OK, I'm ready for a GPS
 

but here's what I want
when I google map a ride for cycling it gives me too many turns to remember so i want to get a gps that works like my car gps
you tell it where you want to go and it takes you the shortest route
in my dreams I'd be able to adjust my google map and download it to the gps but that's just a dream
my budget is cheap like $200 or $300

your thoughts?

btw: my inspiration is from today. I googled a route to my new workplace for cycling but there were too many turns to remember so I just took a direct rout on rodas with good signage but it was much longer than it needed to be.

Prepare to be disappointed.

I wanted the same thing. It doesn't quite exist. You can get close though.

I have a Garmin eTrex Vista Hcx ($200 or so on Amazon). I also paid nearly $100 for the maps (may be optional). I draw my routes with RideWithGPS.com. I download a GPX track file. I import that into my Garmin software (Basecamp), then upload it to the GPS. That gives me a line on the GPS screen to follow, but doesn't give me turn-by-turn directions.

I tried downloading the GPX of the route to get turn-by-turn, but that rarely works. I sort-of works out in the country where there are few roads. It doesn't work at all in the city.

No matter what you buy, it'll be a learning experience with a dash of frustration. :)

hmmm ... so what DOES a cycling gps do?

how bout this one. ad says it does turn by turn directions

http://www.amazon.com/Garmin-Edge-60...387772&sr=8-14

Google Navigation on my Android smart phone works just like my Tom Tom car GPS. My wife and I don't even use the car GPS any more,

Don in Austin

Read the reviews. Turn-by-turn does not work as expected. I don't have an Edge, so I can't comment on that model.

I chose mine for the AA batteries - as I use it for touring. When my planned route didn't exist, I was able to use turn-by-turn to get me around it. I haven't reliably found a way to pre-plan a route and get turn-by-turn directions for that route.

Don't blame JUST Garmin. I don't think anybody has this down yet.

I have tried just about every iPhone solution as well as a Garmin Edge 500 and concur that nobody quite has this solution licked, especially at your price point.

I have the Garmin 705 - works fine for turn by turn. I got mine on eBay last year for $300 (refurb)

Also, forget the phone route - been there done that - flattens your battery in an hour. The 705 will go 12+ hours without a charge. Best piece of kit I ever bought for the bike bar none.

Here's the same bundle I got (hear+cadence included) for $300. Highly recommended.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/GARMIN-EDGE-...item45fd307b58

Buy an Iphone and download the Mapquest App

Again - the constant comms with satellites will kill your phone in approx an hour. IMHO - you dont need "turn by turn" if your within an hour of home :) Makes using a phone inpractical.

Have you tried printing out the google map?

Most (bike-portable) GPS units will do a route. You'll have to generate this externally, on a computer, and download it to the GPS. The DeLorme units are pretty good at telling you roughly where to turn; unfortunately, you have a choice of staring at the GPS or checking it to find you should have turned a quarter mile back.

My personal opinion is that GPS for a bike in 2011 is like a laser in 1969 -- it's a solution looking for a problem. I'll give a minor exemption to the Garmin unit (705?) with a restaurant and hotel lookup function -- good for a touring cyclist with a cell phone to find a bed in the east.

Dont forget the 705's usefullness as a training aid. After a ride I hook it up to the PC and my ride data is saved/displayed including map route, time, elevation...etc. Its a great tool that helps you look back a year and see your improvements.
If mine broke tomorrow I would go out and buy another the same day :)

I love my GPS too. It just doesn't do exactly what I imagined it would.

I use a Garmin Dakota 20 for this purpose. I decided to get a bicycle GPS after riding from Seattle to Olympia with a huge stack of Google map print outs. I still got lost a few times when I missed turns on unmarked roads or bicycle paths with no names. Because it was raining, the papers started disintegrating as well, but mostly I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time stopping, looking at maps, and wondering if I had missed a turn.

You can get the Bike and Hike bundle with the Dakota 10 for $240 at Amazon right now--it includes with a Garmin US Map and bike mount. The 10 doesn't support ANT+ like the 20 does, so if you want cadence and heart rate it recorded on the same device, it won't work for you. I think it may be missing elevation as well and not support micro SD cards, but 400 MB is a pretty good amount of space.

The US map costs $100 separately if you don't go with the Bike and Hike bundle. It allows you to calculate routes like a car GPS does, but it's not nearly as good as Google maps for bicycle routes as it doesn't really have any bicycle trails, so I mostly only find it useful for when I'm in the car. It also has POI (points of interest) which was convenient on a tour when I wanted to know where the nearest restaurant was. Unfortunately, it doesn't know what times restaurants are open.

I didn't go the smart phone route mostly because I didn't want to pay a monthly fee and the Dakota is both waterproof (up to 1 meter) and fairly durable. I've also heard smart phones run out of charge fairly quickly whereas I've used the Dakota for roughly two days per pair of AA's while on a tour.

You can actually load Google map routes to the Dakota and I frequently do so, as Google's bicycle routing is much better than the car-centric Garmin's routing. After you plot a route, grab the bookmarkable link for it (currently a button at the top right), and paste it to http://www.nearby.org.uk/multi-to-kml.php . This allows you to convert the map to KML format.

Then go to http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ and upload the KML and choose GPX as the output. You can then load that into BaseCamp (the program Garmin has you use to interact with the Dakota). I've never tried to actually get turn-by-turn notifications to work, but just having a marked path and map to follow has been fine for me.

If you choose not to go with the Bike and Hike bundle and don't want to pony up $100 for a map, note that the base map that comes with the unit is pretty useless. There are great maps for free here: http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/state/all . The downside is that you won't get turn-by-turn routing or POI.

Let me know if you have any questions about my set up.

Thank you David Chen for the info about the Dakota 20. We just ordered one!

Found one online for $219. Planning on getting a micro SD card for more space. The AA batteries was a big plus also.

We plan to use it on the bikes, for hiking, and driving backroads.

My SO and I are GIS/GPS professionals, working with expensive GPS units on the job, but at home we are sort of luddites. We have a very old Garmin Etrex Vista that we seldom used.

Now we are looking forward to loading it up with topo maps and files (from the website you suggested) and heading into the backcountry with it.

I use a Vista HCx also. I put the Opencycling maps in it so it will have the main cycling trails already on the map. It's a good solution, using a GPSr I already owned to go geocaching with.

If you have iPhone you can use cool app Cyclist PRO

The Garmin nuvi 1300LMT is a pretty simple (too simple for me!) GPS that my wife and I got simply for the promotional deal it came with, "lifetime maps". So far we have had it for a little under a year (we got it last Black Friday) and I think it was $139. It has both a pedestrian and a bicycle mode, can be set to always record a log, the battery life is "okay" and it can also take a miniusb for power, and if you add a *micro* SD card, you can add other maps, like topo maps for your area, and switch them in and out in layers. We have Macs and the Garmins are fairly Mac friendly. Our previous car GPS, a mio, was no longer working well after several years and generally, its been a good purchase. Its not the best bike GPS I'm sure, but for the money it does a lot of the basic things you'd expect from a GPS (and little else) and the fact that you theoretically dont have to pay for map updates is a big plus.

Alternatively, you could roll your own. I think my next GPS will be a homemade carputer with a ublox or skytraq module and open streetmap-compatible maps. The newer GPS modules can output your location at 10 or 20 Hz!

That gives you a lot of detail, but your logs get big fast.

The Magellan I have for the car, Maestro 4040 is a bulkier unit, the trick would be to mount it too. But for the money, well under $ 100. Their 4350 is $ 70 on ebay, has bluetooth, so your phone can sync to it and you can use it for that also. 4350 has 4 hour battery operation. The 4040 I have goes only 2 hours on battery. That's ok though, really only want to get an idea of where the route is rather than leave it on and be directed doorstep to doorstep. In that case it can go into a backpack and be used as necessary, saving the battery for critical use only.

Unless you use a dynohub and a http://http://www.thinkbiologic.com/...rge-power-pack. The downside is you're talking more wieght to carry, more wires snaking around the bike, and lighter pockets to the tune of a couple hundred dollars.

GPS modules are so cheap now that its perfectly reasonable to carry two devices with GPS functionality, a personal navigation device that you, like fuji86 suggested, turn on to get your bearings, and a data logger that records your track to an SD card so later on you can view it, etc.

Since most of the PNDs have LCD screens, they eat more power than I like, as to log you have to leave them on. If you want the door to door, then it might make sense to get a 12volt battery and a DC-DC converter, or a 6 volt battery and a voltage regulator to bring the voltage down to 5 volts..with a mini USB to plug into a GPS, phone, etc. (5.1 volts is what most GPSs, the ones that use USB power, require) Then you can plug your GPS into your bike battery's power, and it will run and be charged up at the same time. You can charge the bigger battery up at home periodically.

I have the Garmin Edge 800. It does most of what you are looking for, but fails with respect to budget.
When it is working well, it does a great job, it will plot out routes for you, like a car GPS - I think that as a cyclist, I am more particular about my routes, so I am not always happy with the route that it picks. I can also plot a route on my computer (I use a site called ridewithgps, but there are others), once I have a route plotted, I can download it into my GPS and it will give me turn by turn directions, and beep if I go off course.

It is not perfect - the software/firmware leaves plenty of room for improvement, and the screen should be higher contrast, but it works.