Garmin Edge 305 Bicycle GPS Navigator with Heart Rate Monitor and Speed/Cadence Sensor by Garmin
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Digital camera reviews of Garmin Edge 305 Bicycle GPS Navigator with Heart Rate Monitor and Speed/Cadence Sensor
Digital camera Review: A Piece of Junk
Summary: 1 Stars
The screen went totally blue after less than 3 months of use. I had to pay to ship it back to get a refurbished item with less than the original warranty and they wouldn't ship the new one until they received the old one. The refurbished one won't have the warranty that the original unit had. I have one other Garmin, which I have discovered by using other devices, is cumbersome to use. I would highly recommend avoiding this product in particular, and Garmin in general.Digital camera Review: A great find
Summary: 5 Stars
What a great tool. Not only does it make running/biking more interesting but it also makes training more effective. Although it is designed for biking, the unit is small enough where you can run with it in your hand without it being difficult. It really is helpful to be able to watch all of this information as it's happening.
The only thing I wish it had was background maps for the display unit (GPS). The GPS acquires quickly and stays locked on, even in dense areas. Highly recommended!
Digital camera Review: A mixed review ( the good, the bad and the ugly )
Summary: 3 Stars
Positives:
1) Many features ( read product description )
2) Generally usable by people who have photosensitive epilepsy and who do NOT tolerate blinking or flashing or scrolling displays. HOWEVER!
a) Satellite icons on GPS page blink on and off and this page cannot be removed from page display sequence. ( as can be done with Garmin trail units )
b) Cadence and heart rate icons blink. ( you have to tape over the top margin of the LCD display )
c) Reset is very nice as it does a non-seizure producing countdown to reset display ( the Sigma units blink and blink and blink )
d) Garmin is three quarters the way to accessibility unlike Sigma computers which are horrible
3) Wireless cadence and speed sensor is relatively easy to set up. ( You push the reset button on the sensor and each time the crank arm or the spoke magnet passes the sensor and triggers it; a correspondingly colored LED blinks ONCE )
Negatives:
1) Installing the cadence magnet on the crank arm is a total pain in the neck. The magnet MUST be within 5mm or so of the sensor. I finally gave up on the Garmin hardware and used the much larger Sigma crank arm magnet ( which extends 3/4" out from the crank arm ). This worked immediately. Garmin is cheap, cheap, cheap in this respect. If you want to save a lot of time and trouble, buy a Sigma unit with cadence just for the crank arm magnet.
2) Limited battery life. Batteries are NOT replacable and Garmin makes no provision for connected an external battery throw the USB port.( the battery life is about the norm for GPS units; this is a comment, not a criticism). If you do long day rides you are going to have a dead battery. You really have to have two bicycle computers. One is a more standard bicycle computer without GPS so you can get statistics for the entire day.
3) Too many features and too many data fields and not enough user configurable pages ( there are only two general purpose pages ) to display it all. There should be, say, ten user configurable pages ( you should be able to select how many you want ). You should be able to configure each of them as you desire (ie: display speed and distance and slope on one page; display heart rate and cadence and speed on another; etc. )and to name them as you wish (ie Cycling, Performance, Trip Totals, etc. ). You should be able to group them into named sets such as Cycling, Training, Summary, etc and you should be able to select which pages are associated with each set.
If it were not for the impossible to install cadence crank arm magnet; the inability to disable pages ( GPS information ); partial inaccessibility for people with photosensitive epilepsy; insufficient number of configurable pages; this unit would get an A- or so.
Comments:
1) Sigma wireless units are totally unusable for people with photosensitive epilepsy or who are bothered ( or worse ) by blinking displays; they just blink and blink and blink. ( I threw away my Sigma 1606L DTS - this is where I got the nice crank arm magnet. I placed one of these abominations on a friends bicycle. As soon as you turn it out it blinks and blinks and blinks ( because the bicycle is not yet moving. this is trash design )
2) The manual for the Garmin Edge 705 is now available on the Garmin website. Having read the manual, I would not purchase the unit.
a) If you need GPS roads, buy a real GPS unit such as a Garmin 60CSX with on-the-ride replaceable batteries, pages that can be enabled or disabled and a larger display.
b) It still only has two fully configurable pages. ( the Garmin 205/305 and 605/705 have a lot of useful data and there are probably 15 fields that you would want to display )
Digital camera Review: A must have
Summary: 5 Stars
I just love my Garmin 305 Edge w/HR & Cadence. This is the ultimate in HRM's in my opinion. I purchased it before the 705 came out with it's color monitor but this does not make any real drawback for me. I never use the mapping function.
Keeps great information that is down loadable to the PC. I was even fortunate enough to be able to show my doctor that I had a problem with my heart. Caught atrial fibrillation so that I got an EKG. I'm a serious recreational rider that puts in over 3k miles a year. I can keep track of all my rides, rate them and compare stats with repeats.
If I had a power meter I would look at the 705 with it's additional capabilities.
Digital camera Review: All-in-one cycling information system [almost]
Summary: 5 Stars
I admit to being a bit of a tech-junkie and have previously purchased a several HRM and GPS-enabled bicycle computer systems. The Edge 305, which I have owned for three months, is the first one that I felt was worth the investment. It strengths are: user configurable displays, high contrast screen with backlight (last several hours for night riding), user-friendly downloads with fast USB communication/charging, very lightweight (~ 3oz), with secure mount/dismount, very straightforward button/menu system, waterproof (haven't tested this yet).
The 'Training Center' software is excellent, with a full set of graphs and maps, much easier to navigate than e.g. Ciclosport or Cambietta software. Ride histories are downloaded automatically as soon as the USB cable is plugged in. Even better, there's a website (motionbased.com) that one can upload rides and get complete reports, including overlaid Google maps, weather, and lots of statistical information about the ride (HR, speed, grade etc). Note that motionbased.com charges a monthly user fee (currently $8/month). The ride history storage is quite good - in the 'smart' recording mode, a data word is recorded every 10 seconds. There are 13,000 storable points, so it should be possible to record about 36 hours of ride data before a download. This would be handy for multi-day trips when a computer isn't available.
Nothing is perfect in life. Here are the issues I have found so far with the Edge.
1. The battery life is close to 9 hours, definitely not the advertised 12 hours. I completed a 200K brevet last weekend, which took 9:10 with stops (the Edge was left on). About 20 minutes before the end I got a 'low battery' warning' but it kept running to the end. Note that I don't have a cadence unit, which probably decreases the battery life. The Edge was fully charged before the ride.
2. The 'grade' display is useless. It bounces around +/- 5% on hills. I think the unit is sampling too fast - Garmin will likely fix this in a firmware update soon.
3. The map display is simply a track history, and does not display actual map information (roads, towns, etc). It's handy for out-and-back rides, since you can see approaching turns on the return trip, but it would be terrific if one could load map data. (Note that positions are recorded and the route is displayed on a 'real' map after download to the 'Training center' or motionbased.com software.)
4. Although there are two bike mounts included, they are at different orientations (90 degs apart) so if you have 2 bikes with the same setup, you'll have to buy another mount ($15).