I am very happy with my set. I've had them for several months now and just changed the batteries this weekend for the first time. much happier with these than I was with the problematic P1s I struggled with for a few years.

You will mainly only read negative reviews as its easier to tell everyone that you had problems/dislike something than it is to say yea I have no problems with them.

I have mine and to date I have not had any real problems with them - I did have the batteries die at roughly only 24hrs of usage but who knows the real story on the OEM battery's. I popped some new ones in (went the Duracell 357 route) and went on with my day. The pedals read power fast, connect fast and give me all the silly cycling dynamics my brain can handle.

I will record the time from new to dead now with them but realistically if I get 80-90hrs out of a set of batteries than I am happy. I will say that I have followed all the threads on the Garmin forums/other bike forums and Garmin is making a genuine attempt to help people and working with everyone on whatever issues they are having. That is great that they have the customer service behind them and support the product.

I have no issues with mine and compared to my other units (Quarc dZero, SRM, Powertap C1) they are accurate and great.

2 months in on mine, and no complaints.

Not a ton of hours on them, as the weather has been poor, but I think about 30hrs of use.

Good experience with mine as well. Used on several bikes thus far, and around 4 months of use. Wasn't initially pleased they weren't dual BLTE/Ant+ despite being marketed as such - but post firmware upgrade they work great. No complaints other than the o-rings on the battery cap you unscrew are pretty delicate and easy to destroy when changing out the batteries.. to be seen on whether this is a big deal on waterproofing or not.

What would be even greater is if they didn’t constantly release products that had so many issues and needed so much customer support...

Problems should be the exception not the norm

I have had mine since they were first released, when they have worked, they have been great, but I have had a number of issues. I know of people who own them and have had no problems whatsoever...ymmv.
Mine worked great out of the box, then the first firmware update hit and they just became useless, huge dropouts, big power spikes etc...stopped using them until the beta FW update released and they have been better since. I think they are making good progress with figuring out the FW issues, but a few thoughts on the hardware itself:

The battery doors seem very poorly designed, the door has a metal thread that screws into the pedal body which is plastic and if over tightened (which is v. easy to do) will strip and become immediately useless. Garmin sent me 'new' doors after I was having issues, but they are not re-designed in any way (although apparently they are working on a re-designed door, hoping they solve the issue below). I have partly stripped one of the threads despite sticking to the recommended tightening instructions.

Inside the battery doors, there are 2 tiny pieces of electrical tape that cover part of the battery terminals...I have found that these are easily dislodged simply installing new batteries, especially if it's warm and the glue on the tape is soft. This also seems to be a factor in a lot of problems people are having (the tape falling off) and the solution is to cut a small part of tape yourself and install it...just seems like incredibly bad design IMO.

I'm supposed to be getting a replacement set per Garmin, although hear they are short on inventory.

had them since release... it get the occasional cant find left sensor, but it goes away in seconds ...

Had initial issues but once switching to the Duracell 357 batteries (as advised by Garmin Customer Service), no issues since. 65hrs on them so far and been happy. Have some data sets comparing them to FSA Powerbox, Quarq, and KICKR, just need to get around to publishing the data. But very close to all of those powermeters and happy with that.

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-Brad Williams
Website | Twitter: @BW_Tri |Instagram: @BW_Tri | Strava | Co-Founder & Coach at: KIS Coaching
Partnered with: Zoot Sports | Precision Fuel &Hydration | ISM

No issues with mine at all.

Ditto others.

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2014 P3 DI2 - RT6, CXR80, Power2Max S, 820, Fenix 3 HR. (gone)

Very happy with mine! No issues. The reviews from other sites also seems good and they seem to have become a trustworthy source for comparision.

A lot of negative feeback on the garmin forum though, which is probably because that is where you turn to if there is any issue.

Mine work great. And are a breath of fresh air after a couple of years of messing about with another brand's crank PM which had constant problems.

I've not had a problem with my set and I've been on them for 6 months or so.

Mine function great as well. Easy to use, and no issues. However they measure lower than my other PMs, which seem to be about the same (P2M, Rotor2inpower, Kickr 2017).

If you haven't bought them yet then i would wait until the battery issue is sorted. I really wanted to get a set as everything else i use is Garmin. But the constant ordering delays and then battery issues put me off. I ended up with the Assioma which have been solid in the month i have had them and were £200 cheaper than the Vectors. The only issue is have with the Assioma is they are a stiff to clip out of.

I'm looking to purchase a pedal-based power meter, and since my other products and sensors are Garmin - the Vector 3's seems like a no-brainer. But after visiting the Garmin message board, and this forum, and reading about all of the battery cover issues ... I'm second guessing the decision to buy the Vector 3's.

I get it: only people who have problems are going to complain and post. However, since the Vector 3 pedal is fairly new to market, I'm wondering if this time next year after everyone's had to replace batteries and open/close battery covers, are the complaints going to continue increasing and trending upward?

Has anyone replaced the battery cover on a single pedal 2 or 3+ times and with zero issue?

Again, I'm wondering if once these pedals are put through the paces, and every owner has had to replace the battery covers several times, will it become evident that the poorly designed battery cover is a huge issue affecting a substantial percentage of Vector 3 owners? Or am I just being paranoid...

I’ve had mine since October (?). I’m very happy with them. I think I had a bad battery a few weeks ago making them act funky. It was a supposedly new battery but I changed them all out and now they work fine.

Here's some info I found on Ray's (DC Rainmaker) blog. Very good update, although I'm still not sure what I'm going to do...

link: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/...ge-1#comment-2876702


DC Rainmaker
April 19, 2018 at 7:28 pm#597
So just as a general update, after spending time at Garmin this week for a variety of topics (primarily related to the Connect IQ Summit). But, I sat down and talked Vector 3 issues with all levels of the Vector team for the better part of two hours earlier in the week. As you might imagine, it’s hard to summarize a meandering two hours discussion, but in general it was me pointing at the numerous comments here and asking for answers.
I’d bucketize those into three areas:
1) Support Requests
More than anything my concern was that folks have been reporting issues where support is telling them long timeframes for replacement of parts or pedals that have issues. Quite frankly, anyone that has received a unit and is experiencing issues should *always* be ahead of backorder queues. Meaning, it sucks if someone in a backorder queue has to wait another week to get their new unit, but it’s unacceptable that someone who received their power meter and needs a support swap has to wait weeks for that to be processed. They agree and are making some tweaks.
At this point, there should be zero queue for Vector support parts/replacement requests in the US. Further, they are validating that all non-US service points around the world are operating that way. If folks here are hearing anything more than ‘it’ll ship tomorrow’ for a support issue, please drop a note here and they will help run that down.
2) Existing units
As noted by Garmin and others via support, there has been issues with some existing units. In talking with them, it sounds like the percentage impacted continues to be low…but as I noted above, if you’re shipping a thousand+ units a week, it’s still impacting people.
Garmin has outlined various ways to improve connectivity for batteries for those having it. They also believe the V3.30 firmware released should resolve all outstanding software-specific issues at this point (some of which were compounded by the battery problem). Further, some battery issues were compounded by the battery cap/hold threads on some early batches (not entire batches, just portions of them) being…less than ideal. Specifically the threads could become damaged easily, which meant that the pods wouldn’t be fully set. That’s been fixed a while back to ensure all units leaving the factory are meeting the specs. If you have issues with threads on your pedals, reach out to support. Or really, if you have any issues, again, reach out to support.
Note that production has never ceased for Vector 3 (aside from Chinese New Year, like virtually all companies manufacturing in Taiwan and China). It’s maintained at full factory capacity. They’re just far beyond what they ever expected to have orders for. They’re backorder queue along exceeds their entire first year expectations.
3) Going forward
So the bigger question is ‘Is it safe to purchase Vector 3’. And that’s a tough one to answer. Manufacturing is in process for the new battery caps to become the default for all units leaving. Some folks have received those new caps/pods via support already if they were having issues. Of course, plenty of others aren’t having issues with the existing caps.
I suspect there’s also an element of folks ending up with crappy batteries also contributing to some, but not all issues. I suggested they put together a list of ‘recommended batteries’, just like they do for headphones on the music side, and other areas of their business. They strongly noted that going with name-brand batteries will definitely help (and I’d agree, especially in the LR44/SR44 battery world). They’re looking into doing this.
Still, I don’t think we’ll have an answer on whether things are past the storm for a while. Not because they don’t feel confident in these combined software+hardware changes (they do), but because if you turn back the clock, it was calm seas for the first three months of units. It wasn’t until really late January that issues starting occurring.
Finally, I would note that the Vector/Cycling team definitely isn’t thrilled about how this played out, especially the way the support requests have been prioritized/handled. There were no happy faces during that discussion, it was as if someone had died (true: we had just finished discussing an hours worth of my Edge 520 Plus issues). I think they want to find the end of the tunnel as much as anyone else.
In any case, hope this helps shed some light a bit. Also, I’ll update the concerns portion of the review with a link to this comment as well.

Lastly, here's a youtube video from a dude who fixed the battery issue with cork from a wine bottle. I kid not. I also read the comments from the video an apparently several other Garmin users employed a similar solution and has worked, so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbK1pkCyW_s