I have had my Garmin Edge 205 Cycle computer for several weeks now and thinks it is about time I review it!

You may remember I struggled over the decision of which edge if any to buy. See an earlier post I wrote. The 205 is the entry level Garmin Edge currently £99.96 at Amazon. The edge range is specifically designed for cycling though can be used for other sports.

The major disadvantages of the edge 205 verses the top of the range 705 are the following

• No barometric Altitude meter (relies on GPS Positioning)
• No City mapping, or “go to” navigation
• Black and green screen not colour
• Cannot upgrade to use Heart monitor, Cadence monitor or Power Monitor
• Cannot Wirelessly share ride data

What are its key features though?

• Comes with Garmin Training Centre PC Software
• Virtual partner – train with a virtual rider or yourself from a previously saved trip
• Auto Pause – Pauses the timer when you stop
• Auto Lap – Set it to lap at a fixed distance/time
• Workouts – Workout to a target – eg calories, distance, time

I think the best way to review the Edge is to look at how you use it, before your ride, during and after.

Before the ride

Just because it doesn’t have a full “take me to this street” sat nav doesn’t mean it cannot navigate. You just have to set it up in advance. This can be done on the Garmin Training Centre software but the standard version of it doesn’t contain detailed maps. I discovered a great site called www.mapmyride.com, This site allows you to map a ride, and download it to your edge as a course file. One great feature of map my ride is as you draw the ride you can set it to follow road, on all the other sites I have looked at, to draw a route you must do a straight line dot to dot. This site will let you place those dots further apart and it will follow the roads to get to them. This saves so much time! You can then upload the route with the Garmin Training Centre software onto your Edge. When you are out on the bike near the start you just hit Do Course and you see a line on the screen to follow, you can zoom into 800yds so when you get to a junction it is really easy to see which turn to take! I made a 45 mile course all the way to Ashford and had no trouble following it (Except where I programmed in a wrong turn! Oops!) Of course if you know where to go, just hit go and start cycling!

On the road

Once out on the road the great advantage over cheaper cycling computers is the bigger screen, you can display all the information you need on one page.

I have it set to show:

• Timer
• Speed
• Distance
• Time of Day
• Calories

You can also see a line map of where you have been (or where you are going if you are doing a pre programmed route) this can be overlayed with some of the above information. Also there is a Compass should you need it!

The other great way to use the edge when your out on the road is its Lap feature. I have set it to Lap every mile. So every time I hit a mile there is an audible tone and it flashes up the time it took me to do the last mile. This is a really good way to understand your pace while you are out on the road.

After the Ride

After the ride it is easy to upload all your information on to the Garmin Connect software. Here it can give you line graphs of data displayed against each other eg speed versus elevation set along distance. You could also comapre this information to a previous cycle, this is particularly good if you do the same route often. The other key feature I find useful is seeing my “laps”, rather than just looking at my totals at the end of my ride it is great to see them for each mile in a table along with elevation change, this can help show where I went to fast / too slow, and how to focus training.

The data from your route is also plotted against a map, in the basis version of the training centre this is a basic map showing key towns and major roads. The Garmin Training Centre software in my opinion isn’t great, its a bit unweldy, and in some places basic, part of that statement could mean I need to spend more time learning to use it! But the data you get off the Garmin is great and there are many other third party software packages you can use. Some examples of this are Memory Map – if you convert your garmin route data to a standard GPS you can view this against an Ordnance Survey map using memory map. Sporttracks is another good stats software which will download information directly from the Garmin.

So thats my review, but to conclude lets look again at the list of what it doesn’t do – Do I think I should have bought a higher model?

• No barometric Altitude meter (relies on GPS Positioning) I have found the altitude read out very accurate when compared with an OS map using memory map.
• No City mapping, or “go to” navigation It would look more pretty if it had maps with roads and POI, but I don’t think I would every want to say Take me here! I am on a bike so I want to make up my own route, plan it carefully to avoid traffic. Sure I could get lost but then I could use its compass or route of where I have been to find my way back.
  
• Black and green screen not colour Not a problem – very clear to read on the road too (though I probably spend too much time staring at it and not the road!)
• Cannot upgrade to use Heart monitor, Cadence monitor or Power Monitor This is a shame, I bought it thinking I could, and this will put off some people. However I don’t think the extra information would make me a better cycling at my level. I am happy without it, but can be bought with the Garmin 305 which is basically the Garmin 205 with HR, Cadance and Barometric Altitude meter.
  
• Cannot Wirelessly share ride data I really can’t see that I would ever use this.

In conclusion I hope I have given a fair and balanced review, I love my Garmin but I am really glad I didn’t spend out on the top of the range, the 205 is enough. After that I am not sure how useful some of the features are or if they are worth the extra money.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this review and if you are thinking of buying one that it helps you, please see the Amazon link at the top of the post for the Garmin 205 and the rest of the range. If you have any questions or your own thoughts on Garmins Edge range please leave a comment.