Just got a new (used) 305 on eBay, great shape, cadence and HR, shipped for $135. And it arrived to my door almost 48 ours to the minute after I won the auction. Amazing.

Anyway, any of you Garmin owners want to share some of your best tips? Anything at all...I'm finding the manual lacking and not too many of the online resources I've found so far are a lot better. Anything at all...thanks

And the two questions:

1) Do most of you keep current with the firmware, chipset firmware, etc? This one is at 3.10 right now, there's 3.20 out there....worth the upgrade?
2) From what I can glean from here and elsewhere SportTracks seems to be the software of choice. Anyone want to concur?

Thanks folks!

Don't sweat on it, the salt corrodes the connections to the start/stop reset buttons. I had to send my back for repair and their customer service isn't that great in my experience.
I use both SportTracks and Garmin SW for recording my rides.... I'm surprised in the elevation gain between the two.

Search the forums, umd posted some good stuff a while back.

The Edge 305 is a great gadget. I bought mine used as well two+ years ago, it has worked flawlessly.
If you are a Mac user get Ascent from Montebello Software.

https://www.montebellosoftware.com/index.html

I bought mine new about 6 weeks ago and it came with 3.20. It's worked flawlessly but I don't know the differences between 3.10 and 3.20. I use Garmin Connect & MapMyRide. I'd like to try SportTracks but I'm a Mac user and out of luck (unless I feel like junking up my Mac and run Win virtually).

I'd also like to try Ascent, but not willing to drop the money right now.

SportTracks is great for the price.

I'm on my second 305. The first one lasted about 6 months or so before it started shutting off. This is the dreaded issue with the battery contacts failing. I sent the unit back (still under warranty) and the replacement has worked very well so far. I've ridden on some rough roads several times and it this one seems to be holding up pretty well. We shall see...

I've been very pleased with SportTracks and several plugins. The elevation correction, weather info and power track plugins work very well.

Get SportTracks and the Power plugins for Sporttracks....browse the rest of the plugins for ones that stirike you fancy. I had a 305 for a little over year and it worked flawlessly until the battery connection shortly after the warranty ran out. I had a great experience with Garmin customer support and they got me a new unit in about 4 days. They were pleasant easy to deal with, concerned about my problem. They now have a customer for life I had such great experience with them. I upgraded to the 705 with pwoertap and despite issues with the 705 firmware I continue to have great customer service experiences when I contact them.

Sport tracks is the way to go until you upgrade to a power meter and then you will upgrade to WKO+ and based on reading your posts.....it's not if you upgrade to a PM but when

I was waiting for that...

Don't forget to press "Start"

Should be getting mine tomorrow morning at 10 AM.

Hey, welcome back!

Garmin 305 is underrated. Sporttracks will drive you crazy for about a month while you work out how to use it, then it is OK. I create courses on Bikely as GPX, then upload to map my ride and convert them to TCX. I use Training Centre to upload to 305. TC is not a patch on sporttracks.

If you ride solo, along the same route and with not too much traffic, then the virtual partner is brilliant. You can race near your PB for every metre of the ride whenever you like., IMHO it is better than a power meter for endurance training.

I was going to buy a 705, but figured out how to overcome a TC bug when loading courses, so now I am back with my old 305. Still liking it lots!

davida

I'm on my 4th one. The previous three had the battery contact issues.

I wonder how common this is... I had the same problem with the unit constantly shutting down in the middle of my rides.
When I contacted Garmin support they told me they were unaware of any issues with teh 305 spontaneously shutting down. After several emails and having to get the original sales receipt from REI they finally issued me a return number. It's been 10 days since I sent it back and I still haven't heard back from them. I could contact them myself but I'm waiting to see if they're going to contact me to let me know it's been fixed or if a replacement is on it's way.

Otherwise I still got a problem free year out of it, and I think it's the best bike computer Ive ever owned.

+1 - best tip so far.

Give them a few more days. It took mine about 10 days to arrive. It had "Upgraded" on the little plastic bubble wrap baggie and so far it has worked well. From what I have read the shutting off problem is quite prevalent. I had very good luck with the folks at Garmin, basically told them the unit was about 6 months old and they cross-checked that with when I first registered the thing. So, for the folks just getting yours it might be worth your while to go to the Garmin website and register your device.

While on the subject of registering an "upgraded" Edge: When I tried to register the exchange unit I got, the website would not recognize the serial number. Since it was basically a refurb, i guess it still had the prior owner's name associated to it. So, I called the Garmin 800 number and went through the whole deal with the rep. They were very nice and in a few minutes the refurbed unit was registered to me.

I had mine for about a year when the shutdown problem started occurring. Over the next six months it got much worse. I called Garmin, they said they were aware of the problem, and that they would send me another that wouldn't have any more of these type of problems. I sent in my unit and got another one about 10 days later. No problems about six months later. I was pretty happy with their customer service.

Yeah, I heard about the "shutdown" issue but for the price I paid I was willing to risk it. It will also let me know, cheaply, if the Garmin works for me and, if it should die I'd know whether or not getting a 705 will be the right thing to do.

Thanks all for the ideas. And yes, SportTracks is annoying to learn, sheesh!

You don't actually need to go to all that trouble. If you create routes at Bike Route Toaster you can then upload them directly to your Edge from Bike Route Toaster using the Download to Garmin GPS tcx option on the Summary tab. This is nice as there's no need to convert the file to another format and mess with uploading it to the Edge via Training Center, it's a one click operation right from Bike Route Toaster online, all free as well.

Creating routes like this and then following them as I ride has made my Edge worth it's weight in gold.

The 305 isn't all that reliable, I've had to send mine back to Garmin 3 times under warranty. That said, my take on their support is excellent. Very nice and the longest time any of the returns took was 8 days for the round trip to Kansas and back to Tennessee (and that was over the July 4th holiday). And they replaced the unit with a new one, each time.

The Garmin elevation gain is pretty good, but the signal is a bit noisy. How the different sites filter the data will affect the total elevation gain quite a bit.

I'm just going to go under the assumption that my used one is a diamond amongst coal and that it will last as long as I do

Wow, a white package just arrived.... my Garmin, fixxed.
Nice customer servic not sending me an email with tracking information so I'd know it was on it's way.
At least it didn't get stolen from my mailbox, which has happened before.
Quick turn around though. I'll be interested in seeing if I have any more problems with it.
But all in all, I'm glad to have it back.

What will Sport tracks do for me that I can't get from Garmin Connect? I signed up for it but I may not have studied enough to appreciate it. I really like Garmin Connect but I had some problems with Training Center.

When researching before buying one I used to laugh and think "what a bunch of idiots" every time I read that.

Then my first ride I forgot to hit start.

And many rides after that...

Make sure you familiarize yourself with the garmin connect site.

That way, you can share and upload rides like this: https://connect.garmin.com/activity/19228203