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?
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.
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.
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.
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
