Specifically the Mio Cyclo™ 505 which seems to offer a bit more for the price than equivalent Garmin units – WiFi sync, ANT+ and UK maps for £285 seems “cheap” (in GPS terms).
I am hesitant about spending nearly £300 on a bike computer but this model does seem decent vfm, just can’t find much online review/feedback on this brand

They have just updated the software which has caused untold problems for some people. The navigation is excellent which I believe is an issue on the Garmin units. I like mine, I got it cheap 2nd hand, but due to the lack of technical support for the software I would be wary about buying one now.

Some good info on http://cyclogps.com/

My 500 made a right hash of recording 4 laps of an xc race in the woods yesterday, are there any ‘real’ alternatives to Garmin, or are more recent Garmins better?

Ah nice link to the GPS forum, thanks 🙂

just to add, would be for road use only.

got a 500 for mrs antigee and ended up using it myself, have considered formally rejecting it – a common reported problem is that it won’t link to pc to upload/download routes – tend to forget about as wifi connect works well but not if in a holiday rental with no wifi
get some odd “system must shut down” error message on a regular basis while riding – can turn off and restart but is frustratingly time consuming
not convinced on the claimed battery life – don’t reckon I’ve got more than 8 hours – sometimes only 6 hours when had a full charge

positives – i got it because comes preloaded with open street map with off road cycle routes and even mtb trails and you enter different profiles road/for CX have to use hybrid 🙁 /mtb and def’ finds some interesting routes away from traffic – also the “find me a route” feature actually works well

to conclude I use it, the basics are frustrating and no way would rely on it not money well spent

Oh, seems like it’s a bit Hmmmmmmmm then 😥

Guess GPS isn’t really sorted yet for bike route finding duties – will stick to memorymap on phone for a while longer and hope someone makes a dedicated unit that actually works sometime soon.

For road use, my Garmin 810 seems to work fine. No problem loading routes onto it and following them with turn by turn navigation. You do need to buy the City Navigator maps on top of the pre loaded base map for turn by turn navigation to work properly though. Not tried it off road.

aha, well seems the G810 can be had for just about £200 w/o the monitors so starting to look the better option

Bought a 505 s/h and its been fine.
Did a couple of sportifs on it and it helped me out.
Battery life was iffy to start with and its been fine now I turned off sensors for cadence and heart rate.
Used it for road and no problem with software etc.?
Thanks,
Max