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Doing my longest ride to date in a couple of weeks, a 200k audax, and I was planning on using my Edge 500 as a back up to the route sheet.
Given that I may well be looking at the wrong side of 10 hours, and it may be getting dark at the end, will the battery last?
I did 9 hours a few weeks back and it reckoned it was still on about 60% battery life.
Great, the machine may last longer than my legs then....
It depends on how many other ANT+ devices you have. But with a heart rate monitor I would get over 10 hours out of my old one. I recently got a new one and the battery seems slightly better on it, reminding me that batteries do age.
Another +1 here. I did a 200km Audax this spring with Garmin HRM on Ant+ was out for 11ish hours and followed the route on it. I don't think I used anywhere near 50% of battery.
If you follow a course on the device, it uses more juice. For just general route logging, it'll be fine. My mate used his for 3 days without charging it when we cycled along the Scottish coast.
I've had over 14hrs out of mine on a couple of occasions, without running any additinal Ant+ stuff though. It's also a couple of years old & used regularily, not had any problems so far with any significant loss of batt performance..
IMO they're a great piece of kit..
Only problem i've found on long/multi-day trips, is if topping up the charge with an external batt, anticipate to do this during natural stops, don't wait till the batt runs out as the unit switches itself off when you plug the external power supply in!
Make sure you've the back-light turned off. If I've mine on constant over the winter id be lucky to get 3 hours.
I've done 13 hours riding and it was still running
I had mine running for a good bit over eight hours last Saturday and still had 54% showing.
I used mine for a week on the HTR, charging it every night and didn't run out at all - this was using it up to 16hrs a day. However, if you do need to charge it mid-ride, you can use a USB On The Go cable and it won't reset.
I posted a description about this cable a few days ago [url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/garmin-edge-500-charging-while-in-use-a-cheap-solution ]here[/url]
Doing my longest ride to date in a couple of weeks, a 200k audax, and I was planning on using my Edge 500 as a back up to the route sheet.Given that I may well be looking at the wrong side of 10 hours, and it may be getting dark at the end, will the battery last?
I've done 200km audaxes using the 500 as a navigation aid, and it had plenty of life left. With "turn bu turn" enabled and running a HRM, I get about 12 hours out of it. Incidentally, I find the navigation is good enough to use it as my main aid, with the printed route sheet as back up. Bikeroutetoaster is my preferred software as it allows you to set a warning beep in advance of the junction.
13 Hours plus for my 4 year old version. The battery was just starting to show a lack of charge when I switched it off.
Cheers ransos - bikeroutetoaster is what I have found easiest as well, and I don't bother with HRM etc, so I'm now more worried about my legs and whether I can finish in daylight!