Couldn't resist buying an Edge 530 at €160 (nearly half price) from Amazon.de (sorry) as my Explore's battery life is barely 6 hours these days. The big attraction is the non usb connection to a charger pack giving 40 hours life but I'm a bit concerned with not having a touch screen. I'm thinking that the wireless remote could enable zooming in and out of the map screen and scrolling from 1 screen to another, all without taking my hands off the bars. Do they eat batteries and is the Ant+ connection reliable? I'm rather sceptical of these Garmin peripherals that look useful on paper but don't survive long trips due to power consumption. Any real world experiences out there?
It's this https://www.bikeinn.com/ciclismo/garmin ... e/674041/p

I have one and like it well enough although it does have limited functionality.
I was initially pretty sceptical - I got one in a package deal with a 530 - but have grown to use it across all my bikes.
For bikepacking it’s really only useful for scrolling through screens.
You can’t use it to zoom or scroll maps.
There is one programmable button which I have set to bring up the map.
Another button scrolls forward or backwards.
The third button is useless to me as it’s a ‘lap’ button.
The ANT connection is reliable and the button battery has so far lasted nearly a year.
In general I don’t miss the touch screen on my 530 compared to the 800 it replaced. The only time I miss it is scrolling and zooming the map. It’s doable but clunky and hard to do (for me) whilst riding.
The combination of 530 and the battery pack is excellent. You have absolutely tons of battery available and the USB on the gps is pretty much redundant as you don’t even need it for data transfer if you bounce things via Connect.
It has caused me a bit of headache getting the up front mounts to play well with my various cockpit and luggage arrangements. For example I needed to cut and shorten a mount to sit within the loop of my Jones style bars.
All I would want extra from the 530 would be the ability to record onto the micro SD card rather than just store maps on it.

Thanks for the info, the inability to zoom and pan the mapping page is a bit crap but the battery life and power consumption of the Ant+ seems ok. I don't tend to constantly scroll between pages but given the multiplicity of info on this unit such as climb pro, that may change. Not sure I'll be too interested in the quantity and distance of my airtime but you never know, I suppose it saves on tyre wear.

I tend to concentrate on 3 pages mostly:
Map, trip/navigation information (distance to go, ave speed etc) and dashboard information (height, temp, time, speed etc)
I also make use of the compass page at times.
I don’t have the hang time or whatever it is activated.
I find the ?Pro climb of some interest in terms of the climb I’m actually on but the algorithm used to decide what is and isn’t a climb is quite kooky to say the least.
I have the programmable button send me back to the map screen as that’s what I prefer to be displayed in general unless I’m on very familiar ground.

Looks interesting.
Now, if only there was a way to fully lock the screen of an edge 1030.
Damn annoying when rain makes the edge change screen, and that’s with sensitivity set to minimum.

All I would want extra from the 530 would be the ability to record onto the micro SD card rather than just store maps on it.

This has me confused as my 530 does not have an SD card?

Hmmm, I don’t think I’m making that up. I need to go and check. Don’t go anywhere…

Ok, so I am making that up. Let me rephrase my original statement… ‘the only thing that I would want to improve on a 530 would be an SD slot and the ability to record onto it’

Re "recording" routes, I use Garmin Connect which automatically saves all my rides to wikiloc as I've got the IQ widget activated. If you don't like wikiloc then Strava and Komoot are also available as an archive. This is on an Edge Explore but I gather the 530 has the same features.

Same.