I keep seeing people saying the unit is crap I call BS. Also to the reviewer saying the battery was dead after 4 hours, the only way you got less was having the back light on. The screen contrast is brilliant during the day and doesn't require the back light unless you have it angled and it gets glare all the time.I got this unit the first week it hit the market. Zero issues though I have the screen sensitivity all the way up to make me happy. My longest ride was 207km total run time of 9h 27m with turn buy turn on. At the end of that day I still had 41% battery. I do think Wahoo is doing some brilliant work and competition is good for innovation but people love to hate on Garmin.
He said the batteries on his friend's unit, which were the smaller ones like Garmin Edge 520, went flat after 4 hours. Not the 1030. But I don't know how they'd go dead at 4 hours whereas the 1030 goes for so much longer when the reported difference is only supposed to be 15 vs 20 hours, so just one quarter less for the smaller units.
I have been using the 820 for 7 months after having the 810 for 2 years. I watched this out of curiosity. I have to say that the review is extremely fair and I would agree with all the comments. Its a great unit but does have some limitations.
Maybe it's where I live but I have both an Edge 820 and 520 and never have issues with either, the 820 is my go to, I have had no issues with the touch screen even with gloves, once you understand it isn't like your phone and dose require a little more pressure there are no issues. The battery life could be better but that can be said of almost any electronics, I did a 5 hr ride yesterday with full navigation and still had about 30% left on the battery.
Same, my 820 has been almost flawless. I only managed to cause it problems one time as I was half way through my ride and turned on my bluetooth and went into the connect app which then tried to sync. I had to hold down the power to foce a reset - it came back with my 50km ride was restored and I resumed.
I've bought Elemnt Bolt and it works like a charm. It has nice tactile buttons, LEDs and great companion app. Not that Garmins are bad by any means but they deliver not so good experience under crappy touch screen.
I started out with an Edge 500 years ago and had no real complaints. I fell for the instant upload to Strava thing and bought a 510 and again, no real complaints, other than there really wasn't any real "wow' factor over the 500 other than the wireless upload. Didn't go for the 520, but bumped up to the 820 when it came out. It was vastly better than the 510 in my opinion. The processor was faster, the touch screen was better, as was the display. It was what I had hoped the 510 was going to be when I bought that. Then the bad started: elevation gain constantly needed to be corrected once the rides were uploaded to Strava. Then I started having it go to the "save ride/resume ride" screen mid-ride, and with ever-increasing frequency. That was it for me. I returned it and went with an Edge 25 on sale and haven't looked back. I still have my 500 and my 510 if I need them, but I doubt I will. I'm all about the minimalist approach now.
Thanks for the honest review! I've watched so many reviews on each one of these and know have too much information. Thanks for simplifying things. The 520 and buy a mount for my phone if I ever need a proper navigation system for when I'm in new territory.
I found that the round trip creator works pretty well. There are settings that you can use to make it so it only keeps you on roads, and keeps away from busy roads, which has worked for keeping on roads but where I live currently you can't really avoid busy roads.
one correction, Garmin 820 battery lasts much longer than 4 hours using a course with turn by turn direction if you are not connected to your phone, which is what drains the battery much more, especially using Strava Beacon. However, using just a heart monitor and turn by turn navigation can take you on a 150km route easily with no problems of running out of battery. I've done a 6 hour ride recently and got home with 25% left.
I agree with most of this review, bit my battery last alot longer than 4 hours while navigating. I just been on 3 day trip to the Vogses regions in France to do some climbing and most of our rides lasted 6 hours! And if u don't use glonass or other sensors (mine is powered with a speed and candence sensor) it will last at least 7 hours while navigating. When using it without navigation I've been on 6 hour rides with over 40% battery left! I do agree with the bad touchscreen especially with gloves on! But on trick I learned; use your tumb, it works much better. But all in all, I've sold my 520 and this one is alot better!
I think the 820 is fine. No problems with it. The Edge 1000 is better, but lacks battery life when using bluetooth ect. The touchscreen on the 820 is not so good but and sometimes a bit frustrating. So in the end I use the Edge 1000 more often, but the battery life of the Edge 820 is better for longer rides. Garmin Edge 820 is a bit too expensive but a fine bike computer.
4 hours with GPS is an instant no go. Garmin really needs to come up with a black and white screen like the Elemnt / Kindle / EInk and add buttons everywhere to catch up. These color touch screens are nearly unreadable in the sunlight, and it just eats up battery. Cyclists need computers that last as long as possible, with easy access buttons. They also need to knock the price down $150 to compete.
Fantastic, honest review. Thanks guys! Doesn't the Garmin Edge 820 have the "Emergency contact" feature? Where it can detect and rapid deceleration, which then prompts you to clear the screen. Failing to do so, will send emergency messages out to your contacts listed under Garmin Connect I suppose. This would be the one and only reason why I would consider upgrading from my Edge 810 to the 820
I've been using one for about 6 months. My battery life is significantly better than yours, around 50% better. I ride over an hour every day and don't recharge but once a week...PM/CDC/HRM/SPD. But I shut off the Bluetooth and wireless crap. It's useless while riding. The touch screen, works perfectly if you stop trying to make it an iPhone. The trick is to "touch" and then swipe, the delay time, a few milliseconds, is insignificant, and (I guess) is a result of power conservation efforts. The CPU is doing a lot of jobs and can't just sit there looking for your touch every nanosecond. If it did you'd be complaining about battery life even more and unintended screen changes. Did you play with the screen sensitivity settings? I doubt it, since you didn't mention it. It's only a matter of using as it is intended and not as you think it should be. It's not an aircraft carrier landing strip for 150 mph swipes. I don't know why you thought the route creation was "comical". The whole point is to take you on exploration rides. I have found it pretty useful, and found all sorts of bike routes I wouldn't ever have seen otherwise. You must not have played with it much as you clearly didn't want to like it over your Edge 1000. But it gives like a zillion ways to shape the route creation, and then generates three different routes which you can inspect on the map before you set out. FIC... You didn't mention that it has 16GB of memory, so there is no end of apps and maps to be stored without resorting to SD cards. It also has spectacular visibility night and day. I agree it's too expensive, but I just dropped 150 on a fucking pair of shoes, and those are the cheap ones. Everything having anything to do with cycling is too expensive...worse than boats. I see a lot of haters posting here...mostly those without...it's called "sour grapes", named for the fox that having tried and failed, decided the grapes he could not have were sour and not worth eating. The important thing is to enjoy your ride and not spend all your time hating other people's stuff.
Thanks for that. I need a half decent GPS navigation system for my solo king Alfred cycle route in June. Almost every bit of tech has pro's and con's and people are biased and will find anything to downplay a device or item.
Garmin should not have gone with the capacitive screen. Useless when it rains or gets cold. sure the resistive one seems bit less sensitive. but it works in a wider range of conditions.
not a fan of the touch screen x.x would rather have buttons i know if i push will do something. I am currently using a wahoo bolt and am pretty impressed hoping that the fall update comes early fall so it can have custom workouts that you can follow on the device. the 820 looks clean though. my old Garmin 520 had tons of micro drop outs from my stages pm even if i moved it to the stem mount they just happened less. which was beyond annoying during a interval and is the main reason i sold it and garbed a bolt for no more 1-3second random drop opts. but if you have a pm that puts out a stronger signal I am sure the 520 would be awesome for you or if 1-3 sec random drops outs don't bother you. most would never even notice them on normal rides
what a BS! got it two months ago and it drove me mad. touch screen is rubbish, battery life disappoint and most of all it turn itself off during ride, total crap! bought wahoo bolt best cycling computer ever highly recommend
Robert Jakobek So I switched to Elemnt a couple of mths ago. I'm having problems with the speed fluctuating wildly. Ny avg speed has dropped by 2km/hr as compared to my Garmin units (hate Garmin btw). I'm willing to work with Wahoo since ive wasted so much money with Garmin. Their support is good and their researching the issue.
it may be the auto pause feature if you were using it with the Garmin and then don't have it turned on for the element.wahoo has also had some bugs for auto pause where it seemed if you had a wheel speed sensor it could take longer to pause the ride. If your looking at strava for avg speed disregard that as strava ignores pauses
When you were testing did you have it running gps+glonass? The 1000 is rated with a similar battery life and I'll get 8 hours running both but if BT or WiFi is on it drains pretty fast. I'd imagine switching to just GPS or Glonass would increase batter life.
do you know if the Garmin Edge 820 auto calculator for VO2 is accurate? Also have you used the auto calculator for heart rate or power zones? And if so what’s your take on these features
I'd recommend the edge 810 if you can still get it. I got mine on clearance (Aldi have it pretty regularly) when it was discontinued and it has been flawless.
Got my 810 for £140 and one for a friend, (sold to him at cost) we both upgraded from 800's. Seems perfectly adequate. I don't think capacitive touch screens are necessary or a good idea on a device that is likely to get wet.
You'll have to call their customer support and ask them. The pair I bought weren't on display and I had to catch the train to go and fetch them after phoning up.
BizzleByron mine often freezes when uploading to my phone and just recently it corrupted my ride while uploading. Quite upset about that. Also, for some reason mine doesn't work with notifications and stuff despite being connected to my phone and having the notification feature turned on
I also have major issues with the touch screen. Also lack of street turn navigation in South Africa (despite having the map loaded) is another drawback.
We'd go for the Bolt. It's already had a 4.5 star review from Ben, and there'll be a video review in the near future. - www.bikeradar.com/road/gear/category/accessories/gadgets/cycle-computers/product/wahoo-elemnt-bolt-review-51034/
Garmin definitely has one of the most frustrating course guidance! The courses are presented in fine magenta lines that are not visibly different from paths on the map. I find myself constantly missing turns because of this.
Latest and Greatest? Why can't Garmins download routes from Strava and other mapping software and apps wireless yet? Tom tom and google maps routing and finding points of interest is far superior than garmin. I thinking getting a phone and making it more cycling friend is better way to design a bike computer with mapping these days. And finally the price. It isn't significantly better than the 1000 but the relative price has increased. Ben nice skills descending off the Koppenberg. I hope do some interest UA-cam videos at the Giro this year.
Worst-most-expensive device I have bought in my life. It took them almost a year to get the firmware to a semi-usable state. There's only so much they can do with software though as the hardware is obviously too weak to perform smoothly. The device has a constant 500ms input lag, you can see it when Ben tries to scroll or change settings. The touch screen is a horrible idea. It reacts to rain drops, doesn't react at all when used in the winter (0-6 degrees Celsius). That, a bit of sweat on your fingers plus the everpresent lag makes operating the device mid-ride very tricky and dangerous. The map is nigh unusable unless you stop and use both hands to change the zoom level or try panning. The battery reacts strongly to temperatures - last weekend on a cold rainy day I've had the device suggest turning on battery saving mode after 3hours of riding! It went back to 20% when I was indoors later. The connectivity is very flaky too. Sometimes it takes the device 40minutes after I get back home from a ride to find the bloody wifi and upload the ride. Even force refreshing the wifi doesn't help. The IQ apps platform is a sad joke. Yeah, I've used the one useful widget Ben mentions, with an analog speed gauge and other metrics shown on one screen. So what, if after one of many firmware updates my setup got wiped and I ended up using the default data screens to save myself the bother of setting them up again for the tenth time. Oh, and the elevation is still botched after a year of updates - it reads 50m lower than the actual reading. Don't take my word for it, there's plenty of similar reports on the Garmin forums (unless they scrubbed them). Avoid the 820 like the plague is what I'm saying
Yeah Garmin just does not seem to learn. Based on the negative reviews I have read and all the comments I am reading on here it tells me that Garmin just does not put in an effort in optimizing it software and hardware integration. Now with the iPhone 7 being water resistant as are a ton of other smartphones out there, this product is obsolete.
Garmin Edge 820 might be the latest but it's nearly a year old. In smartphone time (as these are very similar to a smaptphone these days) that is a looong time! Software is getting more and more important and Garmin is not someone who is known for their fast and good updates. On the other hand Wahoo is kicking Garmin's butt at the moment, wouldn't buy an "obsolete" Garmin now. Maybe next gen.
It sounds as if it's good while the battery lasts -- and useless when the battery dies, which is quite quickly. So it's perfect for short rides, useless for long rides.
Garmin software is buggy, nothing but problems. I've had 810 x 2, and 510. Issue is the software is temperamental often not uploading into Iphone and worse not picking up ant+ devices. Mixed results is a fair comment. If you don't not believe me do a simple Google search....tons of frustrated users. There are alternatives out there
520 has incident detection, not 100% sure what you mean by garmin cycle map but you can manually load OpenStreetMap and can even get it to do turn by turn navigation if you want.
The screen is too small for any decent navigation. When you go off route it's difficult to find it back due to size. It randomly loses navigation (recent software version confirmed by many other users). The device is charged a premium but doesn't feel like it was executed to that level. The navigation is the weakest point of this device. I'm yet to meet a happy Garmin user.
here you have found. navigation is great if you upload osm maps of a place where you cycle to your device and zoom in map size. battery life is not an issue in most of cases (i speak about edge 500 and 520) which lasts for over 10 hours in winter. with external power pack (250 grams more) you can cycle for circa 30 hours non stop.
FOUR hours on navigation?! you serious?! that's S***!!! there's no offroad route which is less than that! i mean, when you go offroad - which is what i do - trips are at least THREE/FOUR hours. how could i rely on it?! do you think i should consider some other device? thank you!
the recent firmware upgrade let you select the sensitive of touch screen, which I use high when wearing gloves, which work good now, but it was crap before.
Wahoo Elemnt Bolt which is not buggy and works as advertised. I never got the Garmin to beep when navigating even after 5 warranty replacements. The touchscreen is not very sensitive. I sold my Garmin and bought the Bolt with the proceeds, best deal I've done for some time.
My mini review. Just recently got a Garmin. First thing first, whoever made Garmin Connect needs to be fired and send back into coding school or something. It is the most ridiculous POS ever. Fit doesn't manually upload, GPX doesn't read, TCX is the only thing, but doesn't even read TCX converted from fit, which is funny because it's recorded in fit. It's mapping only works on Garmin, so good luck trying to share it to a group or use a map from a group page. Touch screen is definitely a bit. Half the time I can't tell if it's lagged or I need to hit it again. At least the screen is clear and navigation is very good (once you get the map in...) Battery life is decent... i guess... I took it for a ~3.5 hour ride, screen on the whole time and navigation for most of the ride. comes home with 50%, so mine seems to last more than 4 hours compared to bike radar's test (tip, turn off wifi!!!! Power drain!!! You dont need wifi searching when you're in the middle of an empty field). I came from lezyne enhanced gps, MUCH more of a simplified device for sure, but the battery lasts like weeks on it... (same ride probably ~15-20% battery drain). In short, decent device, absolutely SHIT softwares, battery life is good for ~2 moderate rides. Don't expect this to navigate you while you go touring, it will run out of juice and you will be stuck on a farm somewhere. I would say this device is more for racers looking to train. For everyday casual riders, look for something else. For touring, look for something else (whether it's garmin touring or others).
I have one, touch screen is appalling - doesn't work at all with gloves. Water also collects on top of the screen and randomly activates the touchscreen functions. Blows my mind that Garmin can have a monopoly of the market with such awful products.
expensive beta unit. the wifi is garbage. it's less effective than bluetooth in terms of uploading data. touchscreen is horrible with cold fingers. the worst part is the button layout. why did they have the start and lap buttons on the bottom of the unit instead of the side? makes no freakin' sense.
I keep seeing people saying the unit is crap I call BS. Also to the reviewer saying the battery was dead after 4 hours, the only way you got less was having the back light on. The screen contrast is brilliant during the day and doesn't require the back light unless you have it angled and it gets glare all the time.I got this unit the first week it hit the market. Zero issues though I have the screen sensitivity all the way up to make me happy. My longest ride was 207km total run time of 9h 27m with turn buy turn on. At the end of that day I still had 41% battery.
I do think Wahoo is doing some brilliant work and competition is good for innovation but people love to hate on Garmin.
He said the batteries on his friend's unit, which were the smaller ones like Garmin Edge 520, went flat after 4 hours. Not the 1030. But I don't know how they'd go dead at 4 hours whereas the 1030 goes for so much longer when the reported difference is only supposed to be 15 vs 20 hours, so just one quarter less for the smaller units.
Great review. I love how this review is no filler, everything you need to know without any filler.
I rode 120 miles using the navigation and the battery was down to 28% . I have no complaints about the battery life.
.
I have been using the 820 for 7 months after having the 810 for 2 years. I watched this out of curiosity. I have to say that the review is extremely fair and I would agree with all the comments. Its a great unit but does have some limitations.
Maybe it's where I live but I have both an Edge 820 and 520 and never have issues with either, the 820 is my go to, I have had no issues with the touch screen even with gloves, once you understand it isn't like your phone and dose require a little more pressure there are no issues. The battery life could be better but that can be said of almost any electronics, I did a 5 hr ride yesterday with full navigation and still had about 30% left on the battery.
Same, my 820 has been almost flawless. I only managed to cause it problems one time as I was half way through my ride and turned on my bluetooth and went into the connect app which then tried to sync. I had to hold down the power to foce a reset - it came back with my 50km ride was restored and I resumed.
I've bought Elemnt Bolt and it works like a charm. It has nice tactile buttons, LEDs and great companion app. Not that Garmins are bad by any means but they deliver not so good experience under crappy touch screen.
I'm liking the open honest feedback
I started out with an Edge 500 years ago and had no real complaints. I fell for the instant upload to Strava thing and bought a 510 and again, no real complaints, other than there really wasn't any real "wow' factor over the 500 other than the wireless upload.
Didn't go for the 520, but bumped up to the 820 when it came out. It was vastly better than the 510 in my opinion. The processor was faster, the touch screen was better, as was the display. It was what I had hoped the 510 was going to be when I bought that.
Then the bad started: elevation gain constantly needed to be corrected once the rides were uploaded to Strava. Then I started having it go to the "save ride/resume ride" screen mid-ride, and with ever-increasing frequency. That was it for me. I returned it and went with an Edge 25 on sale and haven't looked back. I still have my 500 and my 510 if I need them, but I doubt I will. I'm all about the minimalist approach now.
Thanks for the video. I was undecided between the 520 and 820. After watching your video, I know 520 would be a better choice for my use.
Thanks for the honest review!
I've watched so many reviews on each one of these and know have too much information.
Thanks for simplifying things.
The 520 and buy a mount for my phone if I ever need a proper navigation system for when I'm in new territory.
I found that the round trip creator works pretty well. There are settings that you can use to make it so it only keeps you on roads, and keeps away from busy roads, which has worked for keeping on roads but where I live currently you can't really avoid busy roads.
one correction, Garmin 820 battery lasts much longer than 4 hours using a course with turn by turn direction if you are not connected to your phone, which is what drains the battery much more, especially using Strava Beacon.
However, using just a heart monitor and turn by turn navigation can take you on a 150km route easily with no problems of running out of battery.
I've done a 6 hour ride recently and got home with 25% left.
I agree with most of this review, bit my battery last alot longer than 4 hours while navigating. I just been on 3 day trip to the Vogses regions in France to do some climbing and most of our rides lasted 6 hours! And if u don't use glonass or other sensors (mine is powered with a speed and candence sensor) it will last at least 7 hours while navigating. When using it without navigation I've been on 6 hour rides with over 40% battery left! I do agree with the bad touchscreen especially with gloves on! But on trick I learned; use your tumb, it works much better. But all in all, I've sold my 520 and this one is alot better!
I think the 820 is fine. No problems with it. The Edge 1000 is better, but lacks battery life when using bluetooth ect. The touchscreen on the 820 is not so good but and sometimes a bit frustrating. So in the end I use the Edge 1000 more often, but the battery life of the Edge 820 is better for longer rides. Garmin Edge 820 is a bit too expensive but a fine bike computer.
4 hours with GPS is an instant no go. Garmin really needs to come up with a black and white screen like the Elemnt / Kindle / EInk and add buttons everywhere to catch up. These color touch screens are nearly unreadable in the sunlight, and it just eats up battery. Cyclists need computers that last as long as possible, with easy access buttons.
They also need to knock the price down $150 to compete.
Buttons facing the stem like on 520 are a no-go! Sticking to my 500 for that reason alone.
Fantastic, honest review. Thanks guys! Doesn't the Garmin Edge 820 have the "Emergency contact" feature? Where it can detect and rapid deceleration, which then prompts you to clear the screen. Failing to do so, will send emergency messages out to your contacts listed under Garmin Connect I suppose. This would be the one and only reason why I would consider upgrading from my Edge 810 to the 820
I've been using one for about 6 months. My battery life is significantly better than yours, around 50% better. I ride over an hour every day and don't recharge but once a week...PM/CDC/HRM/SPD. But I shut off the Bluetooth and wireless crap. It's useless while riding.
The touch screen, works perfectly if you stop trying to make it an iPhone.
The trick is to "touch" and then swipe, the delay time, a few milliseconds, is insignificant, and (I guess) is a result of power conservation efforts. The CPU is doing a lot of jobs and can't just sit there looking for your touch every nanosecond. If it did you'd be complaining about battery life even more and unintended screen changes. Did you play with the screen sensitivity settings? I doubt it, since you didn't mention it. It's only a matter of using as it is intended and not as you think it should be. It's not an aircraft carrier landing strip for 150 mph swipes.
I don't know why you thought the route creation was "comical". The whole point is to take you on exploration rides. I have found it pretty useful, and found all sorts of bike routes I wouldn't ever have seen otherwise. You must not have played with it much as you clearly didn't want to like it over your Edge 1000. But it gives like a zillion ways to shape the route creation, and then generates three different routes which you can inspect on the map before you set out. FIC...
You didn't mention that it has 16GB of memory, so there is no end of apps and maps to be stored without resorting to SD cards.
It also has spectacular visibility night and day.
I agree it's too expensive, but I just dropped 150 on a fucking pair of shoes, and those are the cheap ones.
Everything having anything to do with cycling is too expensive...worse than boats.
I see a lot of haters posting here...mostly those without...it's called "sour grapes", named for the fox that having tried and failed, decided the grapes he could not have were sour and not worth eating.
The important thing is to enjoy your ride and not spend all your time hating other people's stuff.
Good review
Thanks for that.
I need a half decent GPS navigation system for my solo king Alfred cycle route in June.
Almost every bit of tech has pro's and con's and people are biased and will find anything to downplay a device or item.
Thanks for the review, this was one of the most useful ones I have seen!
Well , I Bought The 820 On The Launch Day. Even Tho , Its Not As Good As The 1000. It Works. I'm Contented With What Features It Has. ☺️
Garmin should not have gone with the capacitive screen. Useless when it rains or gets cold. sure the resistive one seems bit less sensitive. but it works in a wider range of conditions.
Great review. Good recommendations based on conclusions. Thanks!
520 still the best bang for buck garmin device. period.
not a fan of the touch screen x.x would rather have buttons i know if i push will do something. I am currently using a wahoo bolt and am pretty impressed hoping that the fall update comes early fall so it can have custom workouts that you can follow on the device.
the 820 looks clean though. my old Garmin 520 had tons of micro drop outs from my stages pm even if i moved it to the stem mount they just happened less. which was beyond annoying during a interval and is the main reason i sold it and garbed a bolt for no more 1-3second random drop opts. but if you have a pm that puts out a stronger signal I am sure the 520 would be awesome for you or if 1-3 sec random drops outs don't bother you. most would never even notice them on normal rides
1:50 Oudenaarde bridge over Schelde :)
3:49 Koppenberg...downwards??? common
4:23 Aah now Koppenberg upwards
What bike are you riding? the big tyres one, thanks
what a BS! got it two months ago and it drove me mad. touch screen is rubbish, battery life disappoint and most of all it turn itself off during ride, total crap! bought wahoo bolt best cycling computer ever highly recommend
Robert Jakobek So I switched to Elemnt a couple of mths ago. I'm having problems with the speed fluctuating wildly. Ny avg speed has dropped by 2km/hr as compared to my Garmin units (hate Garmin btw). I'm willing to work with Wahoo since ive wasted so much money with Garmin. Their support is good and their researching the issue.
Robert Jakobek i
it may be the auto pause feature if you were using it with the Garmin and then don't have it turned on for the element.wahoo has also had some bugs for auto pause where it seemed if you had a wheel speed sensor it could take longer to pause the ride. If your looking at strava for avg speed disregard that as strava ignores pauses
When you were testing did you have it running gps+glonass? The 1000 is rated with a similar battery life and I'll get 8 hours running both but if BT or WiFi is on it drains pretty fast. I'd imagine switching to just GPS or Glonass would increase batter life.
do you know if the Garmin Edge 820 auto calculator for VO2 is accurate? Also have you used the auto calculator for heart rate or power zones? And if so what’s your take on these features
There is also the garmin 810 edge that is a very good unit for around £225
I'd recommend the edge 810 if you can still get it. I got mine on clearance (Aldi have it pretty regularly) when it was discontinued and it has been flawless.
Got my 810 for £140 and one for a friend, (sold to him at cost) we both upgraded from 800's. Seems perfectly adequate. I don't think capacitive touch screens are necessary or a good idea on a device that is likely to get wet.
Aldi? the supermarket chain? really? nice :)
Can you still buy it in Aldi somewhere in the UK?
You'll have to call their customer support and ask them. The pair I bought weren't on display and I had to catch the train to go and fetch them after phoning up.
BizzleByron mine often freezes when uploading to my phone and just recently it corrupted my ride while uploading. Quite upset about that. Also, for some reason mine doesn't work with notifications and stuff despite being connected to my phone and having the notification feature turned on
overpriced and buggy with a frustrating touchscreen which renders itself useless
My 820 works flawlessly.......had more issues with my last 520 ......
mitchell goodman what kinda issues?
great review, useful.! thanks
I've not had one single issue with mine 👍🏼 dynamic watch rules for plotting routes
Does the speed sensor bring any advantages? I mean the garmin edge 820 has GPS, so you dont need the sensor, right?
I also have major issues with the touch screen. Also lack of street turn navigation in South Africa (despite having the map loaded) is another drawback.
Did you go to Oudenaarde? I recognised the bridge you crossed.
what brand is the support are you using to put the
GoPro under the Garmin? where can i find it? and how much $ it cost?
No mention of my "favorite" Edge 820 feature: Firmware update? Get ready to re-program all your screens and settings!
If you had to pick, would you choose the Garmin 820 or the Element Bolt?.....
We'd go for the Bolt. It's already had a 4.5 star review from Ben, and there'll be a video review in the near future. - www.bikeradar.com/road/gear/category/accessories/gadgets/cycle-computers/product/wahoo-elemnt-bolt-review-51034/
thanks..
Does it have a reflective screen that you can see under bright light when you set brightness to 0% like the Garmin 800's?
Great review, thanks
Hi, the bike in the opening shot, what is it? Seems like a proper beast!
That's a Mason Bokeh - you can see more info about it in this video ua-cam.com/video/wspqYOopyC0/v-deo.html
Thank you!
Communication is fantastic...?
Where is bluetooth LE for sensors?
hoppin around Oudenaarde and the flemish ardennes nearby my highschool ^^
Even the best touchscreen would just be annoying when you're going over uneven ground, or if you're wearing winter gloves, so I'll stick to the 520
Garmin definitely has one of the most frustrating course guidance! The courses are presented in fine magenta lines that are not visibly different from paths on the map. I find myself constantly missing turns because of this.
I’ve never had a garment but can someone confirm if it has gps turn by turn like and is show you where you’re at. That’s my main concern
I hope Wahoo hurts Garmin sales so they see a repercussion of releasing a failed device. Garmin should offer a full refund for owners of this device.
Latest and Greatest? Why can't Garmins download routes from Strava and other mapping software and apps wireless yet? Tom tom and google maps routing and finding points of interest is far superior than garmin. I thinking getting a phone and making it more cycling friend is better way to design a bike computer with mapping these days. And finally the price. It isn't significantly better than the 1000 but the relative price has increased.
Ben nice skills descending off the Koppenberg. I hope do some interest UA-cam videos at the Giro this year.
Iwish phones had good GPS
give dynamic.watch a try--my new favorite piece of software and makes adding routes to my 820 ridiculously easy
I love my 1K!
Can anybody help, no bothered abt maps. Does the 820 have the features where it can tell me what gears am in like the 1000. I am using Sram red etap
Las explicaciones del 820 no las hay en español?
Do these gps units need a waterproof cover?
No
Worst-most-expensive device I have bought in my life. It took them almost a year to get the firmware to a semi-usable state. There's only so much they can do with software though as the hardware is obviously too weak to perform smoothly. The device has a constant 500ms input lag, you can see it when Ben tries to scroll or change settings. The touch screen is a horrible idea. It reacts to rain drops, doesn't react at all when used in the winter (0-6 degrees Celsius). That, a bit of sweat on your fingers plus the everpresent lag makes operating the device mid-ride very tricky and dangerous. The map is nigh unusable unless you stop and use both hands to change the zoom level or try panning. The battery reacts strongly to temperatures - last weekend on a cold rainy day I've had the device suggest turning on battery saving mode after 3hours of riding! It went back to 20% when I was indoors later. The connectivity is very flaky too. Sometimes it takes the device 40minutes after I get back home from a ride to find the bloody wifi and upload the ride. Even force refreshing the wifi doesn't help. The IQ apps platform is a sad joke. Yeah, I've used the one useful widget Ben mentions, with an analog speed gauge and other metrics shown on one screen. So what, if after one of many firmware updates my setup got wiped and I ended up using the default data screens to save myself the bother of setting them up again for the tenth time. Oh, and the elevation is still botched after a year of updates - it reads 50m lower than the actual reading. Don't take my word for it, there's plenty of similar reports on the Garmin forums (unless they scrubbed them). Avoid the 820 like the plague is what I'm saying
Please review Bryton 530
what about 520? ( the one that i have)
Yeah Garmin just does not seem to learn. Based on the negative reviews I have read and all the comments I am reading on here it tells me that Garmin just does not put in an effort in optimizing it software and hardware integration. Now with the iPhone 7 being water resistant as are a ton of other smartphones out there, this product is obsolete.
Garmin Edge 820 might be the latest but it's nearly a year old.
In smartphone time (as these are very similar to a smaptphone these days) that is a looong time!
Software is getting more and more important and Garmin is not someone who is known for their fast and good updates.
On the other hand Wahoo is kicking Garmin's butt at the moment, wouldn't buy an "obsolete" Garmin now. Maybe next gen.
another alternative is the wahoo elemnt bolt
Super!!!
How to get ride time while riding. It shows elapsed time
It sounds as if it's good while the battery lasts -- and useless when the battery dies, which is quite quickly. So it's perfect for short rides, useless for long rides.
ニセコclassic
Garmin software is buggy, nothing but problems. I've had 810 x 2, and 510. Issue is the software is temperamental often not uploading into Iphone and worse not picking up ant+ devices. Mixed results is a fair comment. If you don't not believe me do a simple Google search....tons of frustrated users. There are alternatives out there
Should botch together dynamo which loads phone and then use phone as navigator... =P
520 is sweet
Isn't the only difference between this and the 520 the touch screen?
Nathan Edensor 520 has buttons; 820 has the touch screen.
But is that the only difference? I have a 520 and my dad has an 820 but the software and principal is the same
820 has more features: round trip routing, garmin cycle map, GroupTrack and incident detection.
520 has incident detection, not 100% sure what you mean by garmin cycle map but you can manually load OpenStreetMap and can even get it to do turn by turn navigation if you want.
Nicholas Dutton I was just quoting Garmins own description on the difference between the devices. I'm also slightly unsure what they mean by it
So, the 810 is a better buy then.
just got the garmin edge 820 it is small in dimensions
I have gotten 10+ hours with full navigation on.
The screen is too small for any decent navigation. When you go off route it's difficult to find it back due to size. It randomly loses navigation (recent software version confirmed by many other users). The device is charged a premium but doesn't feel like it was executed to that level. The navigation is the weakest point of this device. I'm yet to meet a happy Garmin user.
here you have found. navigation is great if you upload osm maps of a place where you cycle to your device and zoom in map size. battery life is not an issue in most of cases (i speak about edge 500 and 520) which lasts for over 10 hours in winter. with external power pack (250 grams more) you can cycle for circa 30 hours non stop.
FOUR hours on navigation?! you serious?! that's S***!!! there's no offroad route which is less than that! i mean, when you go offroad - which is what i do - trips are at least THREE/FOUR hours. how could i rely on it?! do you think i should consider some other device? thank you!
touch is useless with gloves..
the 1000 works fine with gloves
the recent firmware upgrade let you select the sensitive of touch screen, which I use high when wearing gloves, which work good now, but it was crap before.
Behold! The Lezyne super gps.
useless it's to small to be of use to navigate whilst riding ,would mean digging out the glasses everytime ,satmap all the way for me.
Garmin is the gps king, but they don't know how to make a decent UI.
Where do you live? Beautiful
this or wahoo elemnt?
elemnt
elemnt bolt.
Wahoo Elemnt Bolt which is not buggy and works as advertised. I never got the Garmin to beep when navigating even after 5 warranty replacements. The touchscreen is not very sensitive.
I sold my Garmin and bought the Bolt with the proceeds, best deal I've done for some time.
My mini review.
Just recently got a Garmin. First thing first, whoever made Garmin Connect needs to be fired and send back into coding school or something. It is the most ridiculous POS ever. Fit doesn't manually upload, GPX doesn't read, TCX is the only thing, but doesn't even read TCX converted from fit, which is funny because it's recorded in fit. It's mapping only works on Garmin, so good luck trying to share it to a group or use a map from a group page.
Touch screen is definitely a bit. Half the time I can't tell if it's lagged or I need to hit it again. At least the screen is clear and navigation is very good (once you get the map in...)
Battery life is decent... i guess... I took it for a ~3.5 hour ride, screen on the whole time and navigation for most of the ride. comes home with 50%, so mine seems to last more than 4 hours compared to bike radar's test (tip, turn off wifi!!!! Power drain!!! You dont need wifi searching when you're in the middle of an empty field). I came from lezyne enhanced gps, MUCH more of a simplified device for sure, but the battery lasts like weeks on it... (same ride probably ~15-20% battery drain).
In short, decent device, absolutely SHIT softwares, battery life is good for ~2 moderate rides. Don't expect this to navigate you while you go touring, it will run out of juice and you will be stuck on a farm somewhere. I would say this device is more for racers looking to train. For everyday casual riders, look for something else. For touring, look for something else (whether it's garmin touring or others).
sounds like a 520 with extra features I wouldn't want. No thanks.
I have one, touch screen is appalling - doesn't work at all with gloves. Water also collects on top of the screen and randomly activates the touchscreen functions. Blows my mind that Garmin can have a monopoly of the market with such awful products.
Will Evans that's why I bought the 520. Works fine with gloves
810 > 820 :D
I had a credit at my LBS. Otherwise, it's a joke.
try bryton rider 530 got it all for 160 bucks!
The battery life is a joke
oudenaarde!!
Bruggeuuuh
So in other words...this is crap. Stick with the 520 or 1000.
this video clearly shows how shite the touch screen is.
expensive beta unit. the wifi is garbage. it's less effective than bluetooth in terms of uploading data. touchscreen is horrible with cold fingers. the worst part is the button layout. why did they have the start and lap buttons on the bottom of the unit instead of the side? makes no freakin' sense.
пиписька
Keep it simple stupid. If you want complex features, use your smartphone. These things are way to overpriced imo.
Expensive useless garbage. My '520' is bad enough. I would never buy Garmin again.
the 520 is just fine
It's absolute garbage and waste of money in my opinion
The worst thing about any Garmin device is Garmin Connect... What's piece of junk, especially since they changed the interface a couple years ago.
Yes, but why use Strava when champions use TrainingPeaks?
Don't trust the judgement of people sitting on 1 x 11 setups and pretending to know something about biking ... or GPS devices ...