Thinking of a Garmin Edge Explore, Anything else I should buy?

Reviews of this seem good and I don’t need stuff for Strava , anything else I should consider

What do you want it to do? I need to replace my ageing 800 and this looks like it fits the bill. My main requirement is navigation. I can live without Strava live and the training stuff.

Same here no interest In Strava, like the navigation side to it plus the feature to be able to set a specific distance from home and be given several loops to choose from showing elevation as well

I’ve been really happy with my Wahoo Elemnt, not ludicrous cash with sensors or not should you wish. Great battery life and ideal if you plan and then ride as it is app based as opposed to on device navigation – if that is something you want I’d head to a pricier Garmin and OS maps.

James

ideal if you plan and then ride as it is app based as opposed to on device navigation

Huh?

@Bez are you stillrunning the Edge Explore, if so what do you think of it.
Confused 😐

New Wahoo Roam has colour maps and improved navigation options. What the chap above was saying is that the elemnt works best with you having a set route to follow. It’s not ideal for choosing routes on the fly or making off the cuff changes. If Strava uploads and the like aren’t what you’re after it might be worth investigating the non-edge models. My Dakota has been perfectly reliable compared to my edge. The elemnt has also been great.

Hi fudge, a group of us recently road c2c in a day. Early start, late finish. Every garmin ran out of power and we had to hook up the cache battery. Every wahoo had at least 30% battery left. All devices vary in ages but didn’t seem to make a difference to the wahoo battery life.

I’ve had various garmins over the years. Currently have a garmin 810. Recent updates mean I can send rides to the garmin without having to plug it in to a computer via Bluetooth.

I think if I was going to replace I’d seriously consider a wahoo but would depend on deals.

Garmin have a good replacement deal. Last time I looked you could return a broken unit and for around £90 they would send you a reconditioned unit with 3 month warranty. No idea if this includes a new battery. Others may be able to confirm.

Have you considered a good waterproof phone mount from topeak and just using an app? Maybe take a cache battery for longer rides? My friend uses his like this and it works just as well.

Bez are you still running the Edge Explore, if so what do you think of it.

Yeah, still using it, still really liking it. Definitely the best unit I’ve owned or used so far. It has a few quirks but they’re very minor, and aside from that it’s really easy to use and basically does what I want. Compared to earlier Garmins the touchscreen is staggeringly good and the responsiveness of the unit is a big step forward: route calculation is quicker and panning/zooming the map could almost be called slick.

I plan routes on RideWithGPS and get them onto the Edge wirelessly via RouteCourse (I’ve paid for the full feature set, but can’t remember the difference between the free and paid versions), or you can send GPX files to Connect on your phone and sync that way. Though I don’t think that will support course points, which I’ve recently rediscovered and find really useful. Instead of using them for navigation directions (as Wahoo devices do) I mark towns/villages, so the cue sheet on the device always tells me how far it is to any places where I can get food etc. Works great for big rides.

As noted above, the hiking/outdoor devices might be worth considering, as they have a slightly bigger feature set and more battery options. But they’re bulky and the handlebar mounts are kinda clunky (whereas my edge sits unobtrusively on my stems). If you’re doing big touring and you have one bike they’re a great choice; if you’re doing big day rides or have multiple bikes they’re less appealing.

The Wahoo Roam may be worth a look. For me it retains far too many of the things I didn’t like about the Elemnt and Bolt, so although my interest was briefly piqued, on closer inspection it’s a non-starter; but the screen looks awesome.

Some additional points on the Explore in the thread below:

Garmin Edge Explore?

Every garmin ran out of power and we had to hook up the cache battery. Every wahoo had at least 30% battery left. All devices vary in ages but didn’t seem to make a difference to the wahoo battery life.

Battery life is one of the things I’ve sometimes found a bit iffy about Edges… I seem to recall the 200 was great (pretty sure I did 36 hours on less than one full recharge) but the 800 and Touring only ever seemed to knock out about 10 hours compared to a claim of something like (IIRC) 15.

From using the Explore, it looks like it should meet its claims of 10-14 hours depending on battery saver mode, but I confess I’ve not yet done a day with it that has required a recharge (longest was about 7 hours, I think, though I’ll top that in a couple of weeks’ time).

If battery life is a big deal then the 530 and 830 are worth a look. They’re claiming 20-40 hours depending on battery saver mode, which is impressive. I tried the 530 but hated the buttons, and while the 830 solves that issue it’s also nearly twice the current price of the Explore, and the Explore has a bigger screen.

The £170 saving from buying the Explore gets you a very nice backup battery for the occasional times you need it 🙂

Cheers Damascus and Bez. With things the way they are at home with the wife my rides will top out at 3-4 hours while someone cares for her, so battery life not a massive issue and can always grab a power bank if things improve with home life. Think I’ll grab one in Halfords, kids got me vouchers for Father’s Day 👍

I tried the 530 but hated the buttons

I have a 530 because I am scarred from my ownership of a touch screen 820.  The 530 is a big improvement in usability over the 820 and the battery life is in another league.  Still about £100 more than the edge explore though so if you don’t want all the extra bells and whistles it’s a bit hard to justify.

My only experience of the 820 was playing with it on the display stand in Halfords. The touchscreen was terrible. Utterly terrible. Completely and utterly terrible. I mean, as in I basically couldn’t use the device. I ran away and never entertained the thought of buying one. I can fully see why you’d find the 530 an improvement.

The Explore’s touchscreen is very, very, very good. Rain, gloves, no problem. Much easier to use with gloves than the resistive touchscreens on the 800/Touring. Coming from that, I found the 530 a truly painful experience.

A slight aside but does anyone know of an App which has the same functionality as the Garmin circular route, i.e. type in a distance and it will give several circular route options. Plenty of Apps where you can import or navigate between points but not found anything that gives the circular option unless I’m missing something….!

I’ve had a edge explore for a year now and I would heavily recommend it, I use mine for navigation only like you plan too, it’s reliable, the screen size bigger than the 830 and 520 so easy to read off-road when it’s bumpy too, can’t fault it at all and for the price it’s a bargain

Bit of a hiccup yesterday after upgrading the firmware. Battery saver mode seems to have swapped one bug for the opposite, and much worse, one. Still pretty much faultless if you turn battery saver off, though.

View this post on Instagram

Firmware v2.10 had a battery saver mode bug whereby the screen sometimes stayed on. v4.30 (first outing today) appears to replace that with a bug that leaves the screen *off*. Which renders the device kind of useless. Well done @garmin @garminuk once again.

A post shared by Bez (@mashing53) on Jun 22, 2019 at 12:33am PDT

Thinking of upgrading to one of these from My Edge 820 Explore. Only reason being is that mine as a crack in the screen (still works though).

These seem a lot more responsive and have a nice big screen. Mine has been really useful and I’ve not encountered too many bugs really.

BILLY BARGAIN KLAXON

The Explore is currently £148 with code PURE20 until 27 June:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Garmin-Edge-Explore-3-Cycling-Sports-GPS-Tracker-Bike-Computer-Water-Resistant-/323722468047?hash=item4b5f5cdacf

Thread resurrection.

My Touring Plus was very badly behaved yesterday. It was giving me the full treatment, namely: a) randomly turn itself off, b) taking c. 10 mins to reload the course, and c) giving me “route calculation error” messages. I’ve persisted with it for years but I’ve now had enough. I’m thinking of the Explore.

Has all of the above been cured on the Explore?

I only want it as a satnav by the way. No powermeter type stuff required.

Thanks all!

I’ve had a route calculation error once on my explore (which I bought due to @bez recommendation). I came out of the route, restarted the loop and all good.

I’m very impressed with it. I probably should spend a bit of time understanding the quirks sat at the kitchen table rather than dealing with them on the fly though!!

Bought mine also on recommendation from bez also and the review on YouTube by drainmaker. Very impressed with it also does everything I need.

My Explore has been very good so far. I cycled the Med to the Channel last autumn and it didn’t put a foot wrong. The only minor niggles are the lack of temperature gauge and altimeter.

Has all of the above been cured on the Explore?

Yes. I used an Edge Touring for years til it broke, and I found all the issues from crashing to bizarre routing decisions and generally weird but apparently intended behaviour.

I got an Edge Explore about ooh, 9 months ago, and it’s been brilliant. Offers the same satnav-like concept but vastly better in every way than the Touring. And more features – being able to plan routes on Strava and pull them onto the device is great.

The only actual bugs I can recall having had are:

– In the original firmware (v2.60) when in battery saver mode sometimes the screen would stay on (but not updating) when it should have switched off. Tapping and swiping fixed it.
– In my current firmware (v4.30) when in battery mode sometimes the screen will stay off, and the device will freeze; not just the display, but track logging will stop and the device will become unresponsive. Holding down the power button for a long time initiates a rebbot and after that it’s ok.
– Also (I think in the current firmware) on long routes the navigation can seem to get out of sync with where you are: when you get the “approaching a junction” view it’ll be showing you the wrong one, so your arrow never appears on the screen and you wonder what the hell it’s showing you because it doesn’t bear any relation to the junction you’re actually approaching. I can’t remember if there’s an easy way to “unconfuse” it, it’s been a while since I did a long route.

The second issue is a serious one, but the workaround (other than not riding for more than 10 hours) is fairly simple, ie to use an external power source rather than battery saver mode. Which isn’t a massive deal unless you’re riding for over 10 hours in torrential rain. It’s a shame they put the USB port on the bottom, but hey ho.

Other than that I *think* I’ve had zero issues. A few things are sub-optimal: eg the “sharp corner” warnings are both pointless and massively inconsistent, but at least in later firmware versions you can turn them off.

But yes, all three of those issues have failed to be a problem for me so far. (Though to be honest, I’ve had four 800/Touring/810 devices over the years and I never had those problems with any of them either. In fact they were all pretty reliable too, apart from at least two of them occasionally resetting all the configuration settings.)

PS this thread prompted me to check for new firmware versions and sure enough there have been a few:
https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/cycling/f/edge-explore
Though as ever with Garmin, it’s always a case of bracing yourself when you fire the device up after updating the firmware, let alone when you do the first long ride since updating…

With the old Edge Touring if the nav got out of sync I used to cancel the nav and go back to the course and re-start it, which you could do without stopping the timer or interrupting the ride log. I haven’t had an issue yet with the new one so I don’t know if that still works.

There is a minor bug I forgot to mention though. Say you are on the map view, with North up, and you approach a turn it zooms the map in and puts track up which is fine and what I want. However when you have passed the turn it doesn’t zoom back out again and put North up. The old unit did this. Only a minor inconvenience as I used to like to look at a large scale overview map whilst riding. If you’re on one of the other pages the turn maps pop up as you’d expect and then if you flip back to the map you’re still on the original settings.

Haven’t had that one. Which version is your firmware?

My Touring Plus was very badly behaved yesterday. It was giving me the full treatment, namely: a) randomly turn itself off, b) taking c. 10 mins to reload the course, and c) giving me “route calculation error” messages. I’ve persisted with it for years but I’ve now had enough. I’m thinking of the Explore.

My Touring Plus has done this intermittently for ages. I sort of know most of the workarounds but following a route a couple of weeks ago, it spent ages telling me to do a U-turn (even though I was on the route going the correct way), so I cancelled nav then restarted it. Later on it crashed (as it often does when following a route) and then later on it crashed again while I was trying to just swipe the screen.

Predictably after that series of cock-ups, the file was corrupted and couldn’t be recovered so I lost a 100 mile ride.

Wondering which new GPS to go for given I don’t need any of the performance stuff, live segments etc, it’s mostly just the mapping and nav.

– Also (I think in the current firmware) on long routes the navigation can seem to get out of sync with where you are: when you get the “approaching a junction” view it’ll be showing you the wrong one, so your arrow never appears on the screen and you wonder what the hell it’s showing you because it doesn’t bear any relation to the junction you’re actually approaching.

I’ve had this symptom with the Touring Plus abroad before (and it was massively infuriating given that I was in a group, so sometimes leading them all the wrong way), but curiously not in the UK even on long rides. I had put it down to the unit not knowing where the satellites were, but that’s just a wild guess.

“Junction Lag” would be a deal breaker for me.

Haven’t had that one. Which version is your firmware?

Might be 4.6, not sure. I’ll update to 5.1 today. It could be a setting though – do you have auto-zoom map set to on?

I’ve had this symptom with the Touring Plus abroad before (and it was massively infuriating given that I was in a group, so sometimes leading them all the wrong way), but curiously not in the UK even on long rides.

That’s interesting. I’ve only had it on my French weekend last year, but I haven’t managed to do any long UK rides since I’ve had the Explore.

It could be a setting though – do you have auto-zoom map set to on?

No. Though, come to think of it, I think you’ve reminded me of another issue. I think mine might have stopped giving me the through-junction screen since upgrading to 4.30.

Damn it, I’m going to have to check.

One thing I’m sure of is that 4.30 sucks compared to 2.60 (or whatever it was; looks like an earlier post of mine says 2.10). But unfortunately the guy who archives the Garmin firmware hasn’t stored anything earlier than 3.00, so I can’t roll back further than that.

Wondering which new GPS to go for given I don’t need any of the performance stuff, live segments etc, it’s mostly just the mapping and nav.

Every so often I think I should try the Elemnt Roam. But then I remember all the misery I had with the Elemnt and the Bolt (and it’s not just me), and then I feel like I can’t even be arsed to give it a try. I dunno…

If someone could mix Garmin’s navigation interactions with Wahoo’s map clarity, and add in anything along the lines of quality control that’s completely absent from the bike GPS device industry, then they could take my money.

Sadly we seem to be stuck with this lot.

That’s interesting. I’ve only had it on my French weekend last year…

I had been hoping that because the Explore can be synched through a phone once you get abroad, then at that point it will know where the satellites are and Junction Lag would be eliminated. With the Touring you needed to plug it into a pc to synch it, which is difficult if you’re abroad.

The navigation issues I had with the Edge Touring were map related. Something to do with poor GPS signal in certain areas causing some kind of conflict with the maps I think. I used Talkie Toaster maps for a while and it got much worse. So it could be that French maps are slightly different somehow which triggers your particular issue.

Hmm. One of the eternal joys of Garmins is the fact that it takes about 9 months of solid riding to figure out what the factors are in reproducing their bugs. (Or even some aspects of their intended behaviours, for that matter.) Imagine how boring it would be if you could have something that just navigated you faultlessly on any ride you cared to plan.

🙄

With the Touring you needed to plug it into a pc to synch it, which is difficult if you’re abroad.

This is one of the reasons I picked up an 810 a while ago. And actually it’s a good device: seems quite reliable (other than occasionally forgetting screen configurations) and the battery lasts 15 hours. But Garmin Connect on the iPhone is toilet: even when it “worked” it generally took several attempts before it would send a file to a device, and recently it seems to be AWOL from the share menu altogether. At least with the Explore you can sync from Strava/RWGPS via RouteCourse, which (although it has some niggles) works a lot more reliably.

I’ve found integration with Komoot to be a very effective way of transferring routes across from phone to Explore.

Oh, I’m glad you said that. I’ve never bothered with the Komoot Connect IQ app because I don’t like Komoot all that much for route planning (even though I’ve paid for the full thing).

But I just had a look and it would seem that RideWithGPS now have a Connect IQ app. Yay!

Ah, except the RWGPS app isn’t compatible with the Explore.

FFS EVERYONE

Oh, I’m glad you said that. I’ve never bothered with the Komoot Connect IQ app because I don’t like Komoot all that much for route planning (even though I’ve paid for the full thing).

Understand what you are saying. However OS maps/Garmin connect dont want to talk to each other anymore on my iPhone. So I plot my routes on OS (better for mtb), transfer to Komoot and then to IQ on the Garmin. Sounds like a faff, but really doesn’t take long.

Hmm. Now it seems to have stopped displaying my custom maps.

I always use the Strava IQ app to get routes to my device. It works well, and it works even better as of a few days ago when I finally discovered that once you’ve ridden a route via the IQ app it is actually saved on the device as a course. I’d been going back through the app each time!

PS Garmin Connect works fine for me on Android.

Is route planning in Strava a pro thing as I’ve never tried it?