ReneV

The forthcoming Bryton Aero 60 looks like the long-distance holy grail ...

atwl77

I currently use both Garmin Edge 520 and 1030, and they support cue sheets exported from RWGPS *but* one major issue is that they truncate the name on the cue sheets so those cannot be too long. "Turn left", "Left on A88" might be fine, but "Turn left after McDonalds" would probably get cut off.

Rootman

Garmin Edge 200, small and does what I want as far as TRACKING via GPS. If I need to see a live map or determine where I am I just fire up maps or GPS on my Android phone. I don't ride with my phone displaying a GPS.

antimonysarah

I'm considering upgrading to the 1030 -- I waterlogged my Touring (which had its quirks but did the job) and replaced it with a new Touring, but the new one has a software issue I've seen confirmed by others online -- it won't restart navigation in the middle of a course, and it crashes more often than my old one, so restarting mid-course is a common occurrence. Sigh. (It will still do breadcrumb style display of the course after that, but the point to me of having a fancy GPS is to have turn-by-turn.) I don't care about any of the social media stuff or most of the performance metrics (though the barometric altimeter and temp sensor in the Touring I did like -- I don't do well in heat and it's useful to see the temperature plot when I'm looking back at a ride.) I won't be able to use the out-front mount with the battery; my handlebar bag is in the way, but it looks like the charging port is accessible when it's on a stem mount.

Not interested in Wahoo unless they add the ability to use it standalone -- while I finally joined the modern era and got a smartphone, I don't want to be required to pull it out and power it up (on long rides I often turn it off so that I don't need to charge more things) to interact with my GPS. And I don't really want to have to have a second RWGPS account just to sync the thing to an account with a manageable number of saved courses.

cvskates

Another vote for the Wahoo Element Bolt - it does exactly what you described - The fields are hugely customizable through the app, and it does all the uploading at the end of a ride on its own, no need to plug it in.

RBChi

So glad I found this thread. Very timely.
I will say I was keen on using my iPhone5s with various apps, mostly Strava and MapMyRide.
The big issues for me were tracking my monthly distance, and I was using the feed to the Apple Health App but found two quirks: Strava wouldn't display my current speed in the app, and MMR would only log a workout, but not distance ridden in Health. As far as the phone itself, the lower operating temperature is 32ºF. So when riding in the fall along Lake Michigan, it would shut off when on my handlebar mount.

Similar to other posters, I'm looking for weather/temp tough, and turn-by-turn. It looks like I've read enough about Garmin's touch screen being problematic that it might be falling behind the Wahoo.

Mostly I'm looking at this as a prize for surviving a vacation with my in-laws as I plan some overnight biking camping nearby. Another feature that seems to be a bonus is the Garmin's have accident detection which might be useful to me as I ride solo.

Ald1 

Garmin 1030. Since the firmware upgrade I love it. Started out with iPhone strapped to handlebar, map my ride. Really like MMR and still keep it along with, of course using Garmin connect. I did try the Bolt but returned it. I'm old and the screen was too small and I like a color display.

kingston 

If it will actually last a full 600k, the Lezyne Mega XL is the first device I have seen that I would get instead of the eTrex20x if I were getting a new GPS for randonneuring.

njkayaker

Who knows what you mean by "turning off the map".

Do you "turn off" your computer by turning off the monitor?

mmeiser

The information on this list is dating quite quickly because GPS technology is progressing so rapidly right now. That's a great thing!

I have quite a bit of experience now with several gps systems and can say that there is no perfect system for navigation on long rides like touring or randoneering. Garmin has the best navigation but because of their short battery lifes and tendency to crash are the most unreliable. They are also very expensive. I have a Fennix 3 which seems to be very stable and has great battery kife, but because it has such a small screen i rarely use it for navigation. it is primarily used as a data recorder for biking, hiking, xcskiing, snowshoing, kayaking... and just plain old activity tracking.

All in all the Garmin 520 series and 810 series have been very crashy. Not sure if the newer ones are more stable. The problem is once crashed you can almost never reload and get the route back up. The battery life is improving tremendously on the newer versions of these but it still is not sufficient for touring or randoneering unless you carry a battery pack or other charge system... but again the primary thing for me is they crash to much while navigating to be reliable so I do not bother. That said when they are wirking the audible turn alerts, display of street names and color base maps make these systems the best for navigating... until they crash.

Meanwhile I love my Bryton 530. Well priced. Very stable and suoerb battery life. I download other peoples GPX files from mapmyride, ridewithgps, and strava all the time and less then one in a hundred times do I have issues wih the route failing to fully load or truncating. This is usually fixed by re-authoring the route one of the mentioned websites or other website of choice. My Bryton has only frozen on me twice in hundreds and hundrds of rides and both times i was able to quickly press a three key combination to restart the unit and immediately reload the route. The irony is it happens so infrequently I cannot remember the key combination off the top of my head. I just google it. lol.

The only shortcomings of the bryton are it does not do audible turn alerts, it ony does grayscale, it only shows a breadcrumb trail, it has no basemaps and it does not show turn indicators or street names unless you author the route on bryton's website. That said I use it as my primary means of navigation with my Samsung S5 and google maps and/or Gaia GPS as a backup... or paper maps.

99% of the time the breadcumb trail on the Bryton 530 works for navigation with the exception being complex multidirectional intersections and small city streets. This is a minor inconvenience as if you turn on the wrong street or trail as you very quickly get notified you are off route with a breadcrumb trail to follow to get right back on route. Garmin is much better at these more complex navigation challenges. I would prefer full color base maps showing all the streets, i would prefer street names and audible turn alerts and directional arrows, but none of that does me any good if the I cannot rely on the unit. I have a huge degree of confidence i my Bryton I did not on my Garmin. I do ver bither to re-author routes on the Bryton website to get turn indicators or street names. It just simply isn't worh the extra time.

That said there are new garmin with much better battery life, thiugh still not as long as the Bryton. Time will tell if the Garmin get more stable. There are also full color Bryton with basemaps coming just around the corner. I cannot wait to get my hands on one of those. Finally I hear there is a new Lezyne GPS coming with 40+ hours of battery life that sounds promising and Wahoo suposedly has some good stuff. I have yet to get any experience with Wahoo or Lezyne.

BTW, my Samsung S5 has been very reliable as a backup navigation and is superb in airline mode with cached data via google maps and in Gaia GPS. I love Gaia the most. Where navigation is mission critical i will often download the GPX file directly to my device and load it into Gaia GPS and then cache the base maps of the entire area. This takes only a few minutes. You can do the same thing by uploading the GPX to google "my maps" AND you can view the route on your Android phone in the google maps application which is wonderful because it is live and you can overlay all sorts of wonderful data and POI. You can even cache googles base maps... HOWEVER there is one achiles heal. When you go offline google maps does NOT cache your actaul route. Thus your route overlay can simply disappear if the maps app crashes or gets otherwise restarted. Hence why i prefer GAIA GPS.

Even though GAIA and google maps are awesome they will never be useable as a primary means of navigation because having them always on and the phone always on absolutely sucks battery life. I have seen people try but I have also seen phones overheat running all the time in the sun and they always seem to get dropped when mounted on the handlebar. likely because their touch screen interfaces were not designed for the handlebar. They require two hands. Best to keep them safely tucked away and only lull them out if stop and you need to consult them for a second opinion.

Check your USB cable! I have loaded GPX files on my bryton endlessly via USB and the only time i have ever had a problem with my bryton not immediatley mounting like a USB drive is when the cable was a crappy non-data USB charging cable. Sadly these crappy USB cables are everywhere now because they come with all sorts of ****ty USB devices that only use them for charging. Your best bet is to go buy an actual quality USB data specific cable from a reliable source. I hae used apple computers, windows XP, windows 95 computers, Winddows 7, 8. I habe walked into libraries in small towns. All that and no issues. Just drop the GPX file in the "NewFiles" folder and restart your Bryton.

LOL. This makes me laugh! I hae the same issue. So far as I know they have still not fixed it, but i have not done a firmware update in a month or so. It is a minor and laughable annoyance. On a side note i have gotten really great at converting kilometers to miles in my head. The trick is just multiply by six and move the decimal. Hence 12 kilometers x 6 is 72. move the decimal and you get 7.2 miles. 50km = 30 miles. 100km = 60 miles. 20kmph = 12mph, 30kph = 18mph. Its simple and quick and relatively accurate.

Did they have you try the restart key combination? I have had other friends who've had a freeze while navigating and this has worked for them as well. Maybe you problem was an underlying firmware issue. Most navigational crashes including those with garmin are do errors in the GPS data. It happens, the key is with the bryton it is rare and I have always been able to restart the unit and reload the route within a few minutes.

I have been using mine for a looong time. indeed before the 530 i had a Bryton 310. I can say that whil i want better I do love my 530. It has proven to be the best of the best for what i do. Primative, but it just works and is very relliable.

atwl77

I've used my 1030 successfully on two brevets so far (400k and 600k) with no issues, both times experienced some moderate to heavy rain during the ride. Though to be honest, I didn't fully trust it (it's a Garmin, after all, lol) and actually had the Edge 520 stashed away inside my bag, recording as backup in case the 1030 locked up or did something stupid.

And yes, you can charge the 1030 easily with a USB battery pack while it is attached to a stem mount (well... unless your spacer cap gets in the way). With the out front mount, on the other hand, the USB port is very easily accessible.

rhm

Many thanks, @mmeiser, that was a very helpful post! I will reread it a few times to make sure I got it all.

((Long story, this is just a little detail that won't interest anyone, you may skip it... But I got my Bryton 530 on eBay and paid a little extra for a third party warrantee. A couple months later the device became unreliable and then stopped working. I contacted Bryton help and got no response, and in frustration I submitted a claim to the third party warrantee company, who promptly refunded my purchase price. So I went ahead and bought another Bryton 530. After it arrived, I heard back from Bryton who asked me to send the non-functional unit back, and they replaced it. I am a little bothered by the ethics of this but there it is, now I have two of these Bryton 530's. In fact the second unit i bought has also been replaced by Bryton by this time. But having two units has been a great help, not least in learning how to use the thing.))

Some of my complaints about the 530 have been resolved by my learning to use it better. For example, when I connect it to the computer by USB, I now know it is best to connect the Bryton before powering the computer up; the PC is much more likely to recognize the device this way than if I plug it in later.

On my recent LOL ride I noticed both my Bryton devices would show the message "no GPS" at the same time, even when @gazer was getting a good GPS signal on his Garmin. It was somehow reassuring to have both devices making the same error at the same time.

Thanks again for your post! I have a lot to learn.

antimonysarah

Thanks! Looks like it should do the trick -- I'm sure it will have some peculiarities (as you said, "it's a Garmin, after all"), but should do better than what I've got. I like not having to worry about navigation in the dark.

rhm

First rule of randonneuring in the dark: form a team, or join a team.

antimonysarah

rhm

Oh, well, sure, if you know where you are, your navigation system (whether it's a cue sheet, GPS, or whatever) is working, and nothing goes wrong, riding by yourself is great! But things do go wrong occasionally, and some problems are more easily solved with a little teamwork than without, especially at night. This is true of navigation as well as other issues.

I started a thread last year about a navigation error I made on the last ride I attempted without a GPS; it wasn't a big deal (especially since it happened in broad daylight when I had plenty of time to correct my error) but it was a worrisome illustration of what can go wrong (the cue sheet, in this case, was perfectly correct; but it had omitted to mention a certain street sign...).

The lesson I have learned, one way or another, is: have a backup plan. Carry a real paper map, make sure your phone has the relevant maps cached, or whatever.

unterhausen

my first 600k, I was riding with 5 other riders at night after the overnight, but I had to pull the whole time. Otherwise it was like a slow race. I do like to know where I'm going all of the time, relying on other people to navigate is a recipe for bonus miles. I keep up with the cue sheet on most rides, unless I've ridden the route before. Don't trust my gps that much.

A lot of time on the Eastern PA rides, I use the "functioning memory for roads" method of navigation. I look through a route ahead of time to see if there are any roads I haven't been on before. One year there were two rides that were 2 weeks apart that ended up on the same (mildly confusing) roads. The first time, we stopped to puzzle our way through. Second time the guy I had ridden with previously stopped in exactly the same place to try to figure out where to go. I mentioned that the route was exactly the same as the last ride and rode on.

OTOH, that's why people like me are not the best people to do cue sheet checks on pre-rides.

I have been the slowest rider on a lot of brevets, so I ended up riding by myself. And in recent years, even when I haven't been that slow there haven't been too many people to ride with, seems like there are a lot of fast riders, the slow riders have quit, and there aren't any mediocre riders. But ever since I had no idea where I was on my first 200k, I have made sure I could navigate by myself and do it even if I'm riding with someone that knows the route. Never know if you'll get separated.

atwl77

My backup plan is the mobile phone, but one thing I like about using the GPS cue sheets (e.g. with the Garmins, not sure if the other brands support them) is that I can mark down other point of interests such as the checkpoints, petrol stations, 24-hour convenience stores, etc in RideWithGPS and the exported points will show up on the Garmin's cue sheet. Helps plan out when and where to refill water, get food, take a short nap and so on with distance to the location clearly displayed on the Garmin.

Also when plotting the route out via RideWithGPS I always go through RWGPS's auto-generated turn cues to make sure they match with the official cue sheets, making sure to delete the extra ones and add any that RWGPS failed to generate. It also serves as a way to verify that I traced the route correctly in RWGPS.

Although I carry the official cue sheet with me in my pocket, but I rarely refer to them. Main problem is the distance marked on the sheets are only accurate up to some point; after you take some detours (e.g. ride 3km to an overnight hotel/homestay), or due to discrepancy between your GPS distances, the distances on the paper sheet can go out of sync with your GPS.

njkayaker

Garmin calls them "course points". They are useful (in the way that you describe).

Other brands don't supoort them. Garmin only supports them on the Edges (as far as I can tell).

​​​Basically, they are a type of waypoints, which most GPS units support in some way but not in the useful way course points work.

Cuesheets are kind of awful and people get lost with them regularly.

I really never use the cuesheet.

Outside of a complete failure, it's difficult to be actually lost with a GPS unit.

​​​​​​They all display the track and your position relative to it. They all do that very reliably. Most of them should have a facility to notify that you are too far from the track. That should be reliable too.

I think a common problem that people have who "don't trust their GPS that much," is an over-reliance on the fancy turn-instructions and not paying much attention to the map. I use the fancy turn-instructions (they work pretty well for me and it's not because I'm special). But I also pay attention to the map.
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It takes some practice to integrate the use of the GPS into your riding (I suspect people think it shouldn't). But that's true for cuesheets too (but with a much less useful result).
​​​​​
if people using GPS get lots of "bonus miles", they aren't using the device very well.


Before I got a Garmin, I used an app loaded with the track as a backup.

That's useful even with a Garmin since it's easier and faster reviewing maps on the bigger screen. Given that one has the track for the Garmin, it doesn't make much sense to not load it onto the phone too. Even if you don't use a GPS, if you have the track, it doesn't make much sense not to load the track onto your phone.

(Of course, the map needs to be preloaded onto the phone.)

The phone is just carrying another GPS.

njkayaker

That might be the second rule. The first rule is be self-reliant (as much as you can).

njkayaker

I saw the problem on the Touring of not being able to to restart routes. I sold it and bought a used 800.

Another problem with the Touring is that it doesn't support "course points" and "off course" warnings (when using turn guidance). Things that would have helped with the "restarting route" problem.

The Touring removed some useful navigation features to make the device easier to use (doing that made the device less useful).

It's possible that the more-popular (or important) units get more attention to fixing bugs. (One reason, maybe, to avoided the Touring/Explore models.)

clasher

Hypno Toad

I just got the 1030 last week for The DAMn (240-mile gravel race across Minnesota). I'm gonna test it's battery life the week prior at the PH24.

So far I've been liking the 1030, my only concern is the battery life. Additionally, I'm interested to hear the touch screen doesn't work with winter gloves. My old 510 touch screen works with my winter gloves... might be the choice of gloves or the screen design. I'll find out soon, winter in MN comes early.

prj71

Lezyne - Engineered Design - Products - GPS - MEGA XL GPS

Lezyne - Engineered Design - Products - GPS - MEGA C GPS

RBChi

I’ve seen a fair number of complaints about Garmins touch screen on the newer larger models.
Has anyone had favorable experience with the $50 Edge remote? I'd post a link to it, but I'm not allowed yet. (Part number: 010-12094-10)
The instructions for it don't really suggest where it gets mounted. I ride a Jones H-loop bar so I'm sure I could find 15 spots.
This would solve the glove issue if reliable, and the lower temp rating is 14ºF.