Hi all,
I’m starting to wonder about investing in a dedicated bike gps, longer rides on the road bike are leaving me twitchy about battery life on the phone…

I’ve been watching reviews of the edge 510, which appears to do everything required including the stalker feature (useful for worried SWMBO) which should be a lot easier on the phone battery than doing the GPS and data together.

One massive lump however is the price.
Are these things worth the ~£200 price tag, or are they approaching mobile phone territory and will be obsolete in a year?

Whilst I’ve seen chinese knock-offs of dash cams, go-pros and pretty much every other bit of consumer tech, so far I’ve been unable to find any Garmings or TongTongs available – does anyone know of any?

Got the 810 when it came out still as good today, does what I need and loads more. Waterproof and the battery lasts ages. I’m a bit lost without it really.

Unless you want mapping, have a look at the edge 20 and 25. The 20 is suitably small and already online for less than a hundred.

I’ve got an Edge 800 which I upgraded to from an Edge 500. If it broke, I’d buy whatever the equivalent was which I suppose is the 520 now it has mapping, albeit limited by space on the device.

I don’t use mapping regularly but it’s been very useful in places where I’ve had no phone signal.

Are these things worth the ~£200 price tag

only you can make that call really. If you’re going to be doing longer and longer rides using different routes and roads each and every time, then I can see the worth of getting something that is pretty much guaranteed to get you around like a SatNav does for cars. Personally I only use roadie when the trails are just too disgusting, and for set routes only, so I really don’t need that function. The recording of routes for analysis can be done via a smartphone and an app like Strava so you no longer require the complex Garmins to do that for you. Or dolike I do and use a Garmin FR210 which serves both running and cycling duties pretty well cheaply (~£130) and conveniently

As above, unless you want mapping, look at the 20, 25 or older Edge models.

The more top end models are very phone-like and to some degree do more than what a lot of people want.

I have an Edge 500 and had an Edge 305 (before I dropped it and it stopped working). The 500 has an amazingly good battery life, especially if i’m not following a breadcrumb trail (around 24 hr territory).

If you want something with maps, heart rate sensor etc then look at the more expensive models.

I think they’re definitely worth having.

Totally worth it to me, but then I ride by myself a lot and like trying new routes without getting lost. I click away on a map where I want to go (or steal someone else’s route), it goes on the Garmin, it tells me exactly when to turn (with road names) and if I need to cut short it’ll get me home quicker.

If navigation and ride logging are what you want, then the Edge Touring can be had for <£150, great battery life, same size/mounts as the 800/810 and the free/included OpenStreetMap mapping works very well.

If it’s a training tool and you still want maps then the Edge Touring Plus isn’t a lot more and does heartrate but nothing else. Need more than that and you’re in 810 territory which will pair with HRM, cadence, speed, power meters, etc.

Wife bought me an 810 as a gift when I thought I’d lost my Edge Touring. FWIW I’ve not had much joy with the live tracking, the bluetooth pairing can be hit and miss and will sometimes just stop. Phone apps work fine for that though, without the screen on they use very little battery.

I’ve always used Viewranger on my phone for mapping and GPS tracking. Since I upgraded my phone, my old one has become a dedicated GPS (factory-reset, then Viewranger installed). Battery lasts for about 10-12 hours recording GPS and using the screen for maps, and I’ve got a spare battery for multi-day trips. I carry another phone for emergency use, either my new smartphone or my £10 Nokia dumbphone (what used to be called a “phone”) with 35-day battery life.

I can’t see what the dedicated GPS units do that this doesn’t. Maybe a bit smaller, lighter, more accurate – none of these things bother me. I’ve got it in a waterproof pouch I picked up for a couple of quid – the touchscreen works fine through it.

Really depends what you want to do with it.

If you want navigation/routing/mapping then a Garmin is the way to go. If it’s just logging where you’ve been and a display of distance/speed etc. I’d stick with the phone, get an external battery and put a RFLKT on your bars to display the data.

I like mine a lot and will buy another if/when it dies. Mapping is really good for me, I’ve found a whole heap of new routes that I wouldn’t have done without it and that alone is worth the money for me.

If I know the route I just use it as a posh bike computer which it also does very well.

Edit, oh and mine is just a very cheap 200 from Aldi so nothing special or expensive.

I have a 200/500 and 810. If you really aren’t interested in cadence, heart rate or mapping, then the 200 is excellent. Upload to strava and compare routes with your friends. If you want more serious data (for training *shudder*) then the 500 was the perfect tool for the job#. The 810 does mapping, but I’ve found the most useful feature is the ability to display BIG NUMBERS on its customisable screens.

And finally Garmin Express has started working after numerous issues.

#So good that the new 520 is basically a slicker update rather than the 510 that stepped up to 800 territory.

Garmin Edge touring here – think I paid £140ish for it from one of the German sites earlier this year.

I generally just use it as a posh bike computer, but like the mapping etc, to check where I am, etc.
I’ve not really used it for navigation yet.
My only complaint is it doesn’t have barometric altitude measurement, and the ‘total height’ figures are miles out. This corrects itself when you download into either Garmin connect or Strava though.

I ride mostly on my own, so want to preserve mobile battery life as I might need it in an emergency..

FWIW I’ve not had much joy with the live tracking, the bluetooth pairing can be hit and miss and will sometimes just stop.

This, sadly. The reason why I got a 810 was for LiveTrack but it just doesn’t work for me unfortunately*. Otherwise the 810 is great! I use Glympse for Mrs M to check up on me when out on my own which sort of defeats the object…

*I have recently read that you can avoid the thing keeling over when it loses signal by switching off wifi before starting it off so that it picks up 3G/whatever from the off. Supposedly when you head off from your home and lose wifi it falls over switching to mobile data. Have yet to verify this but am optimistic (not for the first time!)

Using an Edge transforms nav on multi day tours. There’s no more stopping at junctions and peering at the map. It’s so much more straightforward.

That said, you have to preplan your routes and woe betide anyone that wants to deviate using the Garmin to plan the variation.

Preplan routes using TCX (Track) files and follow diligently. Anything else, beware. Here lies frustration.

800 user here now still going strong since 2010 best investment I made for exploring trails and more wilderness with OS maps. Great for plotting new routes on road to. If you dont go farther than your local woods then no need. Opened up a whole new world of trails for me and Ive used it all over UK, Europe and Asia

Like anything if you use it then its a sound investment

yes, garmin mapping units aren’t renowned for their ability to let you “freestyle” parts of a route like you may do in the car

I’m stuck in the same boat here. I have decided I’m buying one but really don’t know which one. I’m not interested in heart rate or cadence but I do ride a lot on my own and I’m new to the area so I think mapping could be great. So I don’t know if following a bread crumb on a Garmin 25 would do the job (are they easy to follow) or do I need to jump to an 810 or would a tourer do what I need ? Please help.

Edit: 80% off road

You need the Tourer then. No cadence/HRM and you can use OS mapping if OSM doesn’t suit for off road. I’ve used an old Etrex off road and whilst you can follow a breadcrumb trail on a blank screen, it’s not as straightforward as nav from a map screen.

Do you have to buy the OS maps? Or do they come preloaded ?

Interested in upgrading my edge 20 to something with maps since I bought my cx bike. Going on more long distance stuff keeps getting me a little lost.

Cheers for all the input guys!
Just unboxed an edge 25 and done a quick test ride… Didn’t look at that initially having seen a 200 before and not wanting to have to connect up after every ride, but the 25 connects to the phone via bluetooth so automatically (not yet tested quite how automatic) syncs rides and can do live tracking.

As a general point, a Garmin GPS won’t be ‘obsoleted’ by a new model every 6 months or so that mobile phones are. A £200 GPS will last you many years, so overall cost of ownership can be very low.

I’m still using my Etrex H bought for £100 in 1998 and an Edge 705 bought in 2008…