Road Cycling Essentials

[Damien] · 20 Jan 2013 at 21:31

Mine's been spot on. I only bought mine because strava on my phone kept crapping out all the time

Bigsy · 20 Jan 2013 at 21:43

Indeed, I've used my 800 twice a day, at minimum 5 days a week for the last 7 months on my bike. I also use it as sat nav on my motorbike.. both through horrendous weather conditions at times and its never failed me, not even once.

Thomas. PLease. · 20 Jan 2013 at 21:49

Another vote for garmin here, had my edge 500 nearly two years and its never once failed on me. Use it most days for either running or cycling.

grudas · 20 Jan 2013 at 21:53

My motoactv does the job! 99 quid at evans! :-)

There- http://db.tt/v1BxeFog

VeNT · 20 Jan 2013 at 21:57

also their still over £100!
having to shell out for insurance and a new cylinder head gasket for the damn car too this month, it's stupid, I need a car like once/twice a week and on holidays! stupid thing costs me more than it's worth half the time!
maybe if I win the lotto I'll get a 200!

grudas · 20 Jan 2013 at 22:07

200 has nothing over motoactv bar the battery life.. even the 500 is not that impresive.. i dont know why motoactv is not liked really.. it does the job and it has a lot of great features!

chanjy · 20 Jan 2013 at 22:17

I have an ancient Edge 705 and it has always worked perfectly.

I agree that a Garmin is not really any better than the competition if you are just recording data. It's main advantage is navigation with all day battery life - although I admit I only use this maybe 1 in 10 times I take the bike out as I already know the route for most journeys.

touch · 20 Jan 2013 at 22:20

grudas said:
i dont know why motoactv is not liked really.. it does the job and it has a lot of great features!

The fact that it isnt as popular as the garmin probably has nothing to do with the features and more to do with the fact that the garmin was around before it and, more importantly, a lot of pro teams have garmins stuck to their bars.

grudas · 20 Jan 2013 at 22:43

touch said:
The fact that it isnt as popular as the garmin probably has nothing to do with the features and more to do with the fact that the garmin was around before it and, more importantly, a lot of pro teams have garmins stuck to their bars.

i guess the starting price of 250 was a bit of a poof too.. but now at 99quid its hard to complain really

colour/touch screen
music player
good motoactv portal with all the data + export to many formats
support for pretty much all the sensors etc
clock
step counter
can be used as a watch
screen is lit up all the time while cycling(Great at night)

the only con tbh is the battery life in my case which will last 5-8hr ride at MAX

as a watch it can stay up for 3-4 days easily tho.

touch · 20 Jan 2013 at 22:52

grudas said:
screen is lit up all the time while cycling(Great at night)

the only con tbh is the battery life in my case which will last 5-8hr ride at MAX

Can you turn the light off? Maybe thats why the battery isnt very good.
Garmin has pretty good battery life actually, i'v recorded 14 hours with mine before and i think it still had around 20-30% left in it.

grudas · 20 Jan 2013 at 22:57

touch said:
Can you turn the light off? Maybe thats why the battery isnt very good.
Garmin has pretty good battery life actually, i'v recorded 14 hours with mine before and i think it still had around 20-30% left in it.

yeah, i've just set mine to always be ON.. and only turn off if i'm at red light for more than 1min!

also the auto pause is a good feature.. plus gps reception is a lot better than my phone with a gps + data which was surprising

explicit4u · 20 Jan 2013 at 23:00

Does it have maps/navigation?

DIABLO · 20 Jan 2013 at 23:27

Bigsy said:
Indeed, I've used my 800 twice a day, at minimum 5 days a week for the last 7 months on my bike. I also use it as sat nav on my motorbike.. both through horrendous weather conditions at times and its never failed me, not even once.

And on the flipside i've used endomondo on 4 different phones for 124 activities over 6d13h duration and not once has it let me down.

grudas · 20 Jan 2013 at 23:37

explicit4u said:
Does it have maps/navigation?

That is the only feature missing :-)

you can see your route on the map tho..

Shadowness · 21 Jan 2013 at 08:27

Well my ride was 95% fine this morning, apart from the sheltered parts of the cycle path. About an inch thick of hard snow, which on road bike tyres is pretty interesting!

Saundie · 21 Jan 2013 at 08:51

Schwalbe Marathon Winter tyres = thumbs up from me. I did have to walk up one hill though, as I couldn't get enough traction on the back wheel. Better than getting the tram!

Bigsy · 21 Jan 2013 at 08:58

grudas said:
That is the only feature missing you can see your route on the map tho..

Christ you can root the thing and run android apps!? http://motoactv.wikispaces.com/

Wonder how it runs satnav apps.... off to do some research.

Murf · 21 Jan 2013 at 09:01

My Garmin has been in use for over 6 months, usually twice a day. Has never failed once.

Shadowness · 21 Jan 2013 at 09:06

My 500 has failed once. And sods law it was on my first 100 mile sportive event. I was pretty annoyed, as I'm doing the same one this year so I wanted to see my progress over one year

[Damien] · 21 Jan 2013 at 09:19

Saundie said:
Schwalbe Marathon Winter tyres = thumbs up from me. I did have to walk up one hill though, as I couldn't get enough traction on the back wheel. Better than getting the tram!

I haven't stuck mine on yet apart from a 30 mile bedding in run for the spikes. I thought I'd risk running my Marathon Plus for a bit longer. The noise from the studs is a bit much for me.

I'm going to have to put them on tonight though. I've been tempting fate for a bit too long.

The roads near me have been gritted pretty well so I've been ok this morning, although I ended up with drenched feet from cycling through slush. I forgot to put my overshoes on...