Garmin Edge Touring – reviews

Just a quick one to see if anyone has used one and their thoughts really. I want some thing to plot routes and get directions rather than for fitness and I guess the navigation is the main thing I am concerned with. It’ll mainly be used in the road if that makes any difference.
Thanks all.

Just to check, you’re asking about these as they are on Amazon’s Black Friday Lightening deal thingy today, right?

Jamie, correct. I’ve been eying one for a while and at that price it seems silly not to look in more detail.

I’m interested too, but i vaguely recall something about not being able to download maps to it? (like the openmtbmaps ones which i find quite useful)

My 500 is packing up. Will it do all the sports Strava science power Ftp heart rate stuff?

Ah no harm. I’m our

Its got no ANT+, so no Heart Rate/Cadence etc.

I’ve had one since February now,in a nutshell its OK but far from perfect.
From a computer side of things,its great,ie it tracks your ride and speeds etc and allows you to upload easily enough.
I’ve had a little play about with the GPS side of things and found it a bit fiddly if I’m honest, though that was playing with it on a ride without reading up on how to use it,so perhaps that’s a bit unfair to say.
I use mine primarily for plotting a route at home and downloading to the edge for following, this is where it ain’t perfect. Its easy to plot and load onto the edge using various sites( I use ridewithgps and garmins own site),but it doesn’t always direct you as it should. When it works correctly it bleeps when approaching a turn and gives you a count down in time and distance to the turn,while also highlighting the junction and turn coming up. However,it frequently just doesn’t do it, so you go sailing past a junction only to be told that you are then off course,so you have to turn back. Its never failed to tell me I’m off course,so I’ve never really got lost,but it can be a bit off a pain. I’ve taken to flicking to the map screen now when a junction is coming up so I can visually check beforehand.
It used to drive me crazy to start with but now I’ve accepted its limitations it doesn’t bother me. There are a few thread around the web if you have a look.
A neat feature is the random ride thing,where you enter your preffered mileage and it gives you three routes to choose from,though I haven’t really used this enough to comment further.
If a mate asked if I’d recommend it,I’m afraid I really would be sat on the fence.

Bugger…..ordered one from Wiggle the other day at £148! Oh we’ll never mind…I’ve ordered the Landranger maps for the UK too to go with it, I’m only using it for directions as a back up to my pigeon sense 😆

I’ve had one since they came out to replace my old Edge 605. It’s a lot more modern and a lot better value for money (cheaper with maps included and no hassle to set up), and has nice features like suggesting a circular route for the distance that you choose.
However I’ve found it useless for navigation. If you go even slightly off course, which you do if you’re watching the trail instead of the screen, the display goes completely blank while it recalculates so you have to stop and wait minutes for it to come back on, or carry on going further off course with no map visible – riding in a group, it’s always the latter. Eventually all the re-calculating runs the battery out prematurely and you end up not even recording the whole ride (admittedly an all-day ride).
Personally I’ve been so frustrated with it, I have stopped using it to navigate and just keep the map option for emergencies.

I would review mine same as Houndlegs.

I’ve upgrade mine to OS maps which is miles better than the base maps that came with it but I just create / download a route on Garmin Connect and follow it.

I find the round route option rubbish and, no matter what I’ve tried, differentiating between MTB and Road bike is impossible for it and it just sends you the same way.

The Postcode search is OK but I tried it set to Off Road ( mtb ) going from Bolton to Manchester and it took me via Rivington which is completely the wrong direction.

Mine also crashed and switch itself off two thirds of the way through a 60 mile ride which I was following a route on which was annoying as I lost all data but I’ve since updated online and it’s been fine since.

I’ve never tried another GPS so, like Houndlegs, I’m sitting on the fence regarding recommendations.

Have a read through some of these,it will give you some ideas of problems and solutions
https://forums.garmin.com/forumdisplay.php?448-Edge-Touring

Similar experience. Bought to replace a Garmin Dakota, to navigate .gpx routes created in memory map. Using OS 1:50,000 maps

On the Dakota I see the Map, the route line and a little arrow showing where I am. This is all I need and perfect. I can do the rest.

On the edge touring it attempts to re-navigate me according to its own random logic, it then insists on recalculating the route. All I want is the map, the little purple route line and the triangle showing me where I am FFS! 🙄

Need to spend more time working out whats going wrong 😥

I was thinking about one on the black Friday deal but the Amazon reviews convinced me not to ! I have a 500 already so the benefit of this would be the mapping which seems its weakest point.

After I wiped the original garmin maps and replaced them with a fresh osm install mines been almost perfect. No more bugs and crashes it just works

Rob is that OSM from a memory card?

Andy,you can turn off the recalculate route in settings,I’d forgotten about that,I nearly slung it over a hedge a few times in the beginning.
Rob,was that the osm install from on here? I found just as many problems using that as the original garmin maps.

Andy it was downloaded from the net then put on a memory card, Talkytoaster does free os style maps. A search for routable garmin osm will give you lots of options

houndlegs I used the one off here for awhile it worked fine but I have deleted the garmin base map from my card which I suspect was causing me issues

Rob,I used a separate card for the osm maps off here,so no garmin maps on there. Just about sums my luck up with technology 😀

Hmm. Ordered one of these and already wondering if I’ll regret it.

Never managed to follow a route on my 605 and currently have an Etrex 30 with Landranger and an edge 200. I’m hoping the touring will replace both but it sounds like simply following a track on a map without it trying to reroute is going to be too much to ask.

Simons,getting it to work without rerouting is no problem, its the other issues IF you get them thats a pain,hopefully you won’t,not everyone seem s to get them.

I have one on the way.

I figure that it’s been long enough for lots of issues to be fixed (Garmin seem to concentrate on the hardware before launch, then figure out software in the months after), the maps are easily changed, and all I really want is to follow a line as with my Edge 200, so if I can do that but with a map underneath to work out the tricker junctions I’ll be happy.

Simons,getting it to work without rerouting is no problem

Really? I’ve got it packed up with a returns label on it ready to go back to Amazon based on Bez (Stewart Pratt)’s comments on this thread

I want to plot routes using my Tracklogs software and follow other peoples GPX’s. It doesn’t seem too much to ask.

I thought you just turned off the rerouting thing in the unit.

As velosam says,that’s what I meant,you can just turn off the rerouting in the settings.

Simon you can plot routes and use gpx files,most of that ctc thread is not my experience of the touring

There are a couple of sites on how to use these things, here are the links

Dummies Guide to the Garmin Edge 800

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/05/download-garmin-705800810.html

Garmin Edge 800

FWIW I turned off rerouting and it still loused up my routes. AFAICR (was a while ago now) if I exported TCX from RideWithGPS it seemed generally ok.

The 800 at least allows you to show the GPX so you know when it’s diverted from it, though it still does it. (The track display also means you can plan optional diversions in advance and follow them without having to stop navigating the overall route, which can be handy; the Touring won’t show anything other than the route it’s calculated as its best-fit the one you fed it.) Had some fun on one ride where we were mixing proprietary Garmin maps on one 800 with OSM on a Touring and another 800; all were following the same route exported from RideWithGPS, but we had a few bits where they all disagreed about where to go.

The 800 has lots of other wins over the Touring as well, like being able to declutter the map quite a lot. Does seem to very frequently tell me I’m off-course when I’m not, though. I remain of my decade-old view that Garmin’s strategy is, quite inexplicably, to make nice hardware and then get the firmware guys to balls it up.

YMMV 😉