Garmin Edges

[AndreR]

Just as a follow up, I got impatient and bought an edge 530. Used it twice now with varying success. Spent a while ploughing through various menus to try to set it up like I want it. It's similar to the old edge 200 I have (well a bit) so less difficult than coming from the dakota so this was done with an acceptable minimum of swearing. It didn't like the 1:50k OS maps I got with my original dakota but accepted the premium ones I got from ioffer. I'll just have to load them selectively as I need them. I should have given the garmin maps a chance I suppose....

First ride went OK, found how to add a GPX track and got on with it. Having turn by turn nav was a novelty, instead of just making sure the arrow stays on the purple line. It seemed to work OK but the auto zoom was a bit variable plus the turn directions and hill climb schematic got in the way a bit. I think I can turn these off.

Then on the ride today it all went wrong. 10k in and it was suddenly trying to get me to go back the way I came. I tried stopping nav and starting it again but it made no difference. Eventually I switched the nav off and just had the map displayed which was fine (I knew where I was going) but tried again some time later. It seemed to work but when I went off route later (deliberately) it got stuck trying to re-calculate the route. Eventually it seemed to sort itself out but was still getting me to try to turn round right up until I got home...

Turns out the GPX track I'd loaded followed my route anti-clockwise and I was riding clockwise.... I suppose this didn't matter on the dakota as you just follow the line but obviously if its doing nav turn by turn this is going to cause some issues i.e continually telling you to do a U turn. So not quite as idiot proof as ideal but I should be able to sort my way through the foibles as well as making sure my routes go the right way. That said, it will be good for ITT's which follow convoluted routes and cross over themselves. The turn by turn will also be good for places I don't know (like on the BB200 last year) as it will help me take the right track when there is a choice of 4 and you don't know which is the route.... Battery life is good. I used it for 12hrs in total and it was down to 53% despite not being in battery saver mode. With battery saver mode on I should get as much out of a charge as a pair of Ultimate lithiums in the Dakota. I see I can get an extra battery for an additional 24hrs life (and £120) so I might do that at some point when I've gotten over shelling out close to 200 bar already.

Oh and being told how much I'd sweated was a bit disturbing. It doesn't seem to want to calculate my personality disorders to 10 decimal places though....

I have an older Edge Touring which works OK but I find the re-routing to be rubbish and generally turn it off. Riding a route planed clockwise in an anticlockwise direction is an issue and can be really confusing if you don't realize its happened. Planned a figure 8 route on one of the WRT's and went the wrong way around the bottom loop, I worked out I'd gone wrong after a while and did the route backwards OK but Garmin never did! When I got back to the crossing point it wanted me to do the bottom loop again in the right direction and would not sort itself out. Went a few hundred yards up the correct path and re-started navigation and it was OK for the rest of the ride. Still occasionally screw up a route that crosses itself and like to thing its the Garmin not being clear about the direction rather than the operator messing up!