Garmin Edge 705 – a bit of a review

I have been using my Garmin Edge 705 for a few weeks now and have been asked for my thoughts on the gadget. So here is bit of a review.

It works and it works well – I am certainly not a power user, let me explain my simple setup…

I have three bikes – a road bike (that I use for getting enough ‘fitness miles’ in during the week), a commuting/touring bike (the old Cannondale I rebuilt) and my mountain bike (that is used for pure, unadulterated fun).

The Garmin Edge 705 allows you to enter settings for up to three bikes, letting you track individual mileage, each bike’s weight (used to calculate calories burned) and wheel size – although this can be calculated automatically using GPS. I have the optional cadence sensor on my road bike, and this can be used for speed measurement if you are not using the GPS – on a turbo trainer (God forbid).

You can then set yourself up as a user (weight, age, gender), set up your HR zones and you are ready for a ride.

Maps

This is when you find out that the supplied basemap is bloody rubbish. Garmin sell a detailed and routable map (this means that you can plot GPS routes when you are out on the road, much like the Tomtom in your car). But I did a bit of digging and found the superb, routable (and 100% free) open source maps. A lot of them have been customised for cycling and contain Sustrans bike routes, towpaths, etc. This is a great thread to learn loads from.

Navigation

I haven’t used it for navigation yet, but it’s very capable of leading you around routes you have designed yourself (see below) or downloaded, and if you do take a wrong turning, it’ll put you back on the right track. You can set your home location, so if you are ever abducted by aliens during a ride and dropped into the middle of darkest Ceredigion, hit the ‘go home’ button and off you go (that’s assuming you haven’t been ‘probed’ and can actually sit on your saddle).

Lots of data

You can set up the Edge 705 to show loads of data while you are riding. If you have a Garmin walking GPS, you’ll know this view well, you can set the custom data fields, so you can show one set of data when road riding (speed, cadence, HR, time, distance, height climbed, etc) and another set when MTBing (just a big ‘speed’ and altitude) for example. The Edge 705 contains a barometric altimeter for very accurate elevation change and vertical profile data. It makes you feel great to tell your wife that you have just cycled up the equivalent of two Pen-y-fans.

Click on picture to see the Gadget Show’s thoughts on the Garmin Edge 705, including a video.

I’m not going to go into the heart rate functions – it measures and collects all the data you’ll need to set up and monitor efficient training. But read and learn about HR training first, measure your max and resting HR, set up your zones and train carefully. People do die trying to ride too hard. You certainly feel like you are going to die when you try to establish your max HR.

When you get back from your ride, you can be as nerdy as you like (that’s really the whole point of having one of these gizmo’s). Plug it into your computer and pull off all sorts of fascinating stuff – how fast you were going (and where and when), how quickly you were pedalling (cadence), how hard your heart was beating on that monster climb and how quickly your recovered. BUT the best thing of all is you can see your ride on a map and see all of this info at any given point. Why is that good?

Imagine you are trying to get fit, or fitter. That’s exactly what I’m doing. You buy a bike, do a big ride and feel horrible. You try again a few days later and feel a bit worse. You give it one last go before the bike goes onto Ebay and you actually feel quite good. With the Edge – you can measure and see those improvements. I have seen my max heart rate reduce steadily at the top of my monster climb – that is a sure sign that my fitness is improving. I can see my speed improving on one of the big flat sections I regularly ride. On every ride (well most of them anyway), you can actually see small improvements and that makes you want to get on your bike again and try and improve some more. That’s why its good.

Software

I have tried a few things to suck the data from the Edge after a ride, including the much loved SportTracks software. I didn’t get on with it. The data wasn’t consistent and I spent more time in the support forums than riding. I then looked at MotionBased, another well respected but horrible looking subscription based website that gave incredible detail – it’s a very serious training tool.

Then I found out that Garmin had bought MotionBased and was updating the site – the very next day – and it was going to be free!

Now called ‘Garmin Connect’, this usable and pretty good looking site does almost everything I need – the real nerds are staying with MotionBased until all of the features are ported over. Have a look at this recent ride I did down the Doethie Valley to see the detail you get – try the Player button – clever stuff!

Route creation

I have found two very good resources for creating routes that can then be uploaded to the Edge 705 – effectively giving you a satnav on your bike. For on-road routes, I haven’t found a better site than Bike Route Toaster. It uses Google Maps (with elevation data so you see how hilly your route will be) and a very intuitive interface to create the routes. You can then export a GPX file that can be uploaded into the Edge.

For off-road, BikeHike uses a combination of Google and OS maps to let you create your route – it’s pretty good for walking routes too. Again, a GPX file can be created and sent to your Edge 705.

The bottom line

I haven’t gone into to much detail here; a quick Google will give you masses of in-depth forum discussions and articles. You can even check out the owners manual if you like. I just wanted to explain how I use it. I’m not a racer or a fitness fanatic. I don’t have a strict training regime. I’m not very scientific about my approach. I just ride when I can for as long as I can in roughly the correct HR zones, with the goal of losing weight and hopefully living a bit longer. I’ve lost three stone, ridden 1500 miles and met a lot of interesting and enthusiastic people through cycling – and that’s just since Christmas. The extra fitness means I enjoy all of my outdoor activities more and this sets a great example for my three sons.

From the research I have done, the Garmin Edge 705 is the most complete cycle computer that money can buy. I considered the purchase very hard, after all, it’s a lot of money, but if you ride a lot and want to get fitter and/or faster, it will motivate you to ride more and ride at a higher quality. That can only be a good thing.

And if you ever get lost – just hit the ‘go home’ button.