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Hi I have been offered a Garmin 800 but finding it incredibly confusing to choose a bundle. Can anyone shine some light on the subject. The type of riding I do is both mountain biking and road riding. Any positive information will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Performance bundle & download OSM maps for garmin for free
Will I get the heart rate monitor and cadence sensor in that bundle???
yup you should do
^^Cheers I find it all very confusing when it come to which bundle.
Ask yourself if you can really be bothered with the faff of a HRM especially on a mountain bike when your sweating buckets and covered in sh1te and the thing slips down half way down a descent. In any case what are going to do with a record of your heart rate after each ride, all you'll learn is that your heart rate goes up when you cycle a bit harder and drops when you stop or slow down, but didn't you learn that in biology at school.
The Edge 800 is great as a substitute for a paper map on new routes and for navigating your way down from a blizzard, it allows you to follow a nice thick line on your pre plotted route and beeps at you when you've gone wrong. Everything else on it is a waste of your time out riding as you struggle with pretty un user friendly software.
I'd recommend the trail bundle with the 1:50,000 OS maps, and then if you're found wanting there are some software packages out there that will get you the 1:20,000 maps that you can transfer onto your Garmin.
I was kinda wanting the heart rate monitor for road rides/turbo trainer I dont see the point for mountain biking like you say. Thanks for the input.
+1 for munqe chick (but then I bought her the 800 performance bundle...). HRM and cadence/wheel sensor are [s]a rip off[/s] expensive bought separately, so are official Garmin maps, but OSM maps are free/cheap. I've got a talkytoaster 1:50K UK map on my Etrex and I've stuck this on a microSD card and into MC's 800.
On the turbo you'll have your HR, cadence, and equivalent road speed and distance captured from the wheel sensor so plenty to help with training/motivation.
810 Performance and Maps here - it's cheaper than getting the rest later.
I use the HRM most and the cadence on the roadie and look back at some training rides on the mountain bike to see how I was doing. I use it as a motivational stick some times. It also helps to work out where I sit in the chainring world.