Garmin Edge 810 GPS Bike Computer with Heart Rate Monitor, Speed/Cadence Sensor and City Navigator Street Maps For Europe - Black

Was really sceptical about buying the Garmin 810 after reading all the reviews of problems and issues and returns. I pressed the button to put it in my basket several times only to remove it again. Finally got around to pressing the place order button and waited with some trepidation to see if I would regret it. I've owned a SatMap Active 10 for some time which with OS mapping, good GPS and rechargeable battery packs so the Garmin was up against it.I hope I don't regret writing this but, why did I worry and what on earth are all these buyers doing to make theirs not work?Received direct from Amazon in under 48 hours delivered on a Sunday. Charged it fully before touching it. Downloaded Garmin's webupdater software and checked firmware / software for latest. It was already up to date so a recently released unit. This is why I bought from Amazon rather than a third party who may have had slow moving stock lying around.Downloaded OpenStreetMaps free file and installed it on a new Sandisk 16gb class 10 MicroSD card. Configured the unit according to the manual (it was all pretty intuitive anyway) and sat it in the bedroom window to acquire satellites. It took about 15 minutes or so before it found enough to locate itself. There is a lot of talk on the reviews and forums about slow startup. There is no surprise if a GPS is slow when it's cold started. Cold start being when it is powered off for a long time or more importantly moved substantial distances whilst switched off.Location was accurate and when switched on for the second time it took less than 30 seconds to locate.Connected to iPhone 6 with bluetooth after downloading Garmin App. Took the unit out on a short cycle ride, a walk and a car journey. GPS traces recorded were more than accurate enough to use to upload new data to OpenStreetMaps website. Haven't used Navigation yet but so far everything is as slick as can be and loving it.

After a few months of using a Garmin 510 I decided to upgrade to the Garmin 810 for the additional benefits of mapping capability and some reliability / stability issues with the former. The 810 is a bit bigger and heavier than the 510 but my early time with it, including the use of some freely available UK mapping on SIM card, has restored my faith in the Edge series. It is slightly more complex in available functionality should you want it but at the sub-£200 price paid for a touchscreen unit it is a steal in my view (prices on the web fluctuate wildly it seems). Uses the same firmware as the 510 but for me is less issue prone and more stable / reliable. Following courses I have prepared seems so much easier with the added mapping capability provided by this unit - more akin to a traditional satnav. Sealed battery life is fine for my needs and would be enough for a decent sportive over 6-8 hours and could be extended by switching off / tweaking some of the functions I guess. Basic mounts, AC adaptor and USB cable are in the box (no "out front" mounts included in the one I bought). Interesting that Garmin have recently changed the 510 to a 520 but kept with the 810 and 1000 variants.

I bought an 810 from Amazon back in January primarily for mapping and routing functions to stop me getting lost. I will list all of the problems I have encountered so far.Firstly, the routing functions are terrible. Plot a route on garmin and upload to the edge. Everything runs smoothly. Get 30 miles into a 60 mile route on roads unknown to me and it tells me to take a left. So I take the left and it says U-turn. Do a U-turn and it's says go left again so essentially it gives up on the route. OK put a landmark in close to home and tell it route you home. It takes you to the nearest dual carriage way and says there you go, head down there for 20 miles! What a joke.Then if you do plan a route and go off course you hear a beep and "off course" but it doesn't tell you how to get back on course or re-route you so you can carry on going in the direction you are heading but gradually get back on track.OK so you get lost and don't end up going where you wanted too but overall, you enjoyed the ride, how about if you want to tweak that ride on garmin connect and make it into a course to follow at another date? Well I tried that, and on garmin connect the route looks awesome but when you upload to the device it only ever loads up the original course you did in the first place meaning if you want the modified course you have to make it from scratch. Again a waste of time.Finally reliability. This weekend I did my longest solo ride and the most amount of climbing I've ever done. It was hard work but I couldn't wait to upload it to strava. Predictably I got lost several times due to the terrible routing of the device but eventually I got home which is the course end point. When I arrived I heard the novelty tone to sound that I have arrived. Great. Then it turned itself off. Not great! Fired it back up and the ride had gone. No data at all, so now I will never be able to compare my performance over all those segments and will have to do the ride again for the personal records. This garmin has been nothing but trouble.