Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)While it's marketed as a dedicated cycling device and it works "ok" there's plenty of room for improvement. Buy this if you have some extra cash around or you want an alternative SRM display.
The different roles of the 705 and how it performs in each:
As a cyclometer- it's great to have a nice large display (I ride with 8 different fields displayed) and lots of flexibility in what gets displayed and where. Any info at all that the computer collects can be displayed- heart beat, zones, power, average power, time to end of ride, altitude, you name it. It can't be beat in this regard. However, changing the fields is not something you can do easily and certainly not on the fly. Also, several of the fields like calories, or WAY off from reality and not useful. Like other Garmin devices, the menu structure of the device is a slightly non-intuitive hierarchy of options. You can't change the display to suit the ride without going through and resetting the whole display. In fact, I end up wasting five minutes or so every time because the menu structure is so non-intuitive that it's very hard to remember how to do even common tasks. Also, you have to manually start and stop the data collection AND remember to reset the data between rides. You will take a long and memorable ride only to discover at the end of it that you didn't hit the start button, or forgot to hit steart after stopping for that muffin and coffee or forgot to hit stop after putting the bike in the car and driving home. It's very frustrating and totally unclear why they did this.
As a mapping device- what should be the device's strong point is just lame, lame, lame. There are several confusing options for loading routes onto the device (gpx, tcr) and no real clear explanation for why you'd choose one over the other. If you want to load a route and have the device guide you as a replacement for a route sheet then you need to use GPX but if you happen to enter the ride near one of the markers other than the start- it will guide you to the start and abandon you rather than guiding you back to where you started. Further, if you are off the path at the start of your ride the unit offers NO guidance as to how to get to the route other than your manually staring at the display and figuring it out for yourself. Also, it has a propensity for asking you to turn around rather than routing you in the same direction you are going. Then, if you deviate or are misplaced due to a poor GPS signal the unit will reroute and you'll loose all your entered points. Why the hell would anyone on a bike on a recreational ride want to turn around and reride a route you've already been on? This happens a lot when I'm out and decide to go back home, the unit will turn me around and then put me back on a main road- Not at all what you'd want to do on a ride. I could go on... In short, the routing is just the default stuff you see on a car or walking GPS and not at all customized to be useful for typical biking scenarios.
The Garmin connect and PC based software is OK but I still end up using bikely or something similar to plan routes. The garmin stuff just isn't setup to help cyclists. The auto uploads are nice but Linux isn't supported by garmin- why I can't begin to imagine since their site otherwise works fine in Linux and Firefox.
Lets see other minor good and bad points-
good: it's rugged and seemingly water resistant if not proof. The bike mount is easy to use and stable. the battery lasts a good while
bad: the rubber on the joystick button shreds and falls off. there's no indication about battery status (in time for instance) until it's dead and shuts down. Most of the displays other than the map and cyclometer are useless. routing is tough and not cycling specific. The display is not easily readable at night or dusk. the buttons on the unit seem poorly chosen and not helpful to the typical cycling tasks.
It's nice to have a unit which works reliably and can be moved from bike to bike but it would be nice if Garmin actually spent some time making this very expensive unit suitable for cyclists.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Garmin Edge 705 Bicycle GPS Navigator that Includes Heart Rate Monitor and Speed/Cadence Sensor (Factory Refurbished)
Garmin 010-N0555-30 Refurbished Edge 705 GPS Bundle
