Which Garmin

Well, they've never issued a fix for the software on my Garmin, so it may lead you in circles or stubbornly claim to be recalculating the route for the next 20 minutes, by which time your Garmin is hot and the battery is nearly flat.  Is the software in the latest Garmins the same?

Hilariously, when it gets the rerouting right, it may still involve cycling another mile or more down the wrong road, to find a suitable place to do a U-turn!

1) longer battery life (i've found using phone for navigation that it doesn't last too long) so you don't end up *somewhere* with no more navigation and also no means to call for help

2) keeping the phone out of the rain/spray zone, I have had one fail when mounted on the bars, even when it was functional water in the headphone jack can stop you making phone calls, as it tries to send audio to headphones instead of speaker

3) better pairing with sensors such as hrm or power meter 

4) with modern di2 you can switch between garmin pages using the buttons on the shifters, garmin can then also display di2 battery power level and selected gear.

Unlike a 'phone, my Garmin may 'lose' all the satellites if I stop for a pee.  If my 'phone does this, I'm kept unaware of it.

If my 'phone recalculates the route, it must be near instantaneous.

One, (only one?) benefit of a Garmin, is that it's easier to use in the rain wearing gloves

janusz0 wrote:

One, (only one?) benefit of a Garmin, is that it's easier to use in the rain wearing gloves

... whereas the phone gives you a weather forecast 🤣

Mio is OK (not sure what model you mean, I had a 505) but it has its fair share of glitches and the rerouting is shocking.

Flâneur wrote:

Mio is OK (not sure what model you mean, I had a 505) but it has its fair share of glitches and the rerouting is shocking.

Mine is the 210.  Very basic but I've found it almost completely reliable when re-routing.  It certainly has never sent me back to the last place I was on the route!

It has, on rare occasions, dropped the satellite signals but I guess they all do this.

The climb pro function only works if you are cycling on a "route" saved on the device, it will work if you upload a gpx file from a route planner, but not sure it works if you just ask the garmin to navigate you from a to b.

also it decides automatically what the climbs are, so I have had some weird splits, and some climbs (one was >800m vertical elevation gain) which did not qualify for some reason.

The only time I found it really helpful was on an event in the alps where I could see what was coming in the next few kms and pace myself accordingly - slow, very slow, or snail pace.....

I found it very helpful when doing an endurance event with 10,000m of climbing (multi days) to see how far to the next climb, and how long it would be.

Sometimes it misses some, don't know how the algorithm decides what counts as a climb, but it's quite useful to see them being ticked off.

I agree - in the end I found myself using the "total ascent" field to see how much of the days climbing was left. It doesn't tell you how steep things are going to be, but if you have done 2000m out of a day of 3000 m you know where you are.

I was also interested that my daily total climb was always less than the total claimed by the event organisers, and I promise I didn't cut any corners....

wycombewheeler wrote:

I found it very helpful when doing an endurance event with 10,000m of climbing (multi days) to see how far to the next climb, and how long it would be.

Sometimes it misses some, don't know how the algorithm decides what counts as a climb, but it's quite useful to see them being ticked off.

Climb pro is good, but the algorithm is weird.  I've had the same climb register as a climb when tackling it on one route, but not on another.

Karoo 2 also has a version of this too. Works in much the same way. 

Liam Cahill wrote:

I believe that the 830 and 1030 use a better touchscreen but I'm not sure if the 530 has caught up.

as if a touch screen is a definiate upgrade over buttons

wycombewheeler wrote:

as if a touch screen is a definiate upgrade over buttons

Opinions vary on that, of course, but I have 820 and 520 Garmins and I much prefer using the 820 with its touchscreen. The touchscreen doesn't like heavy rain, then again neither do I.