divtag

So, the battery on my CatEye died and I figure now might be a good time to finally upgrade to GPS so I can download and keep track of stuff. I was thinking I could spend my REI dividend towards one.

Can it keep track of two bikes? I ride equally on the road and on dirt and I would like to keep track of mileage and whatnot for each bike.

Alos, any other recs in lieu of the 500?

ModeratedUser150120149

A year ago I bought a 705 from REI as an experiment to see if it was practical for 2 bikes, hiking, navigation in a vehicle and, although not ideal, as a heart rate monitor in the gym. The experiment worked very well. It does a superb job on the bikes. The screen size is not ideal for car navigation but it does the job satisfactorily. In the gym I either drop the unit in my pocket, or zip tie it to the bike(take along a pair of cutters to cut the zip tie).

I considered the 500 and adding gps nav to my smartphone. The 705 was far more capable than the 500 and the idea of risking my smartphone to a bike accident while I was in need of calling for help gave me shivers.

Summary: It costs a bit more but value received from the 705 is far more than the additional cost.

Since then Garmin has released the 800. It has somewhat different features than the 705 and therefore is not a direct replacement. But, you may want to take a look at it to see if it would better suit your needs/desires.

urbanlegend

yes, the 500 can keep track of 2, even 3, bikes. i'm just starting to use this feature, so i'm not 100% sure about how it reflects in garmin connect, but i'll find out...

j

Looigi

Yes, only 3. That's a major, and unnecessary limitation. However, you can use it for nav. Although it doesn't have maps, you can download a GPX or TCX to it and it will display the track on the screen for you to follow. The advantage of the 705 is it can have maps and provide turn by turn cues much like car GPS. This is nice and a feature I use almost all the time, but it's not without its bugs.

Note that you cannot use the 20% member discount on GPS items, and you can probably find a 500 (or 705) for much less elsewhere.

luv2climb

Don't have a 500 anymore. Replaced it with the 800. To answer your question though, I think the 500 has only a total odometer and not a separate one for each bike.

If you have some more questions a great source is forums.Garmin.com.

urbanlegend

i have the 500 in front of me and you do have separate odometers.

if you go to menu, settings, bike settings, bike 1 (or 2 or 3), bike details, it shows you the bike info including odometer. you have to go to this menu every time you switch bikes so it keeps track appropriately.

you can even set the starting odometer if you're switching from another computer. for instance, when i purchased the 500, i already had 800 km on another computer. i entered 800 into the 500 and it kept track from there.

now i'm trying to figure out how to get garmin connect to separate out my bike 1/bike 2 rides.

j

Pug

Word on the Garmin forums is that they are working on this, but nothing available yet. I usually edit the title of my ride to include ID of the bike I did it on.