as being faster to get an initial fix, and being more accurate in trees etc.

The 510 has been full of bugs and I’ve had a number of rides either lost entirely or the positional data is trashed for various reasons. Since 3.20 firmware this might have be fixed though.

The fast fix isn’t so great. While the initial fix is quick, it hasn’t got a fix on all the satellites yet and I’ve had a few instances where chunks of the ride are offset by a fair distance. Profile is right, but the position is out, and Strava won’t match to segments then.

Bluetooth has been a pain, and I’ve heard the same from 810 users also. It can just take forever to pair with the phone. That said the last couple of times I tried it did pair within 5 minutes.

It’s also been reported ride data gets trashed if you try to follow a route with it, and likewise with live tracking, though I’ve not tried either and don’t know if these issues have been fixed.

Frankly, with the hassles, I should have got a 500 at a fraction of the price, or even an 800 for similar price, though I’m not fussed with the maps. Still, it’s basically working okay for me now except the odd positional offset on some rides, so I’m sticking with it.

I’ve been using an 810 for a while and had no problems. Auto sync generally works fine (I think the times it didn’t work was because I left the phone at home and it didn’t have time to pair up after I got back). Not tried the course following, should give that a go. It is a big thing to have fastened to the bars – I’m happy with it on the road bike but I’m sure I’d break it on the mtb. It does find satellites quickly after I turn it on. Much quicker than my other (runner’s watch) garmin.

I have 200/500/810. If you ride multiple bikes with multiple sensors, the interface on the 810 is excellent. I make light use of the navigation and find it useful – used it for a route in Belgium to good effect. But use of addresses never seems to work well. Navigate to a town is fine, though. Curiously, the bike and ride profiles never seems to upload to Strava or Garmin Connect – no idea why not.

The form factor of the 200/500 is, however, perfect and a 510 the same size as the 500, or a 810 the size of the 510 would be of more interest to me.

I still like the 200 for off-road rides. I like the courses feature and think the 810 is a brick by comparison. And I do not use Bluetooth on the 810 as I run Blackberry.

I’ve not had any serious problems (other than user error) with the 510 but have had a few niggles. I updated the firmware, not sure of the version, about four months ago. Prior to that it wouldn’t load courses but the update fixed that. Not lost any route data when following courses (which are much better for on-road courses than off-road). Not really tried live tracking so can’t comment on that. I’ve found that the unit needs to be left in one position for five minutes or so after switching it on and before starting a ride but this isn’t too hard to arrange.

My unit consistently gets the total altitude gain wrong: on a ride with mates our distances will be within a Kilometre or so on a ride of 150 Km but my altitude figure will be 30-40% different. Running it through Strava’s correction code sorts it out though.

Had a 500 and now have a 510. Much prefer this and had no issues at all. The bigger screen makes it a lot easier to see when riding. Always connects to my phone quickly. Battery life easily lasts for a 12 solo race.

On sensors, mine came with the GSC-10 which is a combined speed/cadence, but for MTB cadence is of zero interest to me, and the speed sensor is an arm that can easily be knocked into the spokes.

I’m looking at the magnetless sensors now, which are separate for speed & cadence, but the speed just wraps around the hub. That said I could just use GPS for speed. It’s less accurate, but then I’m really only interested in how long a segment or the ride took, not what actual speed I was going at a particular point.

Also have the HR monitor, but have had an issue where someone else on the ride picked up my HR 😆 . I don’t seem to pick up anyone else’s though the 510 may pair up with the specific monitor I think as long as you do that up front in the menus rather than let it find anything nearby. Though really, only thing of interest from the HR graph is that I’m still alive 😀

First time GPS user here, well I say first time what I mean is I’ve had an 810 for 6 months now and I’m kicking myself for not getting one sooner.
It’s changed the way/what/where I ride for the good, use it for both road and CX’er in 2 profiles I’ve set up. It’s been a god send for all sorts of reasons.
Training: I’ve got a cadence sensor on the roadie, I use a HR belt too. This has enabled me to not only come up with my own training plan and log it, but also I use courses from GConnect and a couple,of other GPS sites. This has lead to me riding much different areas, courses, courses I’ve tried to beat. I’ve done all Raphas GPS rides now and they’ve taken me to some bloody nice places.
On the CX’er I just use the HR and again I’ve used a lot of courses from other folks, again this has taken me to some excellent places, be it long distance or just short course stuff. For instance I loaded a course off Connect that was titled “Grassington Mines” clearly someone did the route, uploaded it to Connect and I simply loaded it to my 810 and on Monday rode it, bloody great! I’d never have known about the course nor where it would take me and that’s the beauty of the 810.. Load a course, ride it 😀

Connect has been a bit of a pain to use, but it’s been stable for over 3 months on my Mac and loads/downloads course easily. I use Bluetooth on my iPhone and transfer files to/from that way too.

The units easy to use, there are a couple of fiddly bits you’ll get used to but once you do it’s easy peasy.

Only one small gripe, not sure if it’s been shared but I have on occasion I’ve lost the course on the unit only for it to reappear later in the ride and I put that down to GPS signal rather than a fault.
Another small thing, multiple day rides are a bit of a pain. Just going back to one of Raphas courses, 3 days of Yorkshire, the GPS files in 3 sections, day one, two, three.. Well I could only load day one and two, no amount of loading/reloading would get the third file on the 810. I’ve no idea why, possibly it’s a big file I don’t know, so I had to trace the course out and do my own on Connect then load that onto the unit, which went well and I rode it perfectly. I had to take a USB lead with me so I could charge the unit up as 6 hrs in the saddle per day would have killed the battery. Didn’t want to take more than I needed, so that was a bit of a pain but to be expected.
Also, I did the Lakeland Monster X and the organisers sent acces to the GPS files, bloody perfect idea and a very welcome when hacking the mountains over 65 unknown miles !!

Some tips I’ve got.. Load courses via Connect, create courses via Connect ive had the best results by doing this, I have taken files and loaded them into “new files” via USB with no problems but it’s a bit of a pain that you can’t load others none Garmin GPS track into Connect for modification ( Garmin won’t allow it and the turn by turn won’t work as it’s not an activity, rather it’s not been recorded on a Garmin device ) also if you don’t need the screen to be so bright turn it down to save battery life.

There are many sections in the device that allow customisation of the screens in profiles that you really need to look into this, I have favorite screens depending on the profile(s) I use.

Allo in all I think the 810 is an excellent piece of kit and it’s transformed my riding in many ways.

HTH

@bikebouy

There are sites like bikeroutetoaster.com that will convert the GPX files in to TCX files which contain the turn by turn instructions and will be accepted by the unit and Garmin connect.

Really? That’s great, thanks.. I’ll check it out. It’s been a pain TBH, some great rides out there but often I’d like to start/stop somewhere else or divertion and you can’t do that (as I’ve said)

Another thing..

Garmin Forums been a wealth of knowledge and of great help..

Cheers for the link above dunmail.

510 owner here, upgraded from 500 and find it more accurate (picks up more segments in trees)blue tooth connectivity works great as does the livetrack as I use it for solo night road rides, touchscreen and setting up diff bikes is also very easy and user friendly.

I use an 800 and its been fine and stable. I create routes on things like bikehike.co.uk or Ridewithgps.

The screen on the 800 is ok but it’s best I find with the open street map maps that a chap on here made rather than ordnance survey maps.

I have a 200 as well and find that holds signal better in the trees etc but whilst you can follow routes on it the 800 is better

OK, so perhaps a little OT, but when has that ever stopped us on here?

I splurged on a 1000 a month or so ago, as I’d wanted something that I could use as a navigation device, more than for performance tracking etc. A few reasons I went for the 1000
Screen – It’s biggerer and seems better in terms of viewing than the 8s. Also, I’ve yet to find conditions where the touch screen doesn’t work with gloves
Speed – From what I gather, it’s far quicker at picking up satellites, and to date, I’ve never dropped a signal or had to wait for it from the moment I step out of the door to ride.
Price – I got a rather nice deal! 8)

Downsides?
Garmin’s servers fall over a bit too often, so make sure you don’t delete a ride until you’re sure it’s saved.
Battery life – It’s bigger, faster, brighter etc, so I think the battery life may be lower. That said, after a three hour ride the other day it was only down to about 70%, so that seems positive.
Price – It’s not cheap. 🙁
Profile set ups – I’d love to see a way to set up the profiles online, rather than on the device. It’s just a little fiddly. I’ve only got two bikes set up on it so far, Diverge and Enduro, and I wanted very different screen profiles for each. Just needs a way to do it online, I reckon.

Re mapping and planning, I’d agree that the “Stick to roads” option is ace, but I use mine for planning grrravel routes. As such, I use a mix of OS mapping and Google Earth aerial imagery to pick and choose my routes between road sections.

Been a bit busy so not had chance to reply before now but wanted to say thanks for the feedback. Think I’ll go with the 510 for now as accuracy in trees/tight trails is of more benefit than the mapping, which seems to be the main difference between the 510 and 810.

I’d be tempted to go for the 1000 but it’s bloody huge.

Expect to see a second hand Edge 200 going cheap in the classifieds very soon.

Thanks again 😀

I hope you’re happy with the choice, what I was getting at is ‘buyer beware’ as they seem hit and miss – I’ve had none of the issues above despite courses, live track, bluetooth etc being on – fast fix, accurate lock and quick connection to the phone. There seem to be lots of variables and those findings above not uncommon – so just buy from a reputable seller with good returns policy.

Care to share where you got the 1000 from CFH…I’m in the market to replace my 800

I’d be tempted to go for the 1000 but it’s bloody huge.

Big, but a good shape, IMO. Narrow(ish) and sits really nicely in front of the stem on drops, or on the top tube on the MTB.

DT78, mine came from my lovely LBS, Stonehenge Cycles, as a part of an overall deal when I bought my last bike. 🙂