Last Saturday I got a Garmin Edge 205 from my LBS for $209. This is pretty much just a cycling-specific model and it does not have heart rate or cadence. Nonetheless, it's impressive in all that it'll do. All the usual things plus elevation, grade, bearing and mapping, etc.
Monday I did my first ride with the unit. I kept my Cateye Astrale on the bike, too and compared them side-by-side. Initially, I was concerned because there's a lot of speed jumping on the Garmin. It samples at a rate of once per second at best (and for longer rides over 3.5 hours, you have to lower the sampling rate). Compare that to a wheel spinning at 20 mph and you're getting far less frequent speed input. On flats, at a fairly constant speed, the two units were spot on with each other. But on hills, either ascending or descending, the Garmin unit lagged behind the Cateye by as much as 5 mph at times. I think this is in part due to the sampling rate. I think it's also a function of how a satellite looks down on you traveling along the ground. It gives you credit for the run, but not rise. In other words, if you're climbing a 100% grade (um, right), for every 3 feet forward you're going 3 feet up. Your actual motion is along the hypotenus which is 4.? feet. I think the Garmin is only giving credit for the 3 feet forward. HOWEVER ... somewhere in the programming the grade must be factored in because, at the end of the ride, the average speed and mileage reported by both units was absolutely spot on. So bottom line, in hilly terrain, it's going to under-report speed. I think they need to figure out how to fix this. It's aggravating to a degree.
The software that comes with the unit is quite primitive. The option to go to Motionbased.com and upload your data there provides lots of very interesting and useful information. But it's a pain to get it all working and my uploads have failed a number of times. No data has been lost, but things just freeze up and you have to start over. But when you get it done, it's pretty cool.
I own and ride several different bikes ... two road bikes and my tt/tri bike. What's really cool is being able to use one unit that jumps between all three easily. This thing doesn't care if you have 700x23 tires on one bike, 700x20 tires on the next and 650x20s on the third. It's not working off of wheel size.
It's a little large, but it's not heavy. Compared to my Cateye Astrale, when I consider the wires and pickups and the computer head and all that will be gone, I should come out ahead on weight and aero implications.
I think what I like most is that it offers such an impressive array of data fields and lets you customize the number of them that display on the screen, and what specific ones you see. That's really neat. If you're on a flat ride, you don't care about grade and elevation, so you can replace them with some other data sets. If you go up in the mountains, you can set it up to report your grade and elevation. Very cool. Of course, it stores all of it, so it's all reported when you upload to your home computer.
The wave of the future. All the other bike computer folks better figure out how to get on board.
Bob C.
Monday I did my first ride with the unit. I kept my Cateye Astrale on the bike, too and compared them side-by-side. Initially, I was concerned because there's a lot of speed jumping on the Garmin. It samples at a rate of once per second at best (and for longer rides over 3.5 hours, you have to lower the sampling rate). Compare that to a wheel spinning at 20 mph and you're getting far less frequent speed input. On flats, at a fairly constant speed, the two units were spot on with each other. But on hills, either ascending or descending, the Garmin unit lagged behind the Cateye by as much as 5 mph at times. I think this is in part due to the sampling rate. I think it's also a function of how a satellite looks down on you traveling along the ground. It gives you credit for the run, but not rise. In other words, if you're climbing a 100% grade (um, right), for every 3 feet forward you're going 3 feet up. Your actual motion is along the hypotenus which is 4.? feet. I think the Garmin is only giving credit for the 3 feet forward. HOWEVER ... somewhere in the programming the grade must be factored in because, at the end of the ride, the average speed and mileage reported by both units was absolutely spot on. So bottom line, in hilly terrain, it's going to under-report speed. I think they need to figure out how to fix this. It's aggravating to a degree.
The software that comes with the unit is quite primitive. The option to go to Motionbased.com and upload your data there provides lots of very interesting and useful information. But it's a pain to get it all working and my uploads have failed a number of times. No data has been lost, but things just freeze up and you have to start over. But when you get it done, it's pretty cool.
I own and ride several different bikes ... two road bikes and my tt/tri bike. What's really cool is being able to use one unit that jumps between all three easily. This thing doesn't care if you have 700x23 tires on one bike, 700x20 tires on the next and 650x20s on the third. It's not working off of wheel size.
It's a little large, but it's not heavy. Compared to my Cateye Astrale, when I consider the wires and pickups and the computer head and all that will be gone, I should come out ahead on weight and aero implications.
I think what I like most is that it offers such an impressive array of data fields and lets you customize the number of them that display on the screen, and what specific ones you see. That's really neat. If you're on a flat ride, you don't care about grade and elevation, so you can replace them with some other data sets. If you go up in the mountains, you can set it up to report your grade and elevation. Very cool. Of course, it stores all of it, so it's all reported when you upload to your home computer.
The wave of the future. All the other bike computer folks better figure out how to get on board.
Bob C.