[Closed] Cycling GPS Device with Maps

- Are you looking for road or off road navigation?
- Are you always going to be rigidly following routes you’ve planned on a website or are you wanting a device that can generate its own route, and which can still navigate you if you need to deviate from your plan?
- Do you currently use any specific online route planner, or any specific site for uploading rides you’ve done?
- Does it bother you if you need to plug the device into a computer to get routes onto it?
- Do you care about training data, or just navigation?
- What battery life would cover 95% of your rides?

For mapping and navigation my personal preferences are the Garmin 800/Touring which you can get for well under £100 secondhand, or the Explore which is £200 new. But they’re not the only options.

Wahoo, I've seen the light and ditched the Garmin.

Thanks Bez

– Are you looking for road or off road navigation? Off Road
– Are you always going to be rigidly following routes you’ve planned on a website or are you wanting a device that can generate its own route, and which can still navigate you if you need to deviate from your plan? This is certainly a preference but not a deal breaker
– Do you currently use any specific online route planner, or any specific site for uploading rides you’ve done? No
– Does it bother you if you need to plug the device into a computer to get routes onto it? No
– Do you care about training data, or just navigation? Navigation
– What battery life would cover 95% of your rides? Yes

So…

For off-road use, Garmins have the advantages of being able to use different maps; eg the OS maps can give useful off-road detail (though they're pretty compromised on a small screen or for readability at a glance), or OSM maps which you can download from elsewhere. This is arguably a little easier and less nerve-wracking with the models that use SD cards, but possible with all.

Only Garmins will do re-routing on the fly.

If you're happy to plug into a computer and you want minimum cost I'd suggest the 800/Touring. You can buy secondhand for about £80 and sell on without losing money. I spent several years with these and only really upgraded to go wireless. I used to get about 9 hours out of it on the map screen, and close to 11 on the data screen (if you're navigating it will pop up a zoomed-in map of a junction when you approach it and then return to the data screen once you've passed through it).

From there, upgrading to the Explore will give you the advantages of better performance (faster/smoother map panning, and faster route calculation), plus wireless syncing (either via Garmin Connect or a Connect IQ app such as Routecourse, which is free), and slightly better battery life if you use the battery saver mode.

If you want primarily navigation then the other Garmin models aren't such good choices, except the 1030 which is a lot of money over the Explore for little benefit.

Wahoos have better screen visibility in daylight, and better* syncing with some particular third party sites like Strava and RideWithGPS (which IMO is the best route planning site). But the navigation is basically "follow your intended route or bust" and the maps are purely cosmetic. Similar is true of the Lezyne units, as I understand, but I've not used one (I have a GPS primarily for navigation, too, and from what I could glean online getting maps and routes onto Lezyne units seemed significantly more difficult/restrictive than either Garmin or Wahoo).

You'll find tales online of people having frustrations with every type of GPS unit, so to an extent it's a little bit of a lottery.

* at least in theory: both units I've had made a real mess of this in practice and the smartphone app was essentially unusable, and burned the battery out in no time at all; YMMV

Also Komoot which is very up and coming. For me is the reliability over the Garmin.

I'm similar to you op in that I'm not really interested in the training stuff, just wanted navigation.

I also only really wanted basic cues for navigation and wasn't after OS map detail on a device.

After reading some reviews and taking advantage of a recent eBay offer I've ended up with the elemnt bolt.

Used it on a couple of rides now and I think it'll do me fine.

One ride I did I downloaded a gpx file, loaded it into the app and synced it. Dead easy. The one I did yesterday I generated the route on Ride with gps, copying a route seen on another site.

It'll take a bit of getting used to and eventually I'll stop trying to pinch and zoom on the non touchscreen, but so far I like its simplicity and compact form.

The limiting factor is not being able to go off course and plot a revised route on the fly but otherwise, good.

A Garmin etrex, dakota or oregon with an SD card with maps on will do what you need perfectly. Most of the bikepackers on the Bear Bones forum have one of these options. Personally I have a Garmin oregon

That is an excellent summary from Bez.  Garmins take a bit of learning and can be a bit clunky if you are used to a phone but once you've worked 8r out it is fine.  The first few trips can be a bit frustrating until you get the hang of it.  To get the battery life out to what they claim can take a bit of work as well - set backlight timeouts, switch off WiFi, stay off the map screen unless you need it. But you get about half the battery life without doing anything fancy and most of the time that is good enough

Thanks all for the awesome feedback I think Garmin is certainly the way to go based on choice available and price - Now I dont think I am any nearer to model needed other than brand, I like the explore but dont really want to spend £200 initially.

There are so many models its so confusing hence why reaching out.

So I currently going to look at:

Garmin Explore
Garmin (Benp1 Options)

Is there any other options between £100 - £150 preferably used.

A secondhand eTrex or Edge 800/Touring sound like your best bets. Choose the former if you also want to use it for hiking (which is what it’s primarily designed for) or want to do multi-day tours without access to a charger; otherwise choose the latter, as it’s much smaller has more flexible and more compact mounts for use on a bike. Both will come in under budget.

Thanks for your advice all I accidentally purchased Touring (ebay put bid on incorrect item) but after once use really pleased with how it works and going to see how I get on. I am going out today too see how it works out but based on ride yesterday money well spent, I will say the only issue could do with larger screen but will try a few more times before I decide but the mapping /routing was spot on for me yesterday. I think I am going to have to invest in some over prices lights as I believe this will change my riding and leave me out me far longer.