UKC

Hi,

Looking at getting a Garmin bike computer, big driver is that my wife keeps getting lost on rides (although she wouldn't put it exactly like that). I'm sure that someone told me that on the Edge 810 there's a feature where you can say how long/far you want to ride, and it will plot an appropriate route from your current position. e.g. I'm in Bala, I want to go for a 40 mile ride, and it will pick a course. Can't find reference to this in any reviews, have I misunderstood? Mrs W really likes the idea of this, and I can see it being handy too.

Other option is the new Edge 520, but I think the navigation options on that are much more limited, anybody had both and got thoughts on which is best?

In reply to Sam W:

Just make sure, if you are in Bala, it doesn't send you on hill-repeats of Bwlch y Groes!

In reply to Sam W:

I have a mio 300 that has that feature . not used it though.

In reply to Sam W:

Thanks, looking at the Mio has allowed me to answer my original question as well, the feature I asked about only comes on the Edge 1000, Garmin call it 'Round Trip' routing

In reply to Sam W:

The Edge Touring also has this feature. If you don't need the bluetooth connectivity, the Edge is a good buy. I borrowed one for a week, but decided that I wanted the convenience of bluetooth so got an 810. There are lots of posts about the unreliability of the 810 as a navigation device. However, in my experience it's pretty reliable once you have it st up correctly.

Both the 810 and Touring have a nice linear route planner. You just tell it you want to cycle from A to B, but avoid main roads and off road sections. Trying this out locally it's routes have been more or less exactly what I would have chosen, with knowledge of the local roads.

In reply to wilkesley:

That's an absolute understatement..... its a complete fooking nightmare!

A 'memorable' trip was Oxford to Devizes.... turned into a 70 mile nightmare

The 810 routed me via wait for it Newbury! FFS. On numerous occasions it would say take a left and then when you did 100 meters down the road it would say Off Route do a U-Turn and then take you back to the the junction to carry on on the original road. A number of times it just got itself stuck in a permanent set of U-turns. It would repeatedly take you off a road to do a 3 to 4 miles 'senic tour' of a village to bring you back onto the original road 1/4 mile further up. But the worst thing was that it would take joy in routing you on farm/mud/gravel tracks not good for my expensive carbon wheels nor the cleats on my shoes after 2 miles of walking.

I did another ride down from London to Brighton Pier. Despite being stood at Trafalgar Square and the onboard map confirming it it refused to offer any other guidance than "Continue on Balham high road" It finally caught up with me around Horley. It can't even (reliably) follow a route created in and downloaded from Garmin Connect.

Even when it does get it mostly right you go to offload the activity and find it corrupted beyond repair. I lost a number of sections of my London Paris bike ride last year to this.

Its currently sat in a draw at home having not been touched since the day the Edge1000 was launched.

The Edge1000 is an absolute peach of a unit..... I love it!

BTW before anyone says anything about Set-Up it was fully and properly set up.

In reply to Indy:

My experience is almost the opposite of yours. A couple of times it has told me to do a U turn on a straight bit of road, where the track on the map clearly goes straight on. Ignoring it and continuing on it sorts itself out after a couple of hundred yards. I have never had a corrupted activity and I have had no problems with it trying to route me along tracks instead of roads. I use RideWithGPS to create my routes and Openstreetmap as the map on the Garmin.

I bought mine from Amazon fully expecting to return it after having read many negative reviews. However, I can only say that my experience has been surprisingly positive.

In reply to wilkesley:

Yes, I don't disagree. Looking at DCRainmaker there appears to be people in both camps. Anyway, even if the 810 had worked flawlessly the 1000 is so much better I would have got it anyway.

I got the 810 Ultimate Package with the Discovery OS mapping which is just crap for the small low res screen. I did speak to Garmin a couple of times and thought of taking it back for a replacement to see if that sorted things out but to be honest I couldn't be arsed having wasted far too much time on it anyway. As I should have said Good Fooking riddance to it!

In reply to Indy:

What's the advantages of the 1000, apart from the obvious it works for you whereas the 810 didn't? Is it just a larger screen, or have Garmin added some more useful features?

In reply to Sam W:

I don't have experience with the Edge 810 specifically, but opinion on using cycling GPS computers for navigation is that they are [i]far[/i] better when the route is planned in advance so that you know you'll get a route that matches your needs, whether that be direct, scenic, hilly, flat, etc. Using the computer to do it may get you from A to B but it will often be far from an ideal route (unless the route planning features have come on a lot). Perhaps it is just that I like to know where I'm going as I find that having a rough knowledge of the route helps with navigation even when using GPS, so if you're not so bothered by that then it may be fine for you.