Originally Posted by
mattbur
NJ,
You and others have mentioned "issues" involving the various Garmin's. What would be an example of an issue?? ie. software, hardware, programming?
And, it seems, according to some things I've read, that some of the Garmin's are more apt to have more problems than the others. Wouldn't it seem the best for a companies reputation to fix their problems as they arise and not allow problems to continue?
My 810, which got used over 2000 miles last year, crashed twice early on.
Once was a bad file that was present on the unit when I got it, resulting in the unit freezing. A call to Garmin tech. support was actually helpful with the correct solution. The 2nd crash was when I had created a route in Connect, downloaded via BlueTooth, started the ride then changed my mind and stopped the routing mid ride. The unit didn't like that and froze. I reset the unit. It had saved the ride to that point so I simply restarted as a new ride. That taught me that the unit doesn't like it when you stop a route while you are moving. No big deal, I won't do that again is all.
After that it's been fine (10 mos. of steady use). I create routes in Connect, which I find works very well. Turn by turn is pretty good and otherwise the units been stable.
Garmin has had a reputation over the years of poorly supporting the units, bad software, flaky units etc.. and it seems the units just need a few years and OS updates till they stabilize. Nobody has had many nice things to say about their tech support either and they don't typically have great suggestions for a problem. I personally think the units have gotten better, but the bottom line is, IMO, Garmin tends to not do a good job of field testing and fixing issues before they release products and this has been the theme about them that the first users of a new product are really beta testers.
Trouble is, I'm not sure anybody else is any better. It took a LONG time for Wahoo to get the Elemnt stable and I've read a few complaint s about Lezyne being slow to get advertised features onto the units. Polar might be the most stable, but at the end of the day the best units with the most features seems to be Garmin.