Well, you can thank me for buying that 530 last night because lo and behold here comes the Roam 😀

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/05/wahoo-element-roam-cycling-gps-in-depth-review.html

It’s not fully clear what approach they’re taking with TBT navigation; sounds like RWGPS is supported but Strava isn’t yet, which seems kinda odd since the mapping data is on the device to enable TBT and if they were using cue points from the original route it wouldn’t be TBT as we know it.

I like their careful use of colour, though. Much better than Garmin’s horrible clutterfest.

I do like the idea of Wahoo’s RWGPS integration, but in practice for me the reality hasn’t been ideal (ie it’s tried to set fire to my phone).

Battery life isn’t up to the 530, if Garmin’s figures are to be believed (I have more faith in Wahoo’s), but it’s good enough.

Looks very nice in theory. I just wonder whether I can bear to try another Wahoo.

Ah, good old Garmin. I’ve owned various products over the years. My current devices are hit and miss. All issues are bluetooth related. My new 520 Plus doesn’t connect to my phone every other ride. It needs unpaired/paired. My Forerunner 230 was the same for months, but seems to have settled recently. Both devices are up to date with the latest firmware.

@molgrips My Edge Touring was truly awful for those reasons. Buried far in the menus is the option to switch off the routing functions, but then they would randomly switch on again. Usually on a long ride where there was precious little time to ride back to get on course and then fiddle with the menus.

As Poly says – suspect very much a hardware company, driven by marketing “features” with no real focus on User based design. That said my Dakota and 800 work fine if kept simple.

My 920XT has been fine for around6 years now, I’ve only had two issues, one where a ride got corrupted and needed the upload file fixing, the other where it just died and lost my data.

I do find the app on my phone to be hit and miss, sometimes it’ll connect and sometime I have to turn the phones bluetooth off and on to get it to pick it up. I did originally set up the wifi auto upload but it never worked…

One thing I found with changing settings on Garmin Edge devices was that for them to be permanent you have to make the changes, shut the unit down then restart it before you let it synchronise with Garmin Connect otherwise the settings on the server take precedence and helpfully changes them back for you but doesn’t tell you that it’s done so – doh!

Bit of a thread bump – the friend with the Sigma Rox 12 that I mentioned a page or so back. She was up this weekend and we were trying out various settings and trying to upload routes. Infuriating. Not remotely intuitive in spite of a couple of reviews saying helpful things like “whack open your Strava and bosh the route across”.

Clearly written by someone who’s not actually tested it – at a guess one of those magazines that seen a press release and just regurgitated the thing in more “matey” language.

Unlike a Garmin, the computer won’t recognise it as an external drive to just shove files into, you HAVE to talk to it via the Sigma Data Centre. And finding the right buttons in all of that and on the unit means importing the file from Strava (or RWGPS, Komoot etc) into Sigma Data Centre where it then allows you to upload it to the unit. Eventually. But it’ll only do it when the unit is plugged in, not via wifi, even though the thing will download your ride straight to Strava via wifi afterwards. Or if there is a way of sending the route over wifi, we certainly couldn’t find it.

Shame because the unit itself is nice, the mapping is excellent and very detailed, it responds rapidly when zooming or scrolling. The nav part has various pre-built modes (MTB, road, tour, commute etc) and you can add others and the good part is that it’s very customisable, it’ll allow you to set MTB to avoid roads and prefer trails, while road can be set the opposite and Commute can be told to prefer cycle lanes while avoiding major roads so that bit was excellent. But the method of importing routes is patchy at best. Certainly not intuitive.

And reviews that read “just whack open your Strava” – what the hell is wrong with a nice simple list of instructions?! Get to this screen. Press that button.

Garmin seems to be divisive on this.

Agree, cycling is probably their smallest market and suffers for it. People buy it and recommend it, so it will never change. The cycling stuff always seems like they did a bit of research for Road and then just reboxed it for mountain.

Similar experience to many on here with discontinued support, flaky firmware, rubbish UX and all the rest.

Personally, if live Strava stages and the need to manually drag files off via a computer of some sort doesn’t bother you, I’d avoid their cycling stuff and look at the units aimed at walking. They’re a million times more useful.

It’s such a shame as the actual HW is possibly the best out there, just ruined by poor firmware/client software and a parent company that doesn’t give a crap about user support as they know they’ll still sell as many whatever they do.

I just bought an 820, have an 810 that has been pretty solid really. Got it out the box, plugged in and updated maps. That was it, couldn’t get it to restart at all, would turn on , boot through to main screen then after 5-1 seconds die. Sent back.

I’m idly on the lookout for an 810 if you happen to be selling 🙂

I’ve been running a Garmin 520 for 3 years now (average 3 times per week) and it’s never once let me down nor done anything i haven’t asked it to…. the display displays what it should, it uploads 1st time every time, the maps work as they should….

battery life could be better, but i turn the screen brightness right down and back light off for longer rides and it lasts a good 6 hours whilst guiding, longer if it’s just showing speed/time/distance/temp/etc/etc/etc…

6 hours, crumbs, that’s poor. Last time I used my Touring I got 12 hours out of it: started at 94%, switched to battery saver mode at 34%, made it to the hotel with it still alive and showing zero.

The Wife’s just bought an Edge 530, which looks like it will be going back as maps don’t appear to work on it. She’s raised a support call with Garmin and we’re waiting a response.

I bought a Polar V650 and Open Street Maps just worked out the box, selected an area, hit download and it just downloaded them and that was that. Garmin seems to have better functionality but doesn’t seem to want to work properly…

I meant “Explore” above, not “Touring”. Doh.

Seeing as the thread has been bumped already…

I did a ride on Sunday, downloaded the route from RWGPS. 2.5 miles into it, it crashed so I restarted it (twice, the first time you restart it’ll sit there looking for satellites all week so it always needs 2 restarts).

Reloaded the route and it navigated me around it, showed me the route, totalled up all the mileage, altitude etc with no issues. Got to the finish, stopped it and it offers you the Save / Discard screen options so I hit Save and the unit froze solid. Needed a full reset which then lost me the entire ride.

Utter garbage. How a unit called “Touring” can fail to guide around a 100km loop is beyond me. I deliberately went for something simple without all the power and performance metrics but even that is apparently too much for Garmin.