It's not going to be for everybody. Everybody knows that. That is, of course, part of the reason for the 530 (and 830).

The solar version is a special case. Not many people need it but some people will still get it if they don't need it (and give Garmin an extra $150).

With inflation, the 1040 is cheaper than the 1000.

So this past weekend Mrs. NoWhammies and I did a century route. The markings on the route were wrong and one point and we (along with many others) were off route. My 1030+ was telling me how to get back on route. A few lefts and rights later and blammo! Back on route we were. Based on experience with route finding on the 520, which is non-existent, I was pleasantly surprised.

I don’t imagine it is any different on the 1030+ from the 1030, and what you’re describing is exactly how the 1040 has worked (which is exactly as the 1030), with one HUGE exception. I’ll explain the 1040 behavior since this thread is about the 1040.

Yes, you can load a course and start off of the track. It will ask if you want to navigate to the start, as we have established. If you select no and just start riding, at some point (within a very short distance, 50-100m typically) it will ask if you want to recalculate, and if you allow it, it will take you to the closest point of the track (which may still be the start point, but not necessarily). Once you get to the track, it will “re-join” the course and then navigation proceeds.

The exception I noted above is an option to pause navigation. This can be achieved two ways. First, you can tap the screen while riding and a “Pause Navigation” dialog will pop up, if you tap that, it just stops giving TBT directions, but the course is still visible…when you rejoin the course it will automatically restart navigation. The other way to pause navigation is to ride off the course a short distance, and it will offer a dialog to ‘Pause Navigation” or “re-calculate”, if you chose the latter it will either try to route you back to where you left the course or to rejoin further along the course, this behavior is not selectable by the rider, which might be a little annoying based on a person’s expectations, but overall, the interaction with the navigation is much improved from the 1030.

Related to these things is how much faster the device recalculates the course and redraws the maps while navigating. It is not as fast a mobile phone running a navigation app, but it is more than fast enough for bike riding. Every time. The lags in the 1030 in this respect have been fixed based on my use of the device for nearly 6 weeks now, riding almost daily and nearly always following a course.

Which is the same for the 1040. See my post above about the navigation behaviors when “leaving” a route.

My 530 will do that. Happened to me last year on a 75 mile ride.

Now that I think about it perhaps the "walking" the course on my 830 is related to me having Recalculation disabled. I typically want to run a course exactly as plotted. If I do deviate from a course I'll manually rejoin it without the Garmin coming up with a way to rejoin the course that might skip large sections. Back with my 800 I recall being near the start of a 200 km brevet and it recalculated to send me directly to the finish skipping 180 km, which I chose to ignore.

With the 1040 this is much simpler now. When you deviate from a course, it will give the option to pause or recalculate. If you pause navigation, it won't do anything until you rejoin the course and then it will pick back up navigating. If you select recalculation it will try to get you back to the course at the point you deviated or at some point further along in the course. I can't really say why it does one or the other, but I've noticed that it is variable. Generally, however, I just pause, and let it pick up once I get back on track, so to speak. I suspect that the likely next gen Edge 8xx and 5xx will do this as well.

Am I missing something here? If I get off course my 530 will do the same thing you are explaining except it just recalculates the route right away instead of giving you the option to pause or recalculate.

Nope, you got it. The x30 series Edge computers gave you the option to allow auto recalculation, or prompted recalculation…in theory I weld tell my 1030 to not recalc, but at some point it would just go ahead and recalc, which led to all kinds of annoying reminders and prompts. Now, the x40 series (I assume the subsequent smaller units will follow the 1040) allow for pausing navigation. That can be done by simply riding off course and selecting it (like I did a couple of times today on my 75km “long" ride home from work) or tapping the map screen while riding and then tapping the “Pause Navigation” button that it brings up.

It’s a minor change to the user interface, but one I find to be quite useful and very handy. As I mentioned above, when you ride back onto the course it begins to navigate automatically.

I just got my hands on a 1030 plus and I certainly hope the screen on the 1040 is as good as the one on the 830. It is baffling to me that the screen on the 830 is superior to the 1030 / 1030 plus in every way aside from size. Better contrast, better color vibrancy, and brighter.

Garmin added features for navigation on the Plus, that were not and have not been available to the 1030. Rejoin, skip-ahead and Cut Across are not available on the 1030.

I have the 1040 Solar and am happy with it. It's serious overkill for me but I like the large screen and the fact that's it's solar. I am also a bit of a gadget nut...

Navigation on the 1030+ annoys the crap out of me. When I need nav, I prefer to use my watch. Fenix provides a much better user experience for navigation.

I was riding with a buddy last Saturday, he had a 1030+ and I had a 1040. I built a route that turned back over itself multiple times in a small area (so we could climb the same hill on 2 unique cobbled ascents and then descend on the gravel trails). He told me that I was gonna have to handle the routing on that spot because his would freak out. Sure enough, on the second ascent, with a different turn for a different descent, he informed me his was saying to take the first turn and the first descent…the 1040 was just fine. Anecdotal, but I’ve noticed several times that it handles these types of routes without any fuss.

How is the phone connectivity on the 1040? I'm particularly interested in Android. I am pretty happy with my 830, but the phone connectivity seems like it's not that great. I have it upload rides on my wifi, for example.
I suppose I could try it again now that they have updated firmware many times.

I can't speak for Android, as I use an iPhone 13, which is running the iOS 16 beta. The BT connectivity has been flawless for me since the start. It always, without any fail so far, connects to the phone and does a full sync in about 15 seconds, upon start up and remains connected for as long as the device is powered on. I think there ae some users complaining about the BT connectivity in the Garmin forums, but I've just not had any of the issues people are claiming. One thing to note, my older 1030 was challenged to sync/upload rides when I was at home and the device was simultaneously connected to the phone and wifi, but I have not experienced this at all with the 1040.

That's good news, as I recall the connectivity on the 830 was worse on iOS than on Android, at least when it first came out.

No connection issues between my 1040 Solar and an iPhone 13 Pro..

I don't turn on phone pairing on the 1040 until I want to upload my ride to Garmin Connect, but when I do turn it on, it often fails to pair until after I restart the 1040.

I note that there's another thread here mentioning new firmware, so I'll need to check it out and see if it fixes pairing.

What you describe is what should happen. It takes both devices, the phone as well as the 1040 to be actively searching for BT. When the 1040 starts up it will do a BT search. If it's already on it's not searching for a connection though it will use BT if there is a connection. You can go to the main menu, disable the phone connection and re-enable, it will then search for BT.

With the 1030, at the end of a ride, I will (i) swipe down, (ii) select the Phone menu, and (iii) Enable, and it'll find my phone and start synching with Garmin Connect. After the ride data has synched, I would then turn that setting Off and it will remain that way until the end of my next ride.

If I try to do that with the 1040, often it will not be able to find my phone until after I restart the device.

Anyway, looks like Garmin Connect is sending the software update to the 1040, so we'll see if it still behaves this way over the weekend.

Sounds like the 1040 is not correctly enabling a search for a BT connection. The 1030 works fine at this. I leave my phone setting enabled at all times on the 1030, mostly as I use LiveTrack, which is (finally) very reliable. I have not had BT connection issues for about 2 years, after a period of issues every time Apple updated the iPhone OS.