Garmin Edge 1000 - potential buyers beware

[Shut Up Legs]

You can get 12 out of it. 12 hours was my longest ride ever years ago.

Unless I can get about 15 hours from it, it's not worth buying.
Garmin (and GoPro, with their video cameras) have for years been piling on the features with their products, completely neglecting the basics, e.g. reliability and battery life.

 

[Nomadski]

My Edge 820 can't handle circular routes when you go even slightly off course for a moment. If you decide to go to a cafe or take a shortcut cutting off even a few metres of planned course, the remainder of your ride will be stuffed as it lists the final destination as your next waypoint, and no other information regarding remaining distance left etc Even trying to reload the course doesn't work.

It's nice and small, but it's crap.

 

[Heisenberg71]

Unless I can get about 15 hours from it, it's not worth buying.
Garmin (and GoPro, with their video cameras) have for years been piling on the features with their products, completely neglecting the basics, e.g. reliability and battery life.

For really long days in the saddle I use a portable battery pack. One thing Garmin is great at is fast charging. Stop for break / brew and boom you can add another c40% back in.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

For really long days in the saddle I use a portable battery pack. One thing Garmin is great at is fast charging. Stop for break / brew and boom you can add another c40% back in.

Yes, I've done exactly that on a 250km day ride I did a few years back. I just plugged in the charger during a lunch break, and that was enough to allow it to last until I got home (total elapsed time about 15 hours). That was with no route guidance turned on, though, just the basic trip recording turned on.

 

[Markymark]

I may try that myself, thanks for the tip. I found a link for a waterproof phone holder with bicycle mount, which will fit my Samsung Galaxy S5:
https://www.casebuddy.com.au/products/galaxy-s3-s4-s5-waterproof-bike-holder?variant=1074686216

One thing I don't like about my Garmin Edge 800 is that its odometer is rubbish. The odometer on my previous Garmin, an Edge 705, went up to at least 100,000km, but the Edge 800 odometer is limited to 42,949.7km, because it appears to store the distance in a 32-bit number and with too fine a precision. If it was stored with a precision of 0.1km, then it could go up to any distance I could possibly ride on a single bike, but some idiot at Garmin obviously decided cyclists would never ride more than about 43,000km on a bike!

Lots of new phones are water resistant so check that out before waterproofing it.

 

[Tenacious Sloth]

How many days are you cycling from LEJOG, 14 days?

Yep. 14 days. Thought about 10 days, but that would mean less time in the bar each night.

Perfect as I'm doing LEJOG starting 17th June. Good luck and enjoy the ride what type of route are you planning ? I'm looking to avoid main roads as Mcgowan as possible, I as looking at Royston Woods Safer route, this has GPx files linked to it.

I'm using a company, Peak Tours. Rather surprisingly their route seems to take us over the Cairngorms rather than the lower-lying Fort William/Caledonian Chanel route to Inverness. Should be interesting weather-wise in May. I notice that there is currently snow up there.

10 hours battery life is probably the main reason I never bought a Mio Cyclo: that's not even close to being enough.

I have a small battery pack wrapped in inner tube rubber and velcroed to my stem that, when plugged into the Mio, increases battery life to several days. I think the battery pack, which is very small, cost me £8.95 from Amazon.

Graham

 

[Dogtrousers]

An infuriated Garmin user put his unit up for sale "pre-smashed to save you the trouble" See previous thread.
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/a-disgruntled-garmin-ebay-seller.203974/

 

[Markymark]

And don't get me started on the....if you haven't used your crappy garmin for a few weeks it'll take 20 minutes to lock on to GPS. Seriously, my phone does it in seconds.

 

[Lpoolck]

An infuriated Garmin user put his unit up for sale "pre-smashed to save you the trouble" See previous thread.
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/a-disgruntled-garmin-ebay-seller.203974/

Brilliant!

 

[Crackle]

@Lpoolck Are you using Garmin connect for your mapping? I have found it to be too buggy for course creation. Instead I use ridewithgps. If necessary I put the ridewithgps routes in Garmin connect for downloading off my phone. Unfortunately the mapping site you choose to use has a great influence on how successful your routing is. One of them, I can't remember which, will not cope with you going back over roads you've already done, it might be Garmin Connect. Ridewithgps/Bikehike in combo with Openstreetmap has worked extremely well for me so far and I've experimented with a few combos including Garmins own maps.

Also, turn off any maps which you aren't using and check your map following settings, there are some websites which advise on this. If your unit stops giving directions, pausing it or switching off/on seems to bring it back to life.

I know a lot of people have issues with Garmins but like most tech (including phones) you need to learn their idiosyncracies. Once you do, they do work really well.

 

[PK99]

My Edge 820 can't handle circular routes when you go even slightly off course for a moment. If you decide to go to a cafe or take a shortcut cutting off even a few metres of planned course, the remainder of your ride will be stuffed as it lists the final destination as your next waypoint, and no other information regarding remaining distance left etc Even trying to reload the course doesn't work.

It's nice and small, but it's crap.

switch off auto recalculate. at the moment it is simply doing what you have told it to do

 

[MikeG]

switch off auto recalculate. at the moment it is simply doing what you have told it to do

Well wouldn't it seem blindingly obvious to anyone with a GPS that if you want the damn thing to put you back on course it should re-calculate automatically after a deviation? Why should anyone have to know some secret little bit of something such that you turn off the very thing that you think you want the machine to do in order to get it to do what you want?

 

[PK99]

Well wouldn't it seem blindingly obvious to anyone with a GPS that if you want the damn thing to put you back on course it should re-calculate automatically after a deviation? Why should anyone have to know some secret little bit of something such that you turn off the very thing that you think you want the machine to do in order to get it to do what you want?

Recalculate what? You have told it where yo want to go, so it tells you how to get there.


On the 800 there is a "distance to course" display setting - that's the one you want

http://www.scarletfire.co.uk/foolproof-course-navigation-on-the-garmin-edge-800/

 

[MikeG]

Recalculate what? ......

The shortest way to rejoin the course from which you have deviated.

If "auto recalculate" doesn't mean "recalculate automatically", can you understand why a user might a bit cheesed off with this £400 item?

 

[PK99]

The shortest way to rejoin the course from which you have deviated.

If "auto recalculate" doesn't mean "recalculate automatically", can you understand why a user might a bit cheesed off with this £400 item?

It does depend on how the course is drawn/set in terms of fixed points.

If you have beginning and end only (which is what seems to happen if you get the device to convert a ridden route into a course or some mapping programs) it recalculates to the next fixed point - ie end point, which is the instruction you have given it.

If you have plotted long sections between points and let RWGPS plot the route, then leave the route, it recalculates to the next fixed point (iirc)

Best way to plot, is to put in lots of fixed points along the route to fix you to your desired roades and set auto ON I think it might then take you to the next fixed point, but I'm not sure as I switch auto recalculate off.

In Automotive display mode with auto recalculate mode off, you get a bleep on going off course, but the course "tramlines" remain visible, and navigating back is easy. I sometimes choose to go off course (eg to a known pub or café) and then take a route that I know will intersect my plotted route, I happily ride until I get a "bleep" and "course found" display.