Getting increasingly irritated by my Garmin 25 on longer rides. I love its simplicity and the small form factor, but no matter what I do with the settings I can’t really get more than 4 1/2 to 5 hours out of it which is no good for ‘all day epics’.

Is there anything out there that does the same job (not fussed about navigation features – just need GPS tracking and ANT+ for my HRM) but has markedly better battery life?

Small form factor would be cool and not overly tied to Garmin as a brand.

Cheers.

Try the Garmin Vivoactive HR – does all that and the Heart rate is built in and seems to work well. With GPS on the watch will last 8-10 hours no worries. Mine is a couple of years old but sure new one will do all that and more! Plus it does all that fitness tracker stuff if you want!

Lezyne GPS advance unit

Lezyne super GPS battery lasts an age

Garmin Foretrex 601. Fairly small and simple, and very long battery life – claims 48 hours. Uses 2AAA batteries, so you can carry spares if necessary.

Or the older Foretrex 401 is cheaper.

New Garmin 105? Might be different number but the new one with black and white screen. Only taken them 3 years to learn how to copy Wahoo.

Something from the Lezyne range sounds like it might be what you need.

What phone do you have? a lot of android phones have ANT+ built in.

Katie’s Lezyne Super GPS battery life isn’t that impressive.  Could be because it went a while unused but shouldn’t matter.

Garmin 130 sounds like what you’re looking for (I’ve just bought one). Screen is lovely. I’ve not found anything really annoying in the software (and it hasn’t crashed yet) which is a first for a Garmin device.

Battery life reports aren’t all great but mine did a 7 hour ride with at least 50% battery left (no devices connected though).   I don’t understand why Garmin don’t make these units a bit bigger and aim for something like a 30 hour battery life – surely it wouldn’t add much size or weight.

(one option is to pick up an old Edge 500….)

What phone do you have? a lot of android phones have ANT+ built in.

Rather not use my phone – it’s GPS isn’t great and battery life might still be an issue.

(one option is to pick up an old Edge 500….)

That’s an idea. I had a couple of 500s before I got the 25 (smashed one in The Peak and lost the other on an Alp).

Will look at the 105 and 130. The Lezynes also look interesting.

Anyone got any experience of the Lezyne micro GPS watches? Looks like the same tech as the bike devices…

Lezyne Super GPS battery lasts 13+ hours, ~£100 from probikekit.

No idea what they are like accuracy wise, but chain reaction has two Lezyne watches in their red hot deals this week, £65 and £95 iirc.

One other comment on the Lezyne – Katies seems to consistently read *significantly* different distance to my Garmins.  A couple of KM on a 30-50km ride.

I’ve not got around to looking at the tracks to see what it’s done.  Anyone else experienced this?  Is there a satellite  or recording frequency setting that might be sub-optimal? (for some reason i trust my garmins…)

garmin watch? my 235 has ANT+, wrist HRM and will do 10hrs of tracking. more with the HRM/bluetooth/Glonass switched off.

there must be a replacement due soon as they seem to be on offer everywhere.