As a ‘get well’ gift, my wife wants to buy me a GPS. She sees how much biking levels my moods and she’s determined a GPS will do better than drugs ‘cos I’ll ride more (if that’s even possible).
As she’s just spent £2k on a road bike for me, I’d really like to keep it as cheap as possible for her so….what GPS?
I’m not bothered about heart rate, training zones etc. As simple as possible would be great. A sat. nav. for a bike. On and maybe off road although I’m not that fussed about off road.
Something that I can easily download routes from the internet and follow the directions while I’m riding.
Thank you.

Sat Nav for a road bike. Garmin 450 with 1:50 works. Shows direction like arrows etc at turnings on road. Robust enough for off road to. Garmin 800 same but not so robust IMHO.

http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/category/accessories/gadgets/cycle-computers/product/review-bryton-rider-50-11-44495

Bryton 50, doesn’t do off road mapping as well as something that used OS mapping, but would do road rides perfectly well.

I actualy find the bike computer and data gathering side of my edge305 really usefull so I’m thinking of an edge800 with mapping for £300 (use the NUS codes for 10% off the £330) to save the constant map checking when following other peoples routes.

happy with a basic Garmin eTrex here monksie.
Started with the Version 1 eTrex (yellow, serial cable) – second hand. £30 or so a couple years ago. It’s kind of given up the ghost so eTrex Vista C (colour – great!) for I think £65, again second hand, been great, grab a bike mount and you’re away – not easy to do the OS mapper stuff but good enough for following routes and tracking where you’ve been.

Great for giving it a go until you see how much it is of benefit – in my case, quite a lot !!

Garmin Edge 200 for £100 of CRC. Type SALE into the voucher bit and get £15 off.

If I was mainly concerned about following routes rather than all the fitness data I’d get a Dakota with a bike mount.

I just got an eTrex 20, with the main purpose of navigating and recording routes. It’s very similar to the Dakota 20, minus the touch screen and barometric altimiter.

Cost me a little over £140. Another tenner for a handlebar mount. Uploaded maps from Open Street Map (not as good as Ordnance Survey, but hey, free). Provides me with pretty much everything I need.

Thank you. Lots of models to have a think about.

I have an Etrex Vista HCx for sale. PM if you are interested. You will need to add a bike mount though.

Hth
Marko

iPhone plus app?

Any suggestions for an offroad GPS without breaking the bank? It’s more for planning routes than recording so I was thinking of an eTrex 30 but I haven’t used one before so I’m unsure how I could load the routes I want to follow.

Does anyone have an idiots guide to using a GPS offroad?

Really pleased with my Etrex 20 – cost £124 from Go Outdoors – get them to price match Handtec and they then knock another 10% off.

for plotting a route on a PC or downloading one from the net, then loading onto a GPS unit to follow – the eTrex is absolutely fine.

u can ‘obtain’ slightly better mapping from the interweb for it and while no where near as good as OS, does the job. To be honest, if u are following a re planned route, you don’t need any mapping at all.

I’ve got a Memorymap 2800. It’s a great moving map display but despite that I can’t recommend buying one (they’re around £200) as they have a fixed battery that lasts around 3.5 hours and the operating system, based on MS Windows, is a bit fragile. I won mine though so at least I didn’t pay for it.

I use an Edge 800 but mostly for keeping track of how much I’ve been riding and where.

Got a Memory Map 2800 also. Get 8 hours out of the battery regularly. I’ve also charged it overnight using a battery pack with a mini USB plug when camping.

Sounds like either you’ve got a dud or the power settings are on full – turning the backlight to 30 secs saves a huge amount of power. Don’t need the backlight at night!