TheManShow

Might not have even spelled Garmin right, but the end result was no sale. Lost of bells, whistles, but honestly I still just want to go out and ride, and look at the desert.

Looigi

There's not a second goes by that I don't buy something I don't need or want.

unterhausen

I am not a big fan of speedometers/odometers. I have a garmin 800 for navigation. The 510 will do navigation, just not as well

TheManShow

Well I am in the process of getting all the componants to build a dream bike. I do want something to do the following.

Tell Time of Day

Tell Distance Rode today, and distance over all since I last reset odometer

Current Speed

Current Cadence

Average Speed on ride

Fastest Speed on ride

I can carry & read a map, and tell direction am traveling by landmarks.

The Garmin unit are very cool but were not in my build budget.

J.C. Koto

You could look into something like the CatEye Strada Cadence CC-RD200 which does everything you mention for about $40 US.

I don't own this unit, and there are probably cheaper options available, just posting it as an example.

InTheRain

My garmin edge 200 may be one of my worst bicycle related purchases ever. I was hoping to switch it between bikes and only have one bike computer. I guess I accomplished my goal... I now have one bike computer that I can share among many bikes... and it doesn't work on any of them. It's a "POS." It takes it up to 20 minutes to "acquire position" if it acquires it at all. It's totally useless if it can't acquire position... all it does is take up space in the cockpit.

It has pretty much insured that I never buy, or even look at, another garmin product again. I like to take nearly every opportunity to share a negative review of garmin. I hope that every race team sponsored by garmin get's lost en-route during a race. I better stop now, I can only continue to say worse and worse things about garmin.

jimc101

There's something really wrong with it if it's taking over a minute, as long as it's uptodate via Garmin Express, no clouds, should be under 20 seconds, cloud cover will increase this upto a minute or so, which can feel far longer, if you really are taking 20 minutes, would be contacting Garmin for warranty replacement (if still under warranty),

Seattle Forrest

Yours is clearly defective and should be replaced.

bbbean 

Love my 510. Don't ride without it. But I love habanero powder on my peanut butter, too. It's almost like we all have our own unique set of preferences and priorities. Go figure.

If you don't care about monitoring your speed/distance/hr/power/cadence/route, why are you looking at bike computers? When I walk though a department store they try to sell my cologne (sopmething I have mno interest in), but I don't go to the net to post about it.

SammyJ 

Love my EDGE 500, have not tried habanero powder on peanut butter, but I will!

ItsJustMe

GPSs WILL take a LONG time to acquire position if you have moved them hundreds of miles, or had them off for weeks, then turn them on. I've had them take 20 minutes to acquire if that happens.

If they've been synced up in the last week or so and in about your current location, they should get lock within a minute. If it's been since the day before, should be less than 30 seconds.

The problem is that they know what satellites were overhead last time they were on and they listen for those. If they can't find them, they have to bail out to square one, start hunting the entire constellation until they find a satellite, then they have to download a current ephemeris to know what other satellites might be in position and to know exactly where they are so that they can do the triangulation.

tjkoko

A fifteen minute topographic map of the area along with a military lensatic compass fully satisfy me. And there's the U.S. Army Manual entitled Map Reading and Land Navigation that accompanies the lensatic and topos. Written just for those two reference materials. And with a speedometer, I'm there. Yeah, high tech.

bbbean 

To give credit where credit is due, I read an article in Bicycling about making Sriracha peanut butter. I thought it sounded weird, but since I like both Sriracha and peanut butter, I gave it a try. Great stuff. A little more experimentation found that hab powder was even better. I have a theory that eating a lot of capsacin containing foods builds my pain tolerance. If anyone has any evidence that that isn't the case, keep it to yourself!

On topic: Just because you have a bike computer doesn't mean you have to use it.

TheManShow

I have an old Cateye hard wired unit that is over 15 years old. It does everything I want it too. I will check out your recomendation.

InTheRain

defective products get bad reviews. I'm not really in the mood for a drawn out battle with a garmin "customer service representative." I've been in a bike shop a few times when people have been looking to buy a garmin or bike computer and I've shared my experience. Each time I've seen them buy something else or walk out with nothing at all. I'm sure it's pissed off the local bike shop people. They have a right to sell garmin and I have a right to share my opinion... even if it's in there shop.

I shared my experience with the shop that sold me the garmin. There response was, "wow! that's too bad." No offer to help out. But I like the guys at the bike shop... they didn't build the product. I don't like garmin.

geehue

I like something that keeps track of speed/distance/time/average speed. A GPS does this for me more easily and accurately than did either wired or wireless computers with wheel sensors. I found that at the least opportune moment, I'd go over a bump, the sensor or the wheel magnet would move out of position a bit, and I'd lose the data. With a GPS unit, I sometimes lose the signal momentarily under a bridge or in deep forest, but it comes back. If you don't need the bells and whistles (maps, power meter compatibility, e-mail notifications, automatic comparisons of your cadence with that of Vincenzo Nibali, etc.), both Cateye and Garmin do GPS models that are otherwise functionally identical to wheel-sensor computers, and they can be had for $80 to $120 or so.

noglider 

I've been using a Garmin Edge 200 for about a year and a half, and it serves me well. I have a handlebar mount for one of my bikes and a wristband mount (which I put on my wrist) for the others. I get GPS errors in Manhattan, but there isn't much to do about that. The tall buildings make a lot of reflections.

fietsbob

Spotted this , here : Garmin launches Edge 20 and Edge 25 GPS bike computers | Cyclingnews.com

small as a simple wheel rotation counting bike computer ,
but because of the power needed to send/receive signals to the satellites in orbit,
battery life is said to be 8 hours , so turn it off when not seeking to feed your Data needs.

noglider 

I'm pretty sure GPS units do not transmit. Satellites would be overwhelmed. And the transmitters would need to be pretty powerful.

fietsbob

I dont own one obviously .. on land it is just too easy to ask a Local for directions ,

but Im not a guy into the latest Electronics competitors ..

the fact that it was no bigger than the typical $20 wired computer did catch my attention span temporarily..

still the battery in my basic computer is an Annual replacement .. that does not last a full Day, in the summer.

Seattle Forrest

It's easy to ask directions, but not as easy to say where you've been. I used to have a state map up on the wall, and I'd take a highlighter to it when I rode a new route. It was a cumbersome, time consuming process, and not completely accurate. Now the computer does it for me.

noglider 

@fietsbob, you're right that these two models are attractive in size and price. I agree that needing to charge yet another thing is annoying, especially compared with the basic computer whose battery you might not have to change for TWO years or more.

I got my Garmin because I own too many bikes, and equipping each one with a basic computer became intractable. I want a decent (though not perfect) tally of miles over each year, so it made sense for me. It also cost less than a basic computer for each bike.

andr0id

I've had a 305, a 705 and and now use an 810.

They are all quirky and as a SW Engineer, they definitely exhibit some shortcomings in code quality.

My major beefs have been when they just flat out refuse to talk to a sensor that I know is good. How do I know it's good? Because my cell phone also talks ANT+ and I can read them on my phone, but not on the 810. So I have to reboot a few times. Also the Bluetooth connection from the 810 to my phone and Connect is equally flakey. Sometime it connects, sometimes it just refuses until I restart the Garmin.

But they have all *mostly* worked and I am an instrumentation maniac, so I wouldn't want to ride without one.

And it does move from bike to bike with relative ease.

Seattle Forrest

I agree; Garmin typically makes good hardware, and leaves it with an enormous untapped potential. Or to be less polite about it, their software drops the ball in annoying ways. InTheRain talks about his Garmin not being able to acquire a satellite fix half the time and taking 20 minutes when it does work; that's obviously defective and not representative of the kinds of things that typically frustrate people who use a Garmin. I'm disappointed that my GPS watch doesn't support auto-lap by position (only by distance) and that it only records minimal info from my power meter.

When the 810/phone connection gets flakey you might be able to fix it by turning Bluetooth off and then back on in your phone (maybe and then bringing Connect Mobile up). That always fixes it when my Fenix 3 loses the connection.