Cat Eye Stealth 90 vs. Garmin Edge 500
 

My wife bought me a Cat Eye Stealth 90 cycling computer with speed and cadence meter and heart rate monitor for Christmas last year. I was very excited because it uses ANT technology so I could eventually add a power meter when the price came down and it had GPS and an online fitness tool. The excitement ended pretty quickly. Right off the bat I was never able to sych this thing to any computer. My laptop saw it as a storage device so I couldn't take advantage of the online aspects. The unit was difficult to setup because it has two recessed buttons on the rear that you need to press to enter programming mode and then press one of the buttons to toggle between modes. Its hard to feel the buttons and even when I did the sequence correctly I would have to repeat it multiple times to enter the setup mode. In setup mode the computer would synch to my heart rate monitor but not the speed and cadence meter. I tried two other batteries in the S/C sensor and hitting the reset button on it for 10 seconds and moving the magnet back and forth near the sensor. it just wouldn't see it. I used it for a few months with GPS and the HRM for commuting but recently it started having a hard time locking onto the GPS satellites. I rode 20 miles to work and it never picked up my location. That was the last straw so I took it back to REI and traded them for an Garmin Edge 500.
OMG! What a joy the Garmin is! It instantly detects the HRM & S/C meter when I turn it on. The programming was intuitive just straight forward questions like sex, age, weight. The buttons are all easily accessible and they work! The screen is larger and you can configure several custom screens. My computer instantly recognized the device and uploaded my rides into the Garmin Connect website I had already been using for running.
I think it's no contest unless I got a bad computer. But I also bought a Cat Eye for my wife for her Birthday and hers was just as bad. Hers was also upgraded to the Edge. The Cat Eye makes a lot of promises it can't deliver on. On paper the Cat Eye the Cat Eye looks like a hands down winner over the more expensive Garmin but it fails to follow through on its promises.