I’m thinking of buying my wife a new distance/GSP unit for Christmas. What is the difference in the Garmin Edge 305 vs the Forerunner 305??
The Edge is much larger and mounts on your bike like a normal bike computer. The Forerunner is a watch. You can put the Forerunner on a bike mount so you don’t have to look at your wrist while cycling, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to put the Edge on your arm…
Edge is bike-mounted. Forerunner is wrist-mounted but can be used on both the bike and the run. Both (I believe) have cadence capabilities. I woudl suggest the forerunner for most triathletes, as it is more useful in more scenarios.
Thanks a bunch. That makes sense.
One other big difference: the Forerunner uses the GPS to determine elevation, but the Edge uses a barometric altimeter. Forget using the Forerunner to measure elevation. Although I love my 305, elevation readings are nonsense. I’ve never used an Edge, but the barometric altimeter should be much more accurate.
Victor
And…screens can be programmed to display whatever information you need. The Edge screen is alrger, and can display up to 8 fields, while the Forerunner screen displays less. (3 or 4, I think)
Does the forerunner leave breadcrumbs? What I want is for when the group decides they want to do more miles than I want, will I be able to look at bread crumbs to give me a general direction of the way home. I read that you can backtrack the route you rode, but that isn’t really what I would want to do. This is for a triathlete, so based on this tread, I’m looking at the forerunner.
Does this gps use watch batteries, or is it a rechargable? I think I read that it is a rechargable battery. If it is a rechargable, is that a pain? I can foresee forgetting to recharge it.
Thanks.
Yep… it does leave a breadcrumb trail… but that is on a blank screen with no map overlay… so never think of either the edge or the forerunner as a navigation device… but yes… it does give you a fairly good idea… and once you get used to seeing the screen you get a fair idea of direction.
It uses a built in rechargeable battery… the Forerunner 205/305 battery lasts only 10hrs… with both the Edge and forerunner you can recharge on the go using a battery/usb pack readily available… but with the forerunner it is a bit messy as you need the cradle to charge via… so is far from a perfect situation.
Actually recharging is a breeze… after a work out i load up my data to the computer and to motionbased (who nicely adjustthe elevation for the exercise and add weather info… perfect)… i then leave on while i am on the computer and by the time i get off it is fully charged and ready to go 
So far I have only not had it charged once… just like bikes lights… you only make the mistake once