Updated: October 2008 Usage I've had the Garmin Edge 705 for a few months now and have some more thoughts. I spent all of May in Italy. 3 weeks in Tuscany and one week doing a bike tour (big up to Thompson Bike Tours) in the Dolomites watching some of the Giro. The 705 with Italian maps was a great device. The GPS saved me a few times in Tuscany, especially when I went 15km's down a decent before I realised I was supposed to take a turn right near the top. I just set the 705 to take me home and a few back roads later I was there. (Nevermind that the gradients reached 20% and the roads were about 1m wide, better than riding back to the top!) Before the bike tour started, we were emailed out maps and course notes, I programmed all the rides into Mapsource and uploaded them into the Garmin. They worked a treat. Everyone else was looking at maps and notes and I was turning as directed by the GPS. The other advantage is that the Garmin records where you have been, and uploading to Google Earth really gives you a sense of where you have been and what you have climbed up, especialy when the 'tilt' function is used. The maps are also handy when descending unknow roads. I set the zoom to 120m and glance at the display to see how tight the upcoming corner is. Probably not recommended for beginners but it is fun. Occasionally at +90kph a kink in the road was actually a 90° corner and lots of hard braking was required. Firmware Bugs There have been several firmware updates in the past few months. The main features that I've been interested in or effected by are: 2.10 - 2.20
The auto calibrated wheel circumfernce was grossly underestimated, such that my speed was about 2/3 of what it should have been. I couldn't work out why I was hurting so much and going so slow. Setting the wheel details to custom and measuring manually fixed the problem. 2.20 - 2.30
I also lost the speed sensor on both of my GSC10 cadence/speed sensors. Cadence worked fine, but I got no speed. More about that in a minute, but the upshot was my speed was coming from the GSP. Until I upgraded to firmware 2.30, I had auto-pausing and then auto-restarting of my rides every km or so, which drove me insane, such that I took of the GSC10 all together. 2.30 'supposedly' fixed this, but I am currently experiencing this problem with one bike profile while another profile is fine. 2.30 - 2.40 This firmware update hasn't really made any changes to my day to day experience. Hardware Issues As mentioned above, I have managed to kill 2 GSC10's. The first one was on my training bike. On a training ride my speed started to go from what I thought it should be to about double. When I got home I checked the speed sensor and I could hear the reed switch clicking twice every time the magnet went past, hence the high readings. I can't figure out why this was occuring. So just used it as a cadence device. The second was on my race bike. The unit just stopped measuring speed. No life from the reed switch in the sensor when the magnet went past. Garmin Australia replaced both units with brand new ones. I just sent them in with a note and a copy of my receipt and 2 weeks late two new ones arrived. I did have a hard time tracking them down (well they weren't the first result in google), so here are their details: Garmin Australia Pty Ltd Unit 19, 167 Prospect Highway Seven Hills, NSW, 2147 Ph. 1800 235 822 Since then, the brand new GSC10 unit returned from Garmin has again started to read erratic speeds and I have removed the magnet from the rear wheel. This has caused the auto-pause error to occur, but only on my training bike. My race bike has a GSC10 unit for cadence but no magnet and it works without auto-pausing. The handlebar mount used with the 705 is the same as the 305. This particular design decision is poor, as the 705 weighs more than the 305 and as such should have a stronger mount. There are various reports of the mount breaking on the 305s, which doesn't bode well for the 705. I wasn't aware of these failures until mine actually broke. The mount is held on the bars or stem by two zip ties, which pass through 2 small bits of plastic. This plastic is fairly light weight and thin and seems to crack under the weight of the 705. I checked the mount on my race bike, which would have had less than 1000km's of usage, and it was nearly broken through also. Another ride or 2 and it would have let go as well. I'll be send the mounts back the the GPS and hopefully get 2 new ones as I don't feel I should be forking out +$20 every 3 months for new mounts. |