[Closed] Modern Garmin devices

What's the Edge Touring like? Looks like cheap mapping?

The unit (not garmin) in the last magazine looked good, and had full UK OS 1:50000 included.

What I can pick up in town now or tomorrow seems o be limited to

Edge 200
Edge 25
Edge touring.

I like the idea of map routing on the device, but I also like the idea of phone connectivity from the 25 and it's cheaper. And the 200 is cheap er still.

well impressed with my dinky edge 25. im not one for masses of stats, nor do i give a toss about cadence and heart rate, if were off exploring new territories im never on my own so someone else will have the mapping... i just like to track my rides and check distance/elevation/speed so its serves all my needs. i have a k-edge stem top cap mount and you hardly know its there, likewise you could just toss it in a jersey pocket and forget about it. i get home and my phone is already notifying me my ride is recorded on strava. simples.

Really like my Edge Touring. Got it because I wanted mapping and wasn't bothered about any extra training functions.

I'm beginning to align myself with those priorities.

I used my old one for three things - basic stuff like telling the time and distance; recording what I've done and navigation. I spend a lot of time poring over Tracklogs in new places planning training rides. This takes ages, so the ability to skip that would be absolutely ace. Compared to that, automatic upload via phone is insignificant (ie what the Edge 25 offers).

For that matter, I always have my phone anyway so I might as well just start Strava in tandem.

Edge Touring is great, and the OpenStreetMap data tends to display better and generally be more useful than OS.

I've not trusted to just make up a loop for me but I've let it navigate me home and it does pretty well, albeit with a strong preference for quieter roads and cycle infrastructure over outright speed. I usually have a route planned though that I transfer to it and follow.

Got an 810 as a gift from my lovely wife as I thought I'd lost the Edge Touring in a house move. Don't tell her, but now I've misplaced the 810 and I'm just using the Edge Touring again, not really missing any of the stuff it can't do.

I upgraded from a 800 to an 810 and woudlnt go back, Best function for me is auto upload, connect to your phone via the garmin connect ap. When you finish a ride and press save as soon as your in range and your phone connects it auto uploads to garmin then auto syncs to strava, well worth the money for the upgrade for the lack of faffing.

was going to get Edge Touring (forget if it was plus or not-plus), but more for road/cx use than MTB.
Never used the other edges, so no idea how they compare. I don't care so much about the bike computer training stuff, so it'd be more for tracking, a map, and gpx routes.
I have a Polar GPS watch too (just for tracking), and the phone (for extra mapping, and e-tickets for the train/tram if need be), and when out in the mountains will always have the eTrex with mapping too/instead (AA batteries, and always have spares).

No idea how robust the mounts are. Only reason I had planned on Edge Touring was to "free the back", ditch backpack, and get garmin out of jersey pocket and on to bars to make room for a couple more flapjacks.

Edge touring ordered.

I've got the 810.

- Auto upload is nice but if you charge your garmin from your computer then it's totally unnecessary.

- Having maps on the device is great for following pre-planned courses (I tend to build a route in strava and export it) but I've found it a bit fiddly for any navigation on the fly. I still use the maps on my phone when I get lost or take a detour.

- I don't like having strava running in my pocket because I'm bad at making sure I have enough charge at the start of a ride. I'd rather keep the phone battery for using maps or making necessary calls.

EDIT: just saw your response up there ^^^ looks like you made the sensible choice.

(I tend to build a route in strava and export it)

Oh, you can do that?

I'd rather keep the phone battery for using maps or making necessary calls

Yeah that's a key concern - I only do it if I have enough charge, which is usually the case on my latest phone. If not, well then I can upload from the Edge all the same.

I'd have gone for the Edge Touring Plus with phone connectivity but it's a lot more wonga.

- Auto upload is nice but if you charge your garmin from your computer then it's totally unnecessary.

dont get me wrong its not much easier than plugging in but i find my garmin lasts about a weeks worth of rides but with the auto upload i can upload daily rather than weekely.

like i said not needed just a nice touch.

Just tried it out walking back to the hotel (won't be able to ride tonight 🙁 ). Mapping is pretty crowded and hard to read in the city, and the route it chose - wtf? It was bananas.

What maps are you lot using? The mapping at least in cities is a bit weird. How easy is it to change?

While the TalkieToaster maps aren't free anymore, there should be all the instructions there that you need to investigate stuff like installing a new basemap. Haven't done it on a Garmin in ages but recall it being trivially easy..

Think there's a free and a paid-for version at talkietoaster still.

I paid the one off fee for Talkytoaster installed on a card as it was only a few quid more than the card would have cost.

Talkietoaster maps are better how?

Talkietoaster maps for me too. Seems to route OK but can be a bit tough to navigate with - I still use the OS map on my phone for non-routed navigation.

A.S. Adventure are selling the Garmin Edge Touring for £120. Seems like a good price. Anyone used this website before? Any cheaper elsewhere?
Cheers.

Well that was a big fat waste of time - literally.

I had the thing plan me a route from my hotel - seemed to do a reasonable job - flicked through the route, looked like it picked open roads and it's late so they will be quiet.

Got out of the building and presumably because I'd had it on inside and it'd failed to lock, it took a while finding satellites. Like, 10 minutes. In the mean time I thought I'd ride along the road a bit in the rough direction of the route. This seemed to confuse the shit out of it.

I *think* what it was trying to do was force me to go back to the start of the route - either that or it picked up my location and assumed I was near the end, cos all I got on the map was a mile of riding. And, I couldn't even navigate that. Ok so a city centre's quite a challenging environment but I couldn't correlate a single thing on the tiny screen to what I was seeing. basically useless. In fact, worse than useless, cos I spent about 15 minutes standing around swearing at my handlebars or riding up and down the same few streets in front of drunk people looking like a right pillock. Kept trying to send me down 'cycle paths' and 'trails' which were extremely dodgy looking alleys. But wherever I went it kept trying to send me on weird loops back to the hotel.

And it has no idea that I'm on a bike, really, they've just nicked the software straight off the car version. If it wants me to turn around it sends me on a loop of the one-way system. Except I'm on a bike, and it knows I'm on a bike, and I can make a legal u-turn pretty much anywhere I like.

Thanks for a great ride, Garmin. I'm really ****ing cross.

I never rely on the in built navigation. Always plan a route in the computer and send the file to the device.

How is Garmin to know that what's marked on a map as a cycling route is just a rubbish shared use pavement down an alleyway?

Of course it's not to know.

Point is - which one of the three routing options doesn't use cycleways?

And why did it keep trying to send me back to the hotel?

I think you may have missed the first waypoint while it was finding its position. It will insist on you following the course correctly and starting at the correct point (unless you dive into the settings and turn that particular feature off).

There is a website which advises how to change all the settings on a Garmin to something vaguely logical. You will have to Google it yourself as I am going to bed.

Does this sound like it might help?

Some quick navigation specific settings for your Edge Touring.

Click the Wrench Icon on the main menu of the unit.
Select Routing Options
Change Routing Mode to Cycling
Change Calculation Method to Minimize Distance
Ensure Lock On Road is set to Off
Enter Avoidance Setup and disable all (keeps the unit from changing your pre-planned route based on its own map data)
Change Recalculation to either Prompted or Off (Important!!! If you lose GPS signal or go slightly off course, recalculation will usually short cut you to the end of your route. You almost never want it, so we set it to Prompted).

Will try those things, thanks.

There's a lot of talk about this online it seems. I think tonight I'll try creating a route from map points on the device, see how I get on.

Premapping waypoints are the way forward, the dead seagull next to you will give better directions than the Garmin itself.

I have found strava excellent for mapping routes as it generally sends you down quieter routes rather than the direct motorway that some other do, but it doesn't think of offroad cycleroutes sometimes

I've done plenty of preparing routes on bikeroutetoaster and similar with success. However the reason for going for this Garmin was so that I didn't *have to*, I could in theory just ride in a strange location if I don't have time or opportunity to plan.

Given that this week I seem to have forgotten to bring the right cable, I'm going to try it out.

Ok, I'm back. I set three waypoints - one to get me out of the city (Brum), one to take me over a hill and one to come back in a different way. I chose them carefully after looking at google maps to encourage the route the way I wanted. I chose timidwheeler's settings, with prompt for recalculation. I had the routing set to minimise time and the mode set to cycling.

And it was pretty damn good. It took me down some lovely open suburban roads, the navigation was very clear too. It gave me good indications of each junction coming up, and showed the path through even complex junctions like right then left, also saying stuff like '1st exit at roundabout' and giving street names. Following a breadcrumb trail on the old unit does't do any of this, you only get junction notifications if you program course points in manually which is pretty laborious for every junction.

Only issue was it wanted me to cross the road go to on cycleways at the roadside. I declined to re-route and had to follow the map without directions until the cycleway disappeared and I rejoined the planned route.

Then at some point the backlight stopped working, and in trying to re-set it I ended up turning off the unit. So this meant I had to recalculate a route, but I coudn't recalculate the old route cos it'd have taken me back out of the city. So I had it take me home which worked. UNTIL I got back into the city, when it started to become obsessed with the lea valley cycleway. Not only did I not want to go down the cycleway cos the roads were fast and quiet, it was also dark, unfamiliar in a big city, and it was also locked. It took ages before it gave up trying to make me do a u-turn to pick up the cycleway. However because it had a map on-screen I could just look at the map, make a call and wait for it to get the idea.

Still - it did pretty well considering. It's actually a pretty ambitious device. It's questionable whether or not it would've been quicker to plan the route up front (which I could still have done of course) or faff with the thing whilst on the road, but with the old device I wouldn't have had the excellent junction guidance for free.

So, pretty good. And this was in a big city environment which is pretty tough. I can't wait to try it out in the countryside.