I moved from a Garmin touring to a Coros dura this year, mainly cos the aged Garmin battery was running on fumes after 100k. It’s mostly used for navigating predetermined routes on solo rides and audaxes. And nabbing veloviewer tiles. I’ve no interest in sensors and monitors so I can’t offer an opinion on that, I’m afraid.
One thing that was new to me is the reliance on a phone app to configure the gps unit settings and send routes to it. There’s a small learning curve but I managed it with very little potty mouth, so it can’t be too bad. It’s nicer than repeatedly pressing buttons on the GPS unit, but pressing buttons isn’t a hardship.
The dura has been great for me so far. Things I like:
The battery life (main reason for buying) is huge. It lasted the LWL 400 and had half the charge left. And I’m a full-value rider. The solar top-up is a nice bonus but obviously weather and time of day dependent.
The nav screen has direction arrows which is great where a route loops back on itself (godsend on the new forest 200 and for tile-bagging for example)
Syncing routes from the app via Bluetooth, rather than using laptop and cables, works well (took me a little getting used to at first - Luddite!)
It hasn’t yet randomly frozen or turned off, which was an occasional “undocumented feature” of the Garmin.
I can use my Garmin mount with it
Ride with GPS pings routes to the app (distinct from the gps unit) with one mouse click.
Things I’m less keen on:
Occasionally the Bluetooth sync with the app doesn’t work and I have to restart the unit. The net hassle is roughly equivalent to loading a route to the Garmin with a cable, though.
It’s got a “hills” function that kicks in when it decides you’re on a hill, showing distance to the top, gradient, etc, but not the nav screen data. So I can’t work out the distance to the finish or next control if I’m on a climb. I’d turn it off but I quite like seeing how much hill is left.
It meets my needs very well so far and, from what I read on t’interweb, better than the established gps units would. So much so that I wasn’t upset when I realised I could have saved the cash and just replaced the Garmin battery 😁