I’m moving to Geneva in 2017 and will have the opportunity to do some pretty hefty rides.
I want to buy effectively a car sat nav for my bikes. What I mean by that is, I want enter a town name and let it work out route and give me a map to follow.
I’m not a garmin fan but the 820 explore looks closest to the job.

Yes, I could read a map but I really can’t be bothered. I want to turn the pedals, take in the scenery and that’s about it.

What else is out there. Any apps I could use instead?

I have a Garmin Touring that does map navigation. You can use mapping app ie Strava to create a route then it’s 2 clicks to export it to your Garmin as a gpx file. This then appears on the route menu on your Garmin. You select it and it navigates you there.

Thanks but not interested in creating a route and exporting. The device needs to do this on the fly.

My Mio 505 has a function called ‘surprise me’ where you enter either the time, or distance you want to ride & it gives you three options based on easy/medium/hard routes.
Ive only used it for road rides as yet though.

Are you thinking on or off road?

edge 1000 will do it by just entering the name. It takes a bit of playing to get used to the settings though as the route can sometimes be a bit more roundabout than you might want as it tries to route you ‘nice’ ways. It’s pretty good though

On road, the etrex 30 gives turn by turn directions, I use it to give me short cuts on the road bike to certain locations, just set a waypoint where you want to go and it gives you options of off road, on road for time or on road for distance.

Legend. Mostly on road but occasional off.

I think I’d go for the Edge Explore 1000 if I just wanted the mapping, the screen’s bigger than the Edge Explore 820 and easier to read.

Has garmin connect got any better in the last few years?

The last garmin device I had was pants. I took it back as it was petty unusable.

I also have a Garmin Edge Touring, 1 of its features called round trip routing which allows you to input a desired length of route and it gives you recommendations starting from where you are or from another location. As always with garmin, the base mapping it comes with is rubbish but you can buy/download local mapping on micro SD cards. I had a similar situation when moving to Spain, I found that wikiloc gives you much more information on difficulty and type of routes, especially off road and it is dead easy to download routes to the gps.

Thanks , but again, absolutely no use to me.
It need’s to do this on the fly. If it can’t do that, it’s useless to my needs.

I’d have thought this would be an absolute standard feature, let alone on the higher end models.

I’m probably better off using waze on my mobile and saving £400.

A Garmin Oregon functions exactly as you require – like a car SatNav. You can “tune” the routing to avoid certain types of roads (e.g. motorways, ferries). Not so good off-road though – but that’s down to the quality of the mapping available, not the GPS unit.

I’m probably better off using waze on my mobile and saving £400.

I’m planning a short tour using Google maps entirely for the navigation. I’m woking it out on the computer but only because it’s easier, you just select designation then specify cycling and away you go. It’s routing me along canals etc. Seems good but I need to try it out. 🙂

Sorry if I wasn’t clear, the round trip routing is usable “on the fly” you simply input the distance you want to ride and it offers you a number of options. I only recommended using wikiloc in tandem as it gives more route info so you know what To expect, especially off road.

Peterpoddy, that’s what I’ve done previously. I though a gps devise would be a good insurance policy as I’ll be doing bigger distances with road signs in a different language and very hilly areas so ” right first trime ” routes are important.

Piston broke, I get what you mean, but not what I’m after. I want proper car level gps. Pop in a postcode, town name and it gives me route options and turn by turn directions.

Off road? No chance.

Google maps are the best I’ve managed to use for doing similar things. But they only really do cycle tracks and road.

The newer Edge 1000s come with OSM already installed but it doesn’t give you altitude. But downloading biking maps is very simple now. You also have the option to do routing as road bike, touring bike or mtb where it will route you along tracks rather than roads.

Oops, double post, that’s what comes of watching the Vuelta while trying to use the laptop.

My old Edge 800 with Ordnance Survey maps will give you a route to a postcode or address, do the new models not do the same?

This will be in the Swiss and French mountains so not sure os maps would cover this.

I have an 820. You can select a destination and it will decide a route for you either on or off road. You can put in intermediate points to make the route more to your liking or you can pre plan a route using connect or basecamp so you get to follow exactly the route you want. I have been very pleased with how well it has worked but although I have found it easy to use I know my mother would struggle with it.

and I should add that the Garmin European maps are based on OSM maps so you only have to take a look at the OSM maps to get an idea of how good the coverage is in any country you wish to ride in.

Can you can that all from the devise ? Other than the connect bit.

Yes. If all you want to do is set a destination it is easily done on the device. The more you want to tailor the route the more the small screen makes it a pain in the arse but it is entirely possible. The larger screen of the Edge 1000 should be better in this respect but I haven’t used one of those

Thanks for that. Appreciated.

All sounds a tad shit considering the asking price. I’ll see what apps are available instead.

I have an Edge 820, I put in the postcode of my daughters wedding venue, it plotted a route for me saving several miles over the route I would have chosen.
The only problem was that quite a few of those miles where on a canal towpath (part of the national cycle network) because I’d forgotten to select avoid offroad and I was on my posh roadbike. 😳

My Edge 800 and etrex 30x both do this. It’s the mapping that’s key, needs to be routable. The OSM mapping from that Dutch site is perfect for this. Free too

Slightly OT but is the etrex30x much use off road? Could I put in a waypoint say 10 miles away, and it’d be able to route an off-road course there and back for example? Never used a GPS so I have no idea, but that kind of function would be ideal for me.

Google Maps on a smart phone mounted on your bars.

Choose your destination, select cycling, then press Start Navigation.

If worried about battery life then turn screen off between junctions, or take a power pack or spare battery.

Also super easy to follow a pre produced Gpx file using free aps.

Peekay, to be honest, this is probably the best solution to the problem.
Spending £400 on a garmin that does very little extra appears to be a total waste of money.
Apparently the garmin 1000 also has an terrible battery life. 5 hours isn’t going to cut for the rides I have in mind. I know a phone won’t have much more, but then it hasn’t cost a lump of change for the private.

The disadvantage of using a mobile phone and google maps is if you go to an area without mobile reception. That’s probably less common in Swiss mountains than Welsh hills (because skiing) but might still be an issue sometimes. We were using google maps in the car at the weekend and it didn’t seem to make any attempt to use GPS to locate us when we got lost (perhaps as hand held and not on windscreen so no view of sky?)

Garmin Edge devices compare badly to a mobile phone on many counts. The screen’s not brilliant, the battery life could be better, the processor is slow.

On the other hand they’re largely waterproof, have some displays optimised for cycling use, are more likely to survive and fall. Once you work around their limitations they’re good. I’m not convinced the top end models add a lot of value. I’m liking my Edge Touring a lot more than I feared I would. At the weekend I was able to find some singletrack and pick the best routes up and down in a set of woods following someone else’s GPX track. It also got us back on a Bridleway when we’d taken a wrong turn across a field.

A six hour ride recording a track with a bit of use for mapping left me with 60% of battery. Turn by turn directions run it down much quicker – I suspect the backlight is the main issue and turn by turn means the screen comes on regularly.

Turn by turn navigation on road seems to work ok and is comparable to a Garmin in car sat nav. it doesn’t take a full postcode for some reason which means you have to do more manual entry of street name than on the in car unit. Last time I tried an address in London it took me to completely the wrong place (about a mile away) and I can’t work out why – must have been an error in the mapping/postcode database.

Neither in car or bike give route options (though you can set quickest/quietest/avoid major roads etc).

So, two devices and neither are exactly perfect for the job but one I already own and the other is a stand alone unit which also doesn’t really do the job I need it to do.
Can’t see the point of a gps which you need to enter a road name in a place you’ve never been and in a different language. Naaar, I’ll pass thanks. Especially with 100+ miles in my legs and temper like a honey badger with its nads caught in his zipper.

I though this was going to be easy. 🙂

So basically we are saying that Garmins are crap? I have used an eTRex with full GB mapping for nav purposes which works ok but bulky. Got an Edge 500 as well. I would like to combine both in one device – surely OS mapping, route guidance and speed/distance/HR isn’t that complicated? The Garmins always strike me as far more complicated than they need to be 🙁

Reading with interest as I’m about to go the Garmin route.

I’d considered the smartphone plus mount option (I’ve at least one, possibly two spare old phones that could be used.

What put my off was the robustness aspect – the phones aren’t waterproof or shockproof, and plugging into an additional power source to keep it going more than a few hours will be a pain (assuming it needs it that is).
You can get a ruggedised waterproof phone I suppose – but then are spending the same money that the Garmin would have cost.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that the “low hassle” factor of the Garmin to do all of the above is worth it but am more than willing to give some other options a go.

Re the smartphone option – are there any recommended apps that will do routing without a data signal?

would like to combine both in one device – surely OS mapping, route guidance and speed/distance/HR isn’t that complicated?

What I did miss off that post was that I’ve found Garmin’s OSM mapping to be very good on the bike – the colours/contrast/level of detail is much better that the OS mapping I’d used before. It doesn’t have the contours but I carry a map in my bag as back up on the sort of ride it would be important.

Clink – that’s what I had before and I think the Edge Touring combines them really well. I more than covered the cost selling my mapping and the Etrex unit on eBay which was even more of a bonus. You need the touring plus if you want heart rate.

Can’t see the point of a gps which you need to enter a road name in a place you’ve never been and in a different language

You can scroll the map visually to the place you want, drop a pin and navigate to that location. That would work for you.

The navigation on all the Garmin Edges is the same as far as I can work out. Buy the Touring (or buy one second hand) and flog it if you don’t like it. They seem to hold their value second hand if in good nick.

Google Maps on smartphone now allows offline navigation and downloading of maps (certainly to an area which is perfectly sufficient for cycling). If Google Maps doesn’t float your boat, Nokia’s “Here” maps allows for whole countries to be downloaded and used offline so data access in remote areas isn’t an issue.

A £130 smartphone (e.g. Motorola Moto G4, Google edition) paired with a £20 supplementary battery will do all you need, and a whole lot more and leave you plenty of change to invest in a sturdy and weatherproof bike mount.

Garmins are great for tough weather conditions, but it’s getting harder to argue that their mapping is getting close to keeping pace with that available on smartphones.