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I'm interested in getting a GPS for the bike. I'd like to be able to navigate with it on and off road, ideally with map info on it, but this isn't essential if it pushes the price up too much.
I don't need too many other features, not bothered about heart rate, cadence etc.
I'm on a fairly tight budget and am happy to look second hand, but what should I be looking for?
Garmin touring?
Are they okay off-road?
Mine was ok but never really used it to follow routes. Plenty do but you just need to change a lot of setting as it tries resetting you back to road. I’m sure someone will be along to give more detail!
I was in a similar boat last year, I ended up with a second hand Garmin Etrex 20 & maps from https://talkytoaster.me.uk. Use a free website for plotting a route or download a GPX file to follow. The TT mapping is great.
Any other brands I should consider?
Rik - I've got a Garmin Edge 705 which is well used but still works perfectly with great battery life. Might be suitable? Mates rates 😉
I have an edge touring. Brilliant for the money but highly idiosyncratic. There's a thread on here somewhere with all my tips in it.
I had a Garmin edge 25, which worked ok and did an ok job. I recently moved to a Bryton rider 330 which is better in every way. The app is simple and does what it needs to do. The best bits are the 1 second recording, the ease of transfer of routes to and from you phone/web (WiFi rather than Bluetooth = instant!), Battery life of 36 hours and a price of £100 new, or £60 for an Amazon warehouse deals... Really impressed to be honest!
They do a mapping one with open maps on it which might be tourer friendly, but the route creation on the app is dead easy so I'm not sure full maps on the GPS is really needed
Out of the garmin range the following have good maps.
800, 810 (old)
1000 (see my other post, I picked up one for £269 at halfords with cadence and HRM - you could sell them on easily enough)
The standard versions are more expensive but there were touring/explore versions released that were cheaper.
You need to get some maps. OS maps are available but cost as much as the unit. THe open source maps are actually really good and can be had for free worldwide. Have a look at the site to see if they are good enough where you ride
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/54.8934/-2.2492
I tend to plot routes at home and follow them when out as it is easier. Only use the maps if I see something interesting or get a bit lost (not paying attention) to the garmin.
What's your budget. My local facebook sales page regularly has garmins popping up. SEcond hand might be worth a punt.
The other brands never really captured market share. Wahoo are supposed to e good but the mapping is limited. Bryton sort of faded away. Lezyne again is limited by mapping. There are some MIO ones on merlin that look cheap. But I wasn't prepared to take the risk.
Thanks all. I saw a cheap touring model for sale last night so think I'm now sorted but I'll let you know if that falls through as the 705 looks like it would fit the bill.
One point to note about routing - this depends on the data used to generate the maps especially off-road. There's a BW by our house that had a gap in the access for bikes where it crosses a beck, if you tried to create a route along it then you'd be diverted about 4km round by the roads. I've fixed this now so the next map generated from it will be correct.
And off road you can come to junctions with 6 trails heading off in various directions and not obvious which one is the direction it's saying to go. Unless you're following marked bridleways etc.