I'm only interested in making sure people understand what it is. I haven't looked at it too closely. So, I might be off on some of the details (at the least, it will serve to make sure people look carefully at the features).

"course points" work but they are somewhat too precise (they are very position dependent). By default, on the Garmins, they show up at the turns on the course when they'd be more useful to show up before the turns. Ridewithgps gives subscribers an option to move the course points earlier in the track/course. Bikeroutetoaster gives you the option to copy the course points earlier (so, each turn has two of them).

Maybe, the Elmnt/Bolt handle the course points better than the Garmins do.

It's possible that the Elmnt/Bolt are doing something that are kind-of like course points but Wahoo's own thing.

The Garmins with maps also provide "turn guidance" (big white arrows) in addition to the course points (you can use both together or one or the other separately). With these, you get big white arrows showing up about 0.1 miles before the turn. These are easier to see than course points and much less position dependent.

One benefit of the "turn guidance" is that it will work with any gpx track file.

Not too many things support "course points", which are an optional feature of tcx files. Ridewithgps does.

dcrainmaker says you get turn-instructions on the Bolt from course downloaded from ridewithgps.

The turn instructions he showed in the photos have labels that are longer than the labels of the course points ridewithgps writes to its tcx files. I don't know what's going on there. Maybe, one uses file exported by the "gpx route" option.

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https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/06/...oo-elemnt.html

* The navigation the Bolt has is the same that was added to the Elmnt in June 2016.
* "It’s basically only going to route you from Point A to Point B, using the directions pre-canned by RideWithGPS." (Sounds like course points or waypoints.)
* In the feature comparison table, dcrainmaker has "yes" for "ROUTABLE/VISUAL MAPS (LIKE CAR GPS)" for the Elmnt/Bolt but that appears to be wrong (based on dcrainmaker's description of the navigation on the Elmnt.

dcrainmaker seems to think adding maps to the Garmins is difficult. After doing it once, it's not that hard.

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No, probably not.

The 800/810/1000 have the same navigation features of the 520/510/500 but add "turn guidance" (big white arrows).

If you don't like the "turn guidance" (big white arrows), you don't have to use it.

Maps work better on the 800/810/1000 than they do on the 520 and the screens are bigger than on the 520.

The 520 sort-of supports maps (it's kind of a hack) but the size of the maps that can be installed on it is very small (making regularly dealing with maps for it too fussy).