Originally Posted by
Steve B.
Do you need it to navigate ?. That rules out watches, whose screens are way to small to be useful. They do have good battery life, my Garmin Instinct 2 Solar goes 25 days typically and I've seen it go to 42 days when it's in the sun a lot. If you want a dedicate cycling device the Edge 1040 Solar goes 45 hors minimum and many more if it's seeing regular sunlight. Also very pricy at $750. The non solar goes 35 hours and runs $500-600
I still kind of hope that the garmin watches might be useful to give a reminder at turns and maybe some minimal usefulness of the tiny maps at turns. The little maps do seem to be useful for staying on the right track on trails in my limited experience. I have not tinkered with turn by turn directions though so I may be dreaming. I have an Instinct 2 and it is useful for a lot of other stuff like workout data and so on. IME on day rides/hikes it works well for getting back to the car if lost.