Garmin Edge 500 product review

Although I am no longer a great fan of gadgets, someone gave me a Garmin Edge 500 a while back and now that I have accumulated some experience with this marvel, I want to share my knowledge with you, the readers of my blog.

The Garmin 500 is a GPS unit, but not the kind that will help you find your way home when you get lost. Rather it is a unit that tells you how fast you are going and how far you have gone. For ultra-athletes it can remind them of the time of day, which comes in handy on day 4 of the RAAM when that mind fog takes hold. The unit also has an alarm function that can wake you up when are about to fall asleep and become part of the scenery.

The Edge NIB

The beauty of a GPS unit is that you can just carry put it on your bike, or carry it in your pocket, or put it anywhere in a moving vehicle and it will work. You can even use it in your car to double check your speedometer.

A GPS is totally standalone and it was that capacity that intrigued me years ago and led me to buy a Garmin 205 for my triathlon bike. Although the 205 worked very well for the intended goal (ironman Arizona) I quickly discovered many nasty side-effects that eventually caused me to abandon the gadget. I gave it to my son and he too got tired of it pretty soon. It is now sitting idle somewhere on a shelf.

The 500 has some distinct improvements over the 205 that address some of these issues. Unfortunately, it also leaves many others untouched.

The key improvements are:

-Battery life. The 500 has an expected 18 hours of battery life. Finally enough to finish an ironman within the time limit- although I do not recommend swimming with it. The 205 had barely enough juice for an average bike leg (5.5 hours in my case). To be honest I have never gone that long so I can't vouch for it, but I do know it will go for over 8 hours.

-Mount. This may sound basic and it is, but the 205 had a poor mounting system. So poor in fact that at one point, I lost the unit in a turn and then found it pancake flat on the road minutes later. A car had driven over it. Fortunately, Garmin agreed to replace it. This will no longer be necessary as the new 500 has a much better mounting system that is also much more adaptable. It uses a mount fixed with rubber bands -much like most lighting systems do- and requires a  90 turn to engage the unit.

Safe and secure

-Size. The smaller the better and this unit is quite a bit smaller and lighter than the 205. Smaller makes it easier to install, especially on the stem, which is the preferred location for most people. Smaller also means you can run with it.

-Robust. The unit is weather and sweat resistant and its new mount is very dependable.

The so-so

-ANT+. The Edge unit uses the ANT+ API which means it can talk to other devices like the newer heart rate monitors, power meters, and any future gadgets people will dream up. Unfortunately, Garmin, in true Microsoft style bought up the developer of ANT, so there goes your universal standard. Also, to use your data effectively you are tied to Garmin's website -the PC software is very primitive and you need their file converter in any case- with all its quirks. Being tied to Garmin's website was one reason I dumped the 205.

The not-so-good

-Hard to read. The screen is hard to read in sunlight, a rather common feature in these parts.

-The USB cover is hard to seat. This was a problem with the 205, but now the USB port is on the back, making it that much harder. No way to download data without removing the unit.

-Needs a clear view of the sky. Although better -read more sensitive- the Garmin 500 still has trouble with deep wooded canyons that are common around here. In practice it means the Garmin is not that useful for most of my riding (in the Berkeley and Oakland hills). It works spectacularly well in the Arizona desert, but around here it is pretty useless.

I noticed that Garmin's software does better in tracking the road (the earliest versions of their software put me in the scenery most of the time) but I suspect these are post-hoc corrections.

-Altitudes go wild all the time. I suspect this happens when the unit switches to barometric. There is no easy way to adjust the barometer and since pressure is temperature dependent and the temperatures vary widely in the canyons the readings are nothing but wild guesses. This time of year it can be 68F/20C at the top of Redwood road and near freezing at the bottom.

-Data overload. There are too many screens with too many displays. Feature overload is a problem for all devices and all software and I really wish someone would do something about it. Three pages worth of displays is total overkill and it makes it that much harder to work with.

Displays are deceptive too. The unit measures only a few parameters. Most of what it displays is computed or derived from look-up tables.  While there is nothing a priori wrong with that, I suspect many people believe otherwise and follow those beliefs to value the unit.

If you pay attention to all that you'll end up in the hospital sooner or later

-Trivial information. I ride the same rides all the time and I know the distances by heart. I suspect that is true for most people. Speed is not difficult to judge either and I pretty much know what 25 mph feels like. As mentioned before you can easily learn to guess your heart rate and your power output too.

The Cateye MITY3 Speedometer on my tandem displays much the same information (speed, distance, average speed, time of day, time elapsed) that the Garmin does. It is much more accurate however, using a simple magnetic pickup element and a wire. It has been there for over 10 years and I only had to replace the battery twice.

Sweet and accurate

Granted, it doesn't have 50 MB of storage, a USB connection, or an alarm to wake me up in the morning. It also can't display my intrepid exploits on Google maps, or let me race with a ghost image of rides past. Nor did it cost  $250. I guess I picked it up for a mere $20 in a sale.

April fool

Yesterday I rode out to Danville for a total of 52 miles. It took me three hours and I burned 2,460 calories. My normalized power for the ride was 247. Overall it was a very fun ride, somewhat chilly in the morning, but better as the day progressed.

Today I ran the Shepherd loop. I am now entering my data on the plus3 network, something I signed up for at the Ronde van Brisbeen on Sunday. To my surprise -this is April 1 after all- the course maxed out at 10.1 miles. Earlier I had "measured" it on Google Earth as 10.5. I ran under 1.5 hrs so that was pretty good.

The problem with most mapping sites is that it they are hard to use. I wish they would solve some rather "trivial problems" that would make life a lot easier.

1. Always follow the road (when checked) --that way I don't have to put in hundreds of way points to catch the various twists and turns. It should be possible to put in two way points and have the software connect them following the road. 

2. Have a button that will backtrack to complete the loop. When I ride out to Danville and then return home the same way, it should possible to let the software complete the second half.

3. Allow for off-road activity. I don't understand why  Google -all these site use Google- cannot add bike trials, fire trails, and other paths?  The regional parks have maps, why doesn't Google include them? Why have maps of the ocean floor but not Tilden park? I never swim, ride, or run the ocean floor.

4. Make it easier to store intermediate results. Sometimes I want to take a break. I want to save what I have and come back later to finish it. I also do make mistakes. Putting up warnings saying, "are you sure this is it?" or "please verify before saving" is not what I need. I need an ability to correct mistakes. Sometimes I don't find the mistake until several days later when someone points it out to me.

5. Correct obvious GPS errors. The same "follow the road/trail/path" can apply here. While Garmin and other units can be quite good in the central valley and other flatlands, in the Oakland hills -or any other interesting course for that matter-, corrections are a must. I don't use the Garmin anymore, but when I did, I noticed that about half the time, it put me in the scenery instead of on the road.

6. Automatically calculate elevation. That too is easy to do.

7. Provide access to all my data and allow me to download what I want. That is another key reason why I stopped using the Garmin. If motionbased wants to play $$ games with me, they should find another fool to rip off. It is not that important to me, really.

Garmin GPS

I think I was one of the first people I know to get a Garmin GPS. My motivation was simple: I wanted a speedometer for my new triathlon bike that did not have wires or pickups of any kind. No clutter. The Garmin seemed ideal for that purpose. All you need is to do is carry it with you in one form or another and get all the info you need. It even stores your route and parameters for later reference.

My first try-out for the Garmin was Ironman Arizona, and it worked spectacularly well there. I got it right before the race and never tried it anywhere else before. IM Arizona is in Tempe, AZ, and the bike course goes out in the desert from Tempe. Great exposure to the Southern skies as they say.

There was one minor glitch. Although the Garmin was new, it barely lasted for the duration of my ride. And I am pretty fast on the bike. By the time I rolled in it was already giving me warnings of a low battery. In subsequent races I would learn not to turn it on until after the swim. Unfortunately, that just adds another layer of complexity.

What I found next was not so good. Here in Berkeley, with all its wooded hills and narrow canyons, the Garmin did not perform nearly as well. Half the time, I ended up in the scenery or cutting out entire swaths of road. The worst was the altimeter. When the unit can't find a good signal, it switches to a built-in barometer and then altitude jumps of 3-500 ft are not uncommon. Parts of my rides looked so jittery you would think there was a major quake.

All those extras add up rather quickly and I often found my rides inflated by 10 or more miles, and the climbing by and extra 3-6,000 ft. I guess that is what beginning riders love!

Next came the download issue. I am an avid Mac user and refuse to buy a windows box or use one of the windows boxes my wife has. Garmin's website, motionbased kept having trouble with my Macintosh. They did fix some of it over time, but never quite enough to remove all the headaches. And then they delete all but the last 10 of your downloads unless you pay them a monthly fee. Go figure ! Why would I want to pay someone a retainer just to access my old data? And why do I need to be online to look at my data? It is a hassle really.

In short, the Garmin was just an endless array of little nuisance factors and in the end, I had enough and tried to sell it on eBay. But before that could go through, my teenage son picked it up for its "gadget appeal."

So here we are, several years later. My son still uses the Garmin from time to time. The glitches are better but many are still there. The tracking is much better and he hardly ever goes off road like I used to. The altitude is better too. But I suspect it is because motionbased corrects the data. They keep him on the road by using maps. That looks good but it is cheating. And what is the point of GPS if you end up using a map anyways?  How can you trust the values that way?

The device works best in open country, no hills to speak of, no trees, and certainly no narrow canyons. You better make sure it is fully charged before every ride and even then it won't last for a whole century, unless you plan to ride without stopping. The lap feature works but more often than not it just causes errors. The interface needs a lot of work and it is something only PC users can love.

Downloading is still a pain. They resolved the Mac issues but it takes forever. You have to wait to get your data, and sometimes you have to wait a long time. I can download all the data from my Ergomo (onto my computer by the way!) and get all the info I need before motionbased gets around to start "processing" the Garmin runs. 

You can keep rides on the device but the more rides you keep the slower the downloads go. Each time you download and process you move another one of your old rides out of reach (you only get to keep 10). I can keep hundreds of rides from my Ergomo on my computer for free. And I can access them anywhere, and anytime. I can get to the original raw data, as well as the processed data. And my Ergomo's battery is good for a week at least.

In short, I think the GPS is a bad deal. You get lousy battery life, a so-so user interface  (really needs some Steve Jobs here), a painstakingly slow download that can take hours, a very limited history (unless you want to keep paying them), a subset of features (unless you want to struggle with microsoft or read manuals or both), and worst of all, "massaged data" that you have no control over. The latter is by far the worst problem and one that should give you pause if nothing else. 

The positives are that you can see where you went. That is great if you happen to suffer from Alzheimer's disease, but I never have trouble remembering where I went. If you rely on the GPS though, you will never find your way again without it.

The trouble with GPS and other route-finding software is that it dumbs you down. You come to rely on it and then you can't remember how you got there. Like speed dial numbers. You friend is number 3, and that is all you remember. Come to a new phone and you are lost. The same applies to GPS. When the device runs out of juice or breaks, it leaves you stranded like a little kid in a foreign city. I know so many people with GPS in their cars, who can't find their local grocery store anymore. I think it is better to stay aware while you are alive. That way you get to enjoy it more.

As for training, the value is extremely limited. It is cool to fly over your route and get all that video-game entertainment, but most of that is a waste of time really. Better get on your bike and ride a bit more. 

On the other hand, if you are in it to impress your friends with cool gadgets, it might be something to consider;) Better to impress them with your riding though! More difficult perhaps but far more enjoyable in the end.