[Closed] Garmin edge explore - anybody using one?

I have one, it's very good for navigation. I haven't tried Strava or komoot routes but you can send routes from the Garmin connect app over Bluetooth. My rides also upload automatically to Strava.

I’m looking at one too, Is there any difference navigation wise between this and the 830? I don’t need power meters and airtime etc. I just want to find my way around on an off road.

I have one. I find the navigation great, can't compare to any other models, but it works as it should. So long as you mark a Strava route as a favourite it will automatically get added to the garmin once it's synced. Or you can use the clunky built in Strava app thing which works but is a bit slow.

Feels like a bargain so long as you don't need the live segments and power meter support. Battery life is ok, I get about 8 or 9 hours off one charge.

I've got one. Really good, and a huge improvement over the previous Edge Touring.

Reliability seems great, works in the rain, navigation is good and it's much cheaper than the other ones. Fully recommended.

As always for anything cycling/running/tri/outdoor tech head to DC rainmaker and read the review. Ray will answer all your questions (including the ones you didn't know you had!)

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2018/07/garmin-edge-explore-review.html

You can quickly and easily share routes from komoot/strava.

The maps are great, and nav is really easy. Screen is easy to see, the battery lasts ages and it will re-route if you go wrong. I was planning on using mine strictly for the road, but it goes on the MTB now too. There is a trailforks app too, so you can quickly send trailforks routes to it.

In short, its a great device, good maps, feels bomber, great battery and hardware. Just suffers from the garmin UI/software.

@gingerbllr thanks for the recommendation.

Slight hijack here but what’s the difference between the explore and say the 520/530?

From what I can gather the explore is bigger has touchscreen and doesn’t have the ability to link to power meter. But you can put postcodes in it. 530 has no touch screen but has stuff like airtime where you can measure your jumps😂. 520 is shit apparently as it’s really buggy and slow

The measuring jumps thing would be pointless for me that’s for sure 😂

Apparently with the older Garmin the downloads are slow.get a 530.

Can I ask how people are getting on with these?
I know there was a PSA late last year and a few people snapped these up for a good price. I dillydallied around and didn’t take the plunge but I’m still mulling one over.
Battery life keeps cropping up as an issue...
The other concern is can I expect garmin to release a new model soon given this came out in 2018?

I got mine in the sale and it's been great. No problem with battery life but then I don't have time for all day epics. It does exactly what I wanted it to do so I'm very happy with it.

Battery seems a bit hit and miss. Went out last week and the battery was gone after 5 hours or so.  I did deviate from my route a fair bit so I suppose it was recalculating a bit, which no doubt impacts battery.  I've done other 5 hour+ rides and had 40% left.  Very happy with mine though, great bit of kit.

I have one - I really like it.
Only issue I find is that it sometimes freezes up coming out of battery saver mode (when the screen turns off). Sorts itself out after a couple of minutes though

I was an early adopter, had mine about 2 years. Ticks all my boxes as I'm not interested in the performance metrics just navigating and following trails downloaded from Wikiloc. Turn by turn is a bit hit and miss depending on the type of trail you are following. I downloaded mapping from Fietsmap, I live in Spain and the detail is fine. The wireless file transfer works ok, the battery life is not as good as the 1030 or 840 but it's a lot cheaper. For long rides I plug it into a power bank but have found the micro usb port fragile. If it came with the 5 pin connecter as the 540, 840 and 1030, it would be possible to connect to the Garmin propietory power bank but hey ho.

If anyone has one that they don't like/need, my brother is looking to buy one 🙂

Happy with mine. Battery life was hit by a firmware update but seems to have been fixed in the latest release. I have had the problem with the battery saver referred to above so I don't use it. The navigation and maps are very good although it does seem keen on u-turns in response to any slight route deviations.

I use one for local explores.

Useful with annoying quirks.

Definitely worth an upgrade to the TalkyToaster maps:

https://talkytoaster.me.uk/

I tend to plot a route with a bunch of waypoints and have yet to get that to work correctly.

My old Garmin etrex would give me an arrow to follow but this keeps trying to reroute me - particularly if i am following a lesser-used track.

Following a gpx stolen off Strava works fine though - and often I just want to know where I am as I wander across a hillside: it does that well.

I get probably 5-7 hours from my battery but I have the backlight on very low or off. You can still see it fine like this.

Next time I do a mega epic I'll take a spare battery.

Oh, just read this: https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/edgeexplore1030/EN-US/GUID-83CA3524-0C2B-435C-BC4D-5FAC6E378659.html

I hadn't considered disconnecting my phone and the fact that my HRM probably used up battery also.

I wonder if I can 3D print some kind of add on battery pack like you can get for the 1000

I'm getting reasonable battery life, tending to recharge it before it gets to ~30% which normally means 5-6 hours riding... I was worried about battery at first, I'm less concerned now, if I think there's a chance I'll be out for more than 6 hours I'll take a power bank of some sort, I've not had to use that yet.

Navigation wise I'm not really following epic routes, instead I've found the most useful when I follow my nose until I get a bit lost then just drop a pin on a known location and let the device route me there (this is on Gravel/road rides).

Mapping seems pretty good, It seems to have major bridal paths and other forms of trail and you just set a preference for Road/off-road in the settings.

I bought one when they were going cheap last year.

The actual design and firmware is all pretty good and the touchscreen is one of the few that works in the rain or with thick gloves so thats a plus.

The two main issues I have with it are the battery life which is average at best - I tend to get 5-6 hrs at most when using it as intended rather than switching everything off.

The second issue is using it as one person described above - i.e I hoped I could ride out in a strange area for 30-40 miles following country lanes/gravel etc and get myself thoroughly lost. Then set home postcode and have it route me home. It will do this by specially choosing the worst busiest roads it can find. It doesn't even make logical choices like the quickest route back by distance which at least I could understand. I've conducted loads of tests and even when you are faced with junction wher the quickest route home is a B/C road and the A road is a couple of miles longer, it will select the A road no matter what you try and alter in settings. It does my head in. Why can you not select a setting which ignores A roads? Its so bad that its routed me on to such dangerous roads that I never use it any more and have gone back to my 520 which is absolutely fantastic and contrary to what people say is not buggy at all plus the battery life can be measred in days not hours!

Also the Explore doesn't have a temperature read out which annoys me.

Have you got the popularity routing switched on? My old Edge Touring used to do the most ridiculous routing, like sending me 15km out of my way up a 350m mountain instead of a flat road, but the Explore has not done this for me. I tend not to use the feature a lot though.

Popularity routing may affect this positively or negatively depending on what your local riders have been doing and when.

You could also try replacement maps (i.e. TalkeToaster) as I believe the road preference weighting is in the maps or affected by them.

I think the route finding software is the same on all the Garmin Edge units. If so, it's worth pointing out that the software on my Edge 530 is pretty awful. It's fine if I follow a course, but once I go off course (or it thinks I have) it's pretty useless.

It seems obsessed with getting me back to where I left the course. Even once I've found my own way back to the course it will be telling me to make a U-turn for quite a while before it realises that I am actually back on track.

This weekend I had an out and back section where I went a short distance further down the trail than planned and it got totally confused. After a long while trying to re-calculate it gave up all together and stopped giving me turn information even though I was back on the course by then.

@winston - you can get temp if you install an additional data field.  I use one called "temperature "

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/a9c39b4a-55f5-42c3-999f-f4c543654e1a

@woody2000   So the Explore has a temp sensor built in but doesn't have a field for it? That doesn't make any sense..

Sorry Winston, I think I've confused myself with the 130 I also use. That has a temp sensor but garmin don't display the data in firmware (presumably to keep the feature count down) but I can access it using the iq app above. I wouldn't be surprised if the explore was the same though. I'd imagine they all share a lot of hardware and garmin just nobble features in firmware.

Oooh, here's a question how do I get the weather report widget to give me temperature in °C without switch to metric?

I like my distances in miles but I'm under 65 so fahrenheit is just nonsense to me...

Actually I just fixed the issue by installing the AccuWeather app and uninstalling the default Garmin one...

I get probably 5-7 hours from my battery but I have the backlight on very low or off. You can still see it fine like this.

I managed to squeeze a 200km Audax on mine, running the battery completely empty. Probably 8 hours on the road.

I think the route finding software is the same on all the Garmin Edge units. If so, it’s worth pointing out that the software on my Edge 530 is pretty awful. It’s fine if I follow a course, but once I go off course (or it thinks I have) it’s pretty useless.

My old one again was rubbish similarly, also obsessed with cycle paths, however the Edge Explore again is loads better, for me. That said whilst I've tested out the automatic routing a few times and used it occasionally I usually am following a route I've planned on Strava.

You can disable route recalculation, or have it ask you for a permission, which I've done to save on battery. Mostly I just zoom out the map a bit to figure how to get back to the route in a reasonable manner instead of the u-turn.

There are different routing modes in the settings if I remember correctly, road biking, gravel, MTB, which will probably affect road preferences for the router. I haven't tested much, as I tend to prebuild my routes.

Thanks @isoo I'll have a look and see if I can disable it. I tend to load a route (course) and follow it. If I go wrong it's good to have a beep to let me know, but I'd rather just find my own way back to the course using the map. Sometimes I will want to go back to where I left the course and other times I may want to re-join it somewhere else or explore an area then go back to the course. I can't expect it to know which and I'd rather it didn't try.

I tend to load a route (course) and follow it. If I go wrong it’s good to have a beep to let me know, but I’d rather just find my own way back to the course using the map.

Then set route recalculation to 'off' as it will do exactly that. However I do leave it on cos it's pretty good at just routing me back onto the route. Seems weird that yours doesn't.

It's not an Edge Touring is it? The older one?

Interesting, thanks @molgrips. Mine is a fairly new edge 530. It may just be that the tracks I was on weren’t on the map or something. It’s still strange how long it takes to realise that I’ve found the course again. I rode almost half a mile last time with it telling me to do a u turn at the next junction (why not now, I’m not a car) until it realised.

Ah it's a 530? Possible then that the nav software isn't always the same across devices. Who knows what goes on in their software dept.

Yes, possible I guess. I’d assume that they’d use the same routing software across all the edge devices to make their life easier, but who knows?

How much were they when they were doing a deal on them?
Currently using an 810 which if fine but if I get lost I rely on the phone to view a map as it’s brighter/bigger/faster loading.
No interest in segments just like to see a big HR number and record my rides, probably only upload some routes a few times a year from ride with gps but if integration with strava is more refined on newer devices then the explore might be an option.

How much were they when they were doing a deal on them?

They were going for £130 late last year IIRC...

Blimey, looks like I missed out there.

I got one in the black Friday sale for £130. The first one had an issue in that the battery indicator was all over the place - it would drop about 25% per hour when riding but when it reached 0% it would continue to work for hours.

I got it replaced by Garmin but this one is doing the same thing ...

Can you put os maps or Talky Toaster maps on the Explore to route with GPX files ?

Used mine today. Started on 89% and after 3.5 hours was on 26% just used as a bike computer with no phone connected. Also the emergency siren thingy has started going off whenever I brake.

I've got a 520, a vivoactive 3 and a gps/depth gauge on my kayak and they have all been faultless but the Explore is a hunk of junk.

Well I think you’ve all confirmed my concern around battery life so I’ll be holding off buying one.

Used mine today on a nearly 5hr ride, navigating the whole thing and had a good 30% left at the end. More than good enough for me.

Last week mine was down to 0% after about 5 hours, then just kept on trucking for another few hours and a couple of days of standby until I plugged it in to update the firmware. I’ve had a full 12 hours on the road out of it before so I know the battery life is there, it’s just an issue of what it displays. Reading around it seems some firmware versions are dicky on this front; the latest allegedly has a fix for power management issues. Though as always with Garmin the question is often not so much about which bugs they’ve fixed in any given version, and more about what they’ve added. We shall see. It’s still the least bad GPS unit I’ve tried so far.

I've got one, it's a really good unit, but also have the issues mentioned above with battery. No issues with how it routes me - I have it set to avoid main roads, and to popularity route.

I used to get about 8 hours out of it with screen on, navs and sensors connected, then it did a firmware update, and seems to rinse the battery in about 3 hours, but when it gets to 0 it just keeps going. Haven't done an update since so might be fixed now.

For me Garmin have the best hardware out there, but we are years into wearables and GPS tech being common place and the software and UI still suck. Sometimes finding basic settings and stuff is really annoying.

Battery gauges on many devices need calibrating by running til empty, otherwise it doesn't know what 0% really looks like. I may try doing this myself.

Also annoying is that standby is quite a battery drain so even a few days between rides takes a big chunk out of the battery.

Standby seems great on mine, it’ll go for weeks without much if any impact on the battery. (Well, without much impact on the reported battery percentage, anyway…)

Right, maybe someone else can try this on a longer ride: I disconnected the 'smart features' to disconnect my phone, I turned off the HRM and went for a 1h05 ride. It still says 100% battery. It'd be interesting to do a longer test, but I'm too knackered from working in the garden 🙂

I usually have the phone disconnected and I don’t have an HRM or anything else to connect, so most of my rides test that setup. I think you just have something like a firmware bug there 🙂

Battery has always gone down during 1hr rides before. I'm just trying to establish how much difference the phone and HRM make.

Right. I upgraded to v5.30 and went for a 3-hour ride, and the battery dropped by 30%. So it looks like it should be back on an even keel. Hurrah 🙂 (well… so far so good, anyway…)

Sounds about right... I was out for 7.5 hours on Saturday and had 10% battery left at the end. That's with navigation and Bluetooth running.

Has anyone seen any good deals on the edge explore as I 'll need something to use to navigate.

I have an opportunity for a days riding in the Lakes as the Mrs and I will be staying in Rydal for a long weekend and she said I can have the Saturday to go riding so I thought I'd go and ride this again Ambleside/LittleLangdale route on fattyres. But, as I have have only been following others I can't remember the route all that well. I may just end up doing it the old fashioned may and use and OS map.

Navigation aside I've been mulling over having something more dedicated to record my rides which is what it would mostly get used for. Currently use my Iphone. However battery is consumed at a quick rate using strava or mapmyride. Anything over 3 hours and the thing is dead.

Or is there anything else that I should consider for about the same price?

@asbrooks

If the iPhone does what you want it to, apart from last the distance, have you tried a USB battery pack? A tenner would get you something that'll triple the life and leave you some power for emergency calls, etc.

@asbrooks

I’ve finally took the plunge on one of these at the weekend. After starting this thread 10 months ago, then not jumping on the really good deal in autumn, I chucked my birthday money at it on Friday night.
It was £180 on Amazon m, tho they did offer me it on 5 payments of £36 so if that’s open to everyone it might help you out if you don’t want to part with a wedge of cash in one go.
I’ve only used it on a brief ride with the kids to try it and so far so good.
I’ve got some routes on it from garmin and komoot easy enough.
Seems like it’ll be really useful .
Battery life is my concern - seems hit and miss- but I’ve a decent size power bank if I need it.

@johnnystorm

I do have a powerbank, I find that the lightning cables are crap unless the phone is left alone.

It's a good call though. I'll have look around to see what's available in terms of fitting it to the bars and more robust charging cable. I have a waterproof top tube pack that can probably take the powerbank.

@asbrooks

I think iffy cables are a concern whichever type of phone you have! One advantage of the iPhone is that it's really well supported for waterproof cases from quadlock and life proof, etc.

Have you seen the cables where you slot a piece into the charge port of your phone and then the cable attaches by a magnet? That might be a more robust solution?

Living in a cave and haven't seen the Edge Explore till now.... Using my phone on my road bike but would like a device with mapping for the MTB and not willing to risk the phone on the handlebars.

There seems to be some talk about dual speed/cadence sensors on the Explore, such that if it is getting the speed signal it thinks you're riding inside and disables the GPS and logs the ride with no route, or something to that effect.

Anyone have any feedback on this issue, especially when using the Wahoo Blue SC! Also, I believe my "MyZone" HRM will be compatible?

It should work with any Ant+ sensor. My Explore has picked up the two old Garmic GSC10 speed/cadence sensors no issues without messing up GPS