Today Garmin announced their latest cycling computer – the Edge 820. Well, actually, they announced two cycling computers: The Edge 820 and the Edge Explore 820. The Explore is simply the dumbed down version of the 820. While the Edge 820 is basically an Edge 520 and Edge 1000 that’s had a baby that’s smarter than both of them.
I’ve been using a nearly-final Edge 820 for a short bit now, and so I’ve got some preliminary thoughts on how it works. But I’ll also dive into how the various models are different and some of the minor nuances that might not be so apparent.
Wait…what’s that? You said you subscribed to Garmin’s YouTube feed and a month ago you got a sneak peak about the Edge 820 before they realized following their summer solstice morning after party and delisted them? No worries – now I’m here to explain all! For realz this time. Let’s get started.
(Oh, as the title suggestions…this isn’t a review. I haven’t used the device long enough. Come back in August for a full in-depth review.)
What’s new & different:
As regular readers of my preview posts (what happens prior to an in-depth review), I’m a fan of using bulleted text and simplicity to cut through all the marketing fluff. Let’s start by talking about what the Edge 820 is in most basic terms:
The Edge 820 is an Edge 1000 in the shell of an Edge 520, except that it’s got a new personality (user interface) and a number of new software features found on neither the Edge 520 or Edge 1000. Oh, and it can stalk your friends for you. No really, it can.
As you can see below – the Edge 520 & Edge 820 are identical in outer shell size (though differ in buttons):
Here’s precisely what’s new on the Edge 820 (and if it’s found on other Garmin units):
– Adds in Group Tracking (stalking your friends)
– Contains full/detailed mapping/routing (like Edge 1000)
– Contains 16GB of internal storage (no micro-SD card slot though)
– Adds in phone-based audio prompts (like Garmin wearables)
– Adds in Incident/Emergency Detection/Notifications (like Edge Explore 1000)
– Adds in new Stress Score (seen on wearables)
– Has WiFi (on Edge 1000, but not Edge 520)
– Has a touch screen (like Edge 1000)
– Has a cool new ‘Battery Save mode’ (never seen before)
So are there any things not found on the Edge 820 that are on the Edge 1000? Just a few:
– Doesn’t have landscape mode (for rotating screen)
– Doesn’t have the micro-SD card slot (for more than 16GB of maps)
– Has a smaller screen than the Edge 1000
And…that’s it.
As for the Edge Explore 820, here’s how it’s different than the base Edge 820:
– No WiFi
– No Ambient Light Sensor
– No ANT+ Power Meter or Shifting Support
– No Structured Training Support (i.e. structured workouts)
– No advanced metrics like performance indictor, FTP, etc…
Most importantly though is that you can easily play the $100 game between the three most popular units:
Edge 520: $299
Edge 820: $399
Edge 1000: $499
Super simple math. I mean, as long as you ignore the Edge 20 at $129, Edge 25 at $169, the Edge 820 Explore at $349, the Edge Explore 1000 at $449 or any of the other Edges out there. Let’s just keep focused on the Big Three above. Mmmk?
What’s that? You want a 15 minute overview video instead of text and pictures? Hmmm…ok. Seriously, I don’t know how this ended up as 15 minutes – but it covers everything under the sun on the Edge 820. You’ll be able to be a product support technician for Garmin after this:
Diving Deeper on the New Stuff:
By and large the unit has virtually all the same features you’ve come to expect from the Edge series. So it’ll of course use its internal GLONASS capable GPS chipset to track your rides, and it has a barometric altimeter for proper elevation record keeping. And it’ll allow you to do Strava real-time segments as well as connect to ANT+ sensors like power, heart rate, speed, cadence, eTAP/Di2/etc… And then all of that is uploaded to Garmin Connect wirelessly via Bluetooth Smart or WiFi (or, via USB cable).
That’s all the baseline things found on all the new Edge units these days. Instead, for now let’s focus on what’s new here – starting with the most obvious – the user interface. You’ll see it’s quite changed:
Now the differences are actually interesting – it now looks a lot more like the past Edge Explore editions with a simplified user interface. You’ve got essentially three core paths to take: Just ride (top option), navigate somewhere (lower left), and training (structured training options).
You’ve still got settings of course – which is accessible via the lower left taskbar area. And then on the lower right you’ve got dramatically increased prominence of Connect IQ (the 3rd party app platform). Also, you can still swipe down from the top to get status information like WiFi/GPS/Bluetooth/Sensor connectivity states.
If you want to change activity profiles, you can do so by simply tapping the left/right arrows at the top. The default activity profiles align to Train, Race, and Indoor. With the indoor option turning off the GPS automatically. You can create and customize your own activity profiles. These control things like data fields and settings for that ride. So you might have a different one for mountain biking than touring or racing.
Next we’ve got the addition of Group Track. The idea behind this is that you can see your pre-established connections (friends in Garmin Connect lingo) on your unit in real-time as they ride. Garmin put together an entire (well shot) video showing how one friend stalks two others and then joins them for the last portion of the ride. It’s a cool concept, albeit one that Wahoo introduced with their ELEMNT.
Since I don’t have any other friends with Edge 820’s in the area yet, you’ll have to settle for Garmin’s screenshot on this and how it looks on the unit itself:
Now what’s interesting here is that there’s actually two options in the menu for Group Track, as seen below. Funny…given there’s no running wearable in the Garmin line-up that supports the just announced Group Track. Looks like Garmin is giving a bit of a hint on where things are going.
[Update] However, it may just be because Garmin states that any device that has Live Tracking capability (which is basically every Garmin device for the last 3ish years) can participate in broadcasting its position. It’s only the Edge 820 (for now) that can see it. So if your friends enable live tracking with their device/app – it’ll show up on your screen.
Speaking of places they’re going – it’s the Edge 1000. That’s the only other device Garmin has committed to bringing Group Track to. And even then, it won’t be until later 2016/early 2017.
Next we’ve got incident detection. This was introduced last year on the Edge Explore 1000, and it allows you to specify emergency contacts that can be notified in the event you crash. It uses a combination of accelerometers and seemingly GPS data to determine whether or not you ran into a camel. If so, it then gives you a 30-second countdown to cancel the notification of your emergency contacts:
It contacts them via text and e-mail message, like below (my phone left, her phone right):
Now in my experience with the almost-final device, it seems to trigger some false positives – of which The Girl was not pleased about. For example it triggered as I simply slowed at an upcoming stoplight/sign. Also while I was just holding the bike taking a picture. On the first, I had seen the countdown warning from 30 seconds – but of course had decided to take a picture of the screen. Turns out though that you need to not only tap the button, but then release and long hold again to validate you’re OK. By time that happened I ran out of time, which resulted in this near immediate freak-out message from her:
So…on one hand, it works well on the notification part (remember it uses your cell phone for the cellular network). On the other hand, I hope false positives aren’t as common as I’m seeing them on this beta device – else people will just disable it.
Next, we’ve got a nifty battery saver option. This is kinda like the battery saver feature we’ve seen on some cell phones lately, which will help you eek out the last little of your ride when battery power gets unexpectedly low.
Once enabled it’ll turn off the screen, but still notify you of various events such as upcoming turns and incoming messages. You can configure these within the options. The important thing here is that it’s still recording your ride/sensor data behind the scenes. It just turns off the display to save battery, increasing battery life by about 50%.
I’d be remiss to not mention mapping with the Edge 820 – after all, that’s a key reason (if not THE major reason) you’d get the unit. But in many ways, the mapping is pretty close to what you’ve seen before in Garmin units. With the Edge 820 it uses the internal fully detailed mapset that’s found on the 16GB of internal storage (it still has 6.1GB free though, and about 2GB unusable space for overhead).
For starters you’d tap the navigation menu option from the home screen, which brings you here:
You’ll see that you can load saved routes (from Garmin Connect), or simply enter in an address somewhere. You can also search for points of interest and then do things like have it create a random bike-friendly route for you. That feature has been previously found on some past units and is handy if you just want to go ride something new and different.
Once you’ve selected the route it’ll begin loading it (calculating). On my non-final unit this process took about 90 years, though Garmin says the units being shipped should be dramatically faster and take about 1 minute to calculate/prepare about each 20 miles of routing.
Once it’s done it’ll give you turn by turn directions using true street names (not just generic turn left/right). If you’re on a regular data page it’ll pop-over a small text box at the bottom with the turn direction, distance, and street name:
Meanwhile, if you’re on the map page you’ll see your route (both the future and the past), and you can also tap to bring up a cue sheet of all turns on the route:
Garmin also says it’ll automatically recalculate routes if you miss a turn, though for some reason that wasn’t working on my unit. Otherwise, it worked just fine for me in terms of routing through/across Paris.
In relation to this is the new feature for getting audio prompts, which was introduced on the wearables last fall. This allows you to pair to your smartphone, which in turn will use the speaker/headphones to give you additional stats and in the case of the Edge 820 – directions.
Again to be clear here – the Edge 820 is NOT pairing to Bluetooth headphones directly. Instead, it uses whatever audio device your phone has (the speaker, wired headphones, wireless headphones). On the Garmin Connect Mobile app, you can configure the different options:
Oh, and in case you were wondering about that touch screen – it works just fine in rain or with gloves. Yesterday gave me ample opportunity to test out the rain compliance. Pretty much every time I brought out my camera it dumped on me.
Here’s a video of the touchscreen I shot while the sky was crapping on me:
(Uploading…please hold)
Last but not least, Garmin has ‘normalized’ the different personal metrics on the Edge 820, bringing in some of the additional stats found on a variety of Garmin units over the past year.
So while we’ve seen FTP and Recovery Advisor features before on the Edge series, we haven’t seen the Stress Score before – which is now seen here:
This feature does require a heart rate strap though – so just keep that in mind.
There’s undoubtedly a bunch of smaller new tweaks/features that I didn’t list here as I may not have found them all yet. But I do cover a few more within my exceedingly long YouTube video in the earlier section.
What’s in the box:
Ahh yes, the unboxing. This time I’m giving such lurid details to you in two different flavors: Video and photos. The unboxing video is down below, where I also compare sizes with units including the Edge 520, Edge 1000, Polar V650, and Wahoo ELEMNT.
But first, a quick unboxing gallery of the standard base edition of the Edge 820:
And if you’re now looking for a much longer version of that, here’s my unboxing video along with a detailed size comparison of the Edge 820 to the Edge 520, Edge 1000, Polar V650 and Wahoo ELEMNT. Sorry about the slight echo on the audio, my microphone port on my phone broke, so my lav mic didn’t pick up properly.
Product Comparisons:
I’ve added the Garmin Edge 820 to my product comparison tool which means you can compare it to other items I’ve reviewed or had hands-on time with.
If you want my full product comparison tool, you can use that here and make your own comparison charts with any products in the database (like the Wahoo ELEMNT or Polar V650). For the purposes of this post, I’m just using the Edge 520/820/1000:
Remember that you can create your own product comparison charts using the full product comparison tool here!
Wrap up & Availability:
I think Garmin has a pretty solid unit on their hands here. I suspect there’s a lot of people that have been waiting years for an Edge 520 sized device that does true routable mapping. And, for that unit to be far more affordable than some of the craziness of the past mapping units. At $399, that’s finally getting to that ballpark.
The group track could be cool once it reaches critical mass. Garmin plans to expand it to the Edge 1000 (but oddly not the Edge 520) later this year or early 2017. Which, is a heck of a long ways away. Still, better than not I suppose. In my case, I didn’t have any other friends nearby with Edge 820’s to try it out…so I’ll have to wait a few weeks for that to occur.
It’s nice to see the incident detection shift from the niche Edge Explore series into the mainstream units (Edge 820). However, in my rides thus far, I’m seeing some false positives that aren’t really explainable. I know the technology has been in place for almost a year now on the Edge Explore 1000 – but that’s just not a unit I’ve really spent much time with. So it’s hard to say if my limited issues were just one-offs or more common. Still, I know that The Girl does appreciate the idea of getting a notification if something happens – especially given I live/ride in a foreign country.
Finally, when it comes to availability – Garmin is following the same model that they did with the Forerunner 735XT two months ago: Immediate availability. Units should be shipping from select retailers by the end of the week, or Monday at the earliest. So that’s good news. No long waits required.
Oh, it should be noted I don’t expect to see an Edge 1000 hardware refresh this year, there’s just no reason to do so. They’ve kept continual software updates on the unit and there’s basically no competition in that portion of the category. Thus no reason for Garmin to rev a new hardware platform. And of course, with the Edge 520 being out precisely 1 year, there’s no reason to revamp that either.
With that – thanks for reading and feel free to drop any questions below!
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FYI on pre-orders:
Clever Training US now has stocks of base Edge 820’s arriving on Friday or Monday. For the bundle versions (with sensors and stuff), those won’t be in stock till early August or so. The Edge Explore 820 will also be in stock Friday/Monday depending on whether the UPS man gets distracted with Pokémon Go.
What kind of maps are on this unit? As you seemed to indicate, 10GB is used for maps, does that mean the map quality is good?
Just wondering whether I will have to follow your previous instructions and create maps for my areas. Assuming that you’d have to add the maps as a system image ala the 520, unless of course you can just drop them in.
I finally upgraded from my old Edge 705 to the new 820 and I love all the new “stuff”. However, since the 820 no longer has a bike profile, I’m wondering how you adjust for tire size. I use 700x25c or 28c rather than the typical 23c. How do I tell my 820 that the wheel circumference is 2105mm not 2096mm?
Thanks, Joe
Sadly no equivalent for Crank Length on the cadence sensor.
Not sure that it makes a hill of beans worth of difference, but when transitioning from Bike Profiles on the “old” 810 to Sensor Pools on the 820 it kinda jars a bit.
I’ll live :)
No hill of beans. The setting was never used by the cadence sensor, but rather by a handful of power meters (mostly pedal ones). Now the Edge is smart enough to simply only show you the setting option if your connected power meter actually uses it.
I have a big issue withe 820 and elevation data. 1) Compared to my 800, i doesn’t determine the (almost) correct altitude, not even after 5 MInuten, free, open and sunny sky ! My 800 is 1% – 2& Correct, The 820 shows about 80 meters instead of 130, which woukld be the correct altitude.
Then, when i enter a correct location, and i start a unit, i does’nt take on the altitude of the location (GPS is 2-5 Meters accurate).
3rd issue, when i enter the altitude manually, and i ride a completely flat track of about 3 km, it is going up and down and adding about 15 Meters elevation data at the end. Look slike GPS determination where it shouls have barometric.
That’s all stuff where i thought it would be eliminated with the experiences and the customer feedbacks of the 800 series, 520 and 1000.
So can anyone tell what the hell is going on here?
Cheers Hanno
Same to me. This was also the case in the first release of the edge 520. probably an old peace of software re-used for this one. Normally Garmin needs some more software updates to get it stable.
definitely multiple. did like 5 rides yet, all about the same. one thing i also noticed today: did a commute ride (in my car) and the 820 was running, start altitude was entered manually by myself. same as before. after 20 minutes, when a arrived at the office, it had abot 30 meters less then the real altitude of that location. then i’ve loadad it up to GC, and i realized that the elevation chart started 30 meters lower than the altitude that i manually entered when i started off.
There is an issue with wrong elevation/total ascent/descent data (see the link bellow), elevation drift. I have the same problem, and it has nothing to do with blocking, cloudy weather, etc. Therefore I sent my unit back to the shop. However, as you can see in the last post, the upgrade seems to solve the problem.
The last update only improved the calibration by location issue. The elevation drift is still not solved. The elevation has a tendency to drift to lowerr values, terminating around -40 m.
I wanted to comment that using the navigation on the Edge 820 you can only enter a destination city if the full address is entered. The other options only allow a select cities listed as upcoming list (5km approx). No keyboard appears. this happens to someone else?
I received my new Edge 820 today. Getting a app display to work has been futile as apparently, the format is not supported. Also noticed the Garmin out front mount is very poorly designed. It has the unit sitting up in the wind and at a flat angle at that. I’ve contacted Garmin about this as ,imo, nobody should be expected to shell out $399 and then be forced to buy a third party mount. They also moved the buttons to the bottom which, also imo, is perplexing. This was clearly designed by avid couch sitters. I don’t think this really adds much from the Edge 800 but I will try it out on a ride before deciding whether to return it or not.
Actually, at a flat angle is best for aerodynamics. If you tilt it, it’s a pretty huge hit on aerodynamics surprisingly. I did testing in a wind tunnel on it here: link to dcrainmaker.com
Is that a micro-usb connection on the underside? Is that still accessible with the unit in a mount so that the garmin can be charged by a dyno hub/usb charger ?
Does this device have an “automobile” or “car” mode? In combing over this brief review, video, and owner’s manual, it does not appear to have this capability. As I travel out of town for work on day trips, the ideal device for me would have a mode for driving across state, then switching to a cycling mode so I can ride on some unknown roads before driving back home. It sounds like the Edge 1000 is still the device for this, correct?
You can add a profile and configure it to be used for driving, however if you’re looking at the map to get around, it may prove to be challenging simply form a screen size stand point but the turn by turn directions should still be helpful. The ability to have several different profiles for different purposes without having to change options every time you switch profiles is one of the biggest reasons to upgrade. Without being able to test accuracy yet, the out-front mount is the only downside to the 820 that I have encountered coming from a 800.
Seeing a problem with the training calendar. Send schedule across and the workouts and schedule.fit files are there as per my old 510 but nothing shows on the 820.
Wondering if others have seen the same or just me.
This is such a basic question I’m almost afraid to ask it. But here goes.
Is there an option to attaching stuff to a carbon bike part other than by rubber band?
Even today I note that Garmin still includes rubber band mounts with their most advanced unit.
The things I want to attach are cadence sensor and EPS interface. I understand rubber bands for ease of replacement but I was wondering about the cleaner look of something like adhesive with velcro.
I just have had the 820 for about a week now. Coming from a Polar M450. I really like it so far, a nice upgrade for me! I also am running the Varia Radar with it and works flawlessly!
The only concern I have would be battery life. Has anyone taken it out on a long ride? I will be doing a century ride next month, and I am not that fast, so the computer will be running for a while!
I did a century last weekend and the battery was still something like 80% or more at the end. I was going reasonably quick, just over 4hrs, but based on that I would expect it would last at least twice that. I was using live tracking (bluetooth) and following a course, but hardly ever on map screen, just HR data etc. I had backlight set to go off after 15s. Wifi was not enabled.
Well after my first ride (mountain), I lost it all. This is a new interface for me, from the 800. With the 800 you simply press reset and hold for 5 secs and it stores the ride. I think a lot of the negative comments stem from the “new” interface (gui) at least I know it is for me.
I was using a map that I had loaded from strava and it worked quite well at telling me when I was off course and when turns were coming up, much better than the 800 imho. The ||> symbol (which seems to signal an upcoming turn) was a little bit annoying but I’m sure there is a way to turn it off.
Bottom line: you have to do your homework with the unit. I didn’t and expected it to be similar to the 800…NOT!
Also, I would like to know if there is a website or software that I can use to edit a .gpx file. I would like to modify (cut/paste) from Strava or similar files.
It uses a sensor pool concept, so you can pair numerous sensors and it doesn’t matter as it automatically detects them. You can still have activity profiles though, which are kinda like bike profiles. They allow customization of screens/etc…
A word of warning: Have spent six months trying to get Garmin edge 520 to work with a Stages power meter when in the out-front mount. It seems to work okay when on the stem, but has lots of drop outs when in a variety of out-front mounts. Other headunits work fine in the out-front position. Stages customer service has been great in trying to resolve the issue, but it seems Garmin are less helpful. Just got off the phone with Garmin (I had to contact them again as it took over 2 weeks for them to verify I had a problem!) who told me the same issue is present with the 820, and there is no solution on the horizon. I was told neither device was faulty, but as the Stages was a “third party” device they don’t routinely test these before releasing a device. Given that the issue was clearly known about with the 520 before the release of the 820, I’d suggest careful consideration before buying either of these if you have or intend to buy a Stages (or similar) power meter.
@bmonster – Thanks for the information. Maybe I should consider getting another head unit or PM. Honestly, I think the Stages gen2 is the culprit, since all my other Ant+ sensors can communicate with the 520.
I have had no such issue with my Stages power meter while using the 520….I just purchased the 820 and do not anticipate a problem. I do have the newest model of the stages so perhaps it’s your model (older? )….
I used the 820 on my bike with a Stages (can’t remember if it’s first or second gen) all this week without problems recording the PM data – maybe 75-100 commute miles. The 820 was in a garmin out-front mount on the handlebars.
I put a screen protector (got one for the 520) on, and it completely transformed the touchscreen. It works flawlessly now. The heat finally broke here, so I probably won’t get a chance to see if the screen protector prevents sweat drops from activating/changing screens like it was before, but I can’t say enough positive things about how much better it works now. If you were having problems with the touchscreen being weirdly too sensitive and at the same time not selecting things when you touched them, try a screen protector, it immediately transformed the 820 into something awesome.
Does this do audio turn by turn directions where it talks to you? Or beeps to tell you a turn is coming up? Or are the directions just visual by text? You can disable the crash notification feature right?
Im probably going to get one just for the extra memory. Im tired of plugging into the computer and switching maps so much. Such a shame the 520 had so low internal storage and no micro sd slot.
I was using the turn-by-turn navigation with my 820 yesterday. It pops up notifications on the screen when a turn is coming up, and if you have the Garmin app running on your phone, your phone will text to speech the notification at the same time (I think I had to enable that somewhere on the garmin or on the phone, won’t swear to it one way or the other). The text to speech also tells you, after a turn, how far it is to your next turn (which isn’t displayed on the unit’s screen) which is nice. I have the unit’s beep sounds turned off so I can’t speak to how it beeps when navigating. I haven’t set up the crash notification feature (you’d have to tell it who to notify, at the very least), but I assume you could disable it once you’d set it up.
Would you please add a row to your comparison tables to indicate which units have the following features, all of which were present on the Edge 605 and 705 but missing on the Edge Touring (which made it inferior for Touring!):
My bike computer took a dive today so I am in need of getting a new computer… My last computer was a Mio Cyclo505… I got it because it could pair with both Bluetooth and ANT+ devices… This unit was terrible and I want to make sure I dont make the same mistake again…. How does the new Wahoo Elemnt really compare to the new Garmin Edge 820? I like the idea of the Elemnt supporting both bluetooth and ANT+ components but how dose it stand up, head to head, with the newly released Garmin Edge 820? Is there another unit I should be looking for?
Anyone figured out how to turn of the voice announcements on your cell phone (without unpairing) when riding a course? Kinda freaks out the riders behind me…
You do it on the app on the phone. On my iphone, I bring up the Garmin app, hit the “More …” icon, hit Garmin Devices, select the 820, select Device Settings, select Audio Prompts, and there is a “Navigation Alerts” on/off button.
Does anyone know whether the 820 needs a special doo-hicky to allow it to rear the gear position of a 2016 Di2 Ultegra groupset, or is it built in now?
Is there no longer a crank arm length option on the 820 for power meters? Also I found that even when I download Garmin IQ apps, they somehow don’t show up under the apps but as weird looking data fields. When I click IQ it tells me to go to the Web but I have successfully logged in and downloaded apps. Little weird.
It’s still there for me, but does depend on which power meter you’re using. Previously Garmin units might display the crank length setting for anything,versus now it’s just for power meters that actually need it. What unit are you using?
Ahh, gotchya. Yup, for that you’ll actually set crank length within the sensor menu. So after pairing the P1’s, in the sensor menu tap on the P1’s and you can set it there. You’ll need to ensure that it’s connected to the P1’s at the time you set it though (so go to your bike and spin the crank arms a few times to wake it up).
Got my new shiny 820 from Clever Training couple of days ago.
Used it on few rides so far, noticed over sensitive touch screen like others reported, haven’t used navigation yet.. so, can’t comment on that.
For bothers me the most, at this point, is connection drop. Phone connect/disconnect warnings, no text/email notifications and constant connection drop with Edge Remote.
Remote won’t connect back until I go to settings, disable and re enable sensor.
Does anybody else have remote issues as well?
The 820 has a second Bluetooth “pairing” that need to be setup to enable the 820 to receive txt/call notification from your phone. Check your phone settings and make sure that it is paired with “BLE_Edge 820” in addition to “BT_Edge 820”. I missed this initially in the setup and was having the same problem.
Got mine. I did notice that to get the Text and Call notifications I had to have 2 bluetooth connections. The 820 actually says that under bluetooth, but the print is so small it is pretty hard to read. I made my own screen protector with some 3M Scotchguard Clear Bra Paint Protector. It works just fine. I already had some I used on the bike to keep paint from being rubbed off by cable housings. Navigation works great using a TCX file. I will have to change my pre-turn warnings as they are overlaying the standard Navigation pop-up. Even with being a smaller unit it is easier to read than my old Edge 800. Pretty happy with it!
That’s a great idea, using the clear-bra material. So, was the response really good with the film installed? I don’t find mine too sensitive now, but I would like to protect the screen somewhat. The other concern I might have is removal of the film. On my bike, it’s almost impossible to remove without pulling some of the clear coat off.
I have had no problem removing it so far – in fact it took a couple of failed attempts before I got it installed correctly ( bubbles ). I had a little problem with the screen being too sensitive before the protector – no problems since. I have some issues swiping from page to page. I started using the arrows at the bottom that appear after touching the screen.
I know the size of the 820 and 520 was stated to be identical, however in the comparison photos it appears like the side shape is somewhat different. Maybe it’s just the colors, but I’m curious because I would like to get a silicon protective shell and since the 820 aftermarket items are not yet available can I use a 520 shell?
Ray, Has the implementation of Workouts been improved since the 510?
I used workout a lot with my 510, but I would love audible alerts of when to start and complete an interval.
Also is it possible to disable on-screen alerts? ie. so it doesn’t tell me if my power is too low or too high during an interval.
I really appreciate your comprehensive product reviews. Thank you.
I’m looking forward to your full in-depth review of the 820.
The faster satellite acquisition versus my 705 is almost worth the price of admission.
A confirmation that the 820 allows for swapping the default map (which I assume is region-specific, depending on where the unit was purchased) with a map for a different region, will seal the deal.
If the default map is swappable, let us know if it is via the same method as in previous models, i.e. by replacing “gmapsupp.img” with a different map image with the same file name.
The quarter turn mount all by itself is worth the price of admission. It’s much easier than the 705 mount, and, unlike the 705, I haven’t had one break. My 705 mount broke twice (once I caught the 705, once I didn’t).
As for maps, if it is the “gmapsupp.img” trick that has to be used, than the 820 isn’t for me. Earlier Edges, including your 705 and the 800 I currently use, will take multiple maps on board, not just one, and the name can be anything .img. Having to use the gmapsupp trick would be a major step backwards from Garmin.
I haven’t messed with map swappage yet on it, though, I know a few readers have – and one posted the details somewhere in the comments section (was successful). I believe he was just doing the .img swap, but I thought another also did it with Mapsource to add maps.
Had the most lovely response from Garmin today! LoL. We talk about an Edge 820 Bundle (S/N was provided with the request) and obviously latest Software update on. I asked re: WiFi issues, Touchscreen sensitivity issues, connection issues re Ant+ Shimano D-Fly, and super slow routing… Here is what the “pro” answers:
“Please be aware that we have escalated a ticket with Engineering regarding the touchscreen sensitivity on the Edge 820. Customers are complaint about the touchscreen being too sensitive. At this time we believe improvements can be made through a software update therefore we should not exchange customer devices for replacements.
The Edge 820 is not compatible with Wifi so the customer will not be able to set this up on there. The Edge 820 is also not listed as compatible with Shimano on FAQS.
With regards to the slowness calculating and swapping profiles I would advise that the customer check the software on the device is up to date as well as the maps. If these issues persist please let us know so we can look into this further. ”
Kind of speechless!!! I have to say I do not feel quite well understood ;-) @Ray, I donated you your 20$ subscription as I like what you do. Maybe you can have a chat with them, but this is too funny… Response received this morning via Garmin Switzerland.
Correct JC, that was the lovely German speaking gentlemen I was on the phone with. He thanked me for the English message he forwarded to his international Garmin support folks, who responded as you can read c/p from the response email. This response comes from Garmin, and was forwarded this morning with a lovely cover note in German….
@Ray Did you got the WiFi working? I mean it is obviously build in – my one catches the network for 1 sec and loses it right after and I was able to register the different WLANs via the Garmin Express software. Also the “The Edge 820 is also not listed as compatible with Shimano on FAQS” is a kind of a joke as a) Di2 Integration is on the standard list of functionality, and b) what FAQ is Garmin refering to, no FAQ for edge 820 is anywhere active on their websites. On the Swiss-German or German one there is not even the 820 listed, while on the garmin.com the content is still empty. The issue seems just with the antenna placement or Ant+ signal strength.
I couldn’t get my 820 to join my wifi networks (a home one with a password, or a work one with an open network) – I noticed that in the settings on the device I can enter a network name/password by hand (instead of doing it with Garmin Express). I did that, and now it works great. I tried to do it a few times with GE without success; maybe there was something else happening besides enter-on-device v. enter-via-GE, but it worked for me.
The first unit I have, WiFi uploads perfectly every time. The second unit I have (configured via GC), shows my network saved, but never fires and nothing ever uploads (even when I force it).
I’ll try the trick above tomorrow on setting manually on device. I may have done that at some point on my first unit, perhaps explaining why that worked fine. Interesting.
(And Changren – I didn’t get a prompt to install any WiFi update this afternoon via GC or WebUpdater…interesting…)
@CY / @Ray – Interesting one the WiFi update… My manually set-up WiFi said “Failed to connect to #SSIDname”. Regardless which Network I try… With the pre-set via Garmin Express it tries to connect “searching”, but then just stops w/o failure messages. At least Garmin tried to add the WiFi maybe – remember, they responded to me the 820 doesn’t have it :-)
Garmin has some really specific – I would call that limited – requirement for WiFi on the 820. This is from a post in the 820 forum:
2.4 GHz band
802.11 B or G (N and AC are not supported, nor is 802.1x)
WEP / WPA / WPA2 security (WPA-Enterprise is not supported)
Channels 1-11 for North American devices, channels 1-13 for International devices
Hello, I have a Garmin Fenix 3 HR so wrist-based heart rate. Can the Edge 820 display the HR from my Fenix 3 HR? It would be rather dull to have to wear a heart rate monitor to display HR on the Edge 820 since I got rid off the strap thanks to my Fenix 3 HR.
In other words : can I pair the Fenix 3 HR with the Edge 820 to display HR?
I have been using the Edge 800 for the past few years, and mostly I have been very happy with it, except for the navigation during pre-loaded courses. If I miss a turn somewhere, and I go off the course, the device will only notify me that I am back on the course if somehow I find the way by myself. However, if I go off course far enough to not find my way back by myself, the navigation feature will only send me back to where the course started rather then back to where I went off or the nearest point to rejoin the course. Any improvement on this with the Edge 820? Thank you in advance! :-)
Does anyone have any luck installing the Wi-Fi A1 Firmware update for the Edge 820? It showed up in my Garmin Connect app (on my Mac) yesterday. On rebooting the 820, i would see the prompt to install the Wi-Fi update but it would get stuck at 0 (this counter does not progress beyond 0). I left the update running for more than one hour and it didn’t do anything.
I’m not sure what the version 2.10 is for. I think it may be for the Wi-Fi software version. My Edge 820 was at version 2.30 before i updated it to 3.0 yesterday.
Does it matter as long as it can handle enough gears? As long a gear 1 shows as 1 then with 10 speed it *should* work and you will just never see it display 11. The problem would be trying to run an 11 speed system when the settings only went up to 10. (this is all theoretical as I have neither an 820 – yet – or Di2 gears).
Ray or anyone, has anyone figured out how to take courses, like gpx courses downloaded from another site like MTB Project or similar, and wirelessly transfer them to the 820? Garmin seems to want to have you be limited to creating courses in Garmin Connect but I can’t seem to find a way to simply get a file from another website onto my 820 without connecting to my computer and dragging to the New Files folder. Sometimes while traveling I might find out about a route or may decide to try a route that I didn’t preload on my Edge and I don’t want to have to bring a laptop. I always travel with ipad and iphone and would love to be able to do this with one of these devices. Thanks.
Hi Jan, I am also interested to know how to do it (both wireless or connected).
Actually I dont even know how to follow a GPX file put directly into the edge 820 memory. Following your comments I dragged, in file manager, two gpx files no the “NewFiles” folder and it seems the 820 did not respond well. It refused to start afterwards! I then connected it again to Garmin express and it restored, but for some reason the two mentioned GPX files disappeared from the “NewFiles” folder! Maybe this was the reason why the 820 refused to start. Maybe this folder is not for GPX files?!
Anyway, in your case:
– whas this “NewFiles” (you mention “New Files”) the folder you used to put gpx files?
– what was the menu sequence you used to take a GPX track?
Thank you.
Rui
Thanks Jan.
I found those instructions on post #437. I put both GPX and TCX files on the “NewFiles” folder and it showed up on the Courses list of the edge 820. I have to test it!
Thank you!
Rui
OK, so I’ve figured it out thanks to some posts in the Edge 1000 subforum. Thanks to mcinner1 and DAVID.MEI over on this post link to forums.garmin.com…/t-324675.html
“Garmin Connect Mobile does the Job. The easiest is if you plan the trip directly on connect, than you can send it to the device via bluetooth.
Another possibility:
1) upload the file (previously saved on dropbox/onedrive/google drive) on garmin connect to the activities using the web-interface (not the app)
2) open the app, the new activity and save it as a course
3) send the course to the device via bluetooth
This should work theoretically, I often have the problem that the gpx-file cannot be uploaded to garmin connect and sometimes it’s not possible to send the course to the device, don’t know yet the reasons of failure, it seems quite random to me…”
The key is to download the iCab mobile app onto the ipad. This app has a built in download manager and lets you download a gpx file from another website directly onto the ipad, and then from the download manager button, you save it to your dropbox. From there, you need to make sure it has the .gpx suffix, so rename if necessary. Then go over to the Garmin Connect website, not app, and go to your activities page and on the right side of the page is a button to “import” which lets you choose the file from dropbox. Go ahead and upload the file into your Connect account. Open the file in connect by clicking on it in your activity list and on the far upper right side of the page is a gear button which has the option to “save as course.” Go ahead and do that and then when you sync your device with Garmin Connect it will now be available on your Edge device.
Simple, right?
Come on Garmin. Please make this easier. But at least it’s doable now.
Question, Regarding maps for the 820.. there are multiple maps and files loaded > .img and .sum files.
If i want to load OS maps should i remove the factory installed maps? OS maps seem to have more detail
I am new to strava live segments with the 820 (previously had 800) – I can’t get it to work though, can anyone tell me what I am missing?
I have Strava Premium, starred a bunch of segments, synced with 820, enabled live segments on Strava (can’t remember where), there are a list of enabled segments on the 820 showing up. I am on latest 3.0 software which updated today.
But when I ride, I never get the Go! message. I have definitely ridden over starred segments.
Are there any other pre-conditions? E.g. does 820 have to be connected to phone? Do I have to be riding a course? Any special kind of course? Something else?!
I might have answered my own question – if you are following a course segments don’t work, right? I am almost always following a course. I saw this on some very old forum comments about 810 but assumed it might have been fixed by now.
For me they don’t work either. They are listed and enable on my edge but I also never get a message. Independent if I follow a course or not. Firmware v3.0. Any other suggestions?
Two questions:
1- What is the purpose of the soft button “IQ” that appears on the bottom right of every page? If I press it it only gives some instructions on how to set up Connect IQ. Couldnt this button be used for some more useful function?
2- Are there any proper Manual for this cycling computer? The one provided is just quick start manual, and what I learned about this gadget was in this DCRainMaker page (Thanks DC RainMaker!).
Thank you
Rui
I take what i wrote about the IQ soft button back. If you have the 3.0 firmware, you can download a connect IQ application (not data field). Right now, there is only two Connect IQ applications available for the 820. Once you have installed the application, pressing the soft button will take you to a menu listing the installed application.
On my 800 the courses always came up sorted by the closest to my current position first. On the 820 they seem to be sorted in order by course name. Is there a way to change this? I usually have a large amount of courses on the unit and finding the correct one becomes difficult when sorted by name.
After installing the latest update bluetooth to my iPhone didn’t work. i finally had the phone “Forget” the 2 bluetooth connections and then re-paired and all is working now. Wifi also started working after the update – I had never been able to connect before.
As we all know, the screen is too sensitive to sweat falling on it. Before the update I was able to Lock the Screen and still scroll through the individual screens. Since the update it seems they took this functionality away from us which leaves us with just one screen while riding. Am I missing something on settings that would go back to being able to scroll (not auto scroll) through the screens while in Lock Screen mode. Pretty useless if you can’t. I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have taken back that Elemnt.
Locking it isn’t the problem. In fact I don’t know how you would use this without locking the screen as every time you sweat on the device it messes it up. The problem it before the update when you were operating under Lock Screen you could still swipe between screens. Now since the update when I lock the screen I can’t swipe between data screens. Not very functional.
Ah, OK, sorry but I misread what you wrote. I confirm that when locked one cannot swipe between screens and I completely agree on the usefulness of that functionality now removed (!). I hope in a next update (I believe there will be many) we will get that functionality back!
Good afternoon, after reviewing the comments in regards to the screen sensitivity, it has become apparent that the Edge 820’s screen is far to sensitive depending on the type of rider you are. The way I have found to get around that issue is to lock the screen (Which in fact locks it and allows no other usability with the touchscreen except for the physical buttons on the bottom of the device) and use an Edge Remote. This is an expensive fix, but I have come to prefer the Edge remote to the touchscreen anyways and use it with my older Edge 810 as well. I hope this was helpful!
Hi Ray,All
Had the 820 since 10 days and found that quite a few of the initial quirks were in fact user errors.
A lot of the comments here helped me as the Garmin manual is as usual rather incomplete.
Seems that I’m one of the few who are not unhappy with the Touchscreen, but I can’t reproduce the reports of a finger hoovering 5 Millimeter above the screen activating it. Also my sweat typically goes the others way… ?
Just updated to Firmware Version 3.0 and WiFi works finally.
One thing that is still broken is the following:
When zooming out distance in the elevation data page it gets Stuck at 20 km. Trying to Zoom in again only toggles between 20.09 and 20.0 km. Doesn’t seem like User error, so maybe Garmin could fix that at some point.
Otherwise fairly happy with the device, but I’m a fenix2 User so probably pretty expectations managed…
Cheers
Clemens
You might want to check out my latest video on exactly this topic (bike profiles/activity profiles/sensors/etc…). It helps explain things a bit: link to youtube.com
I will check it out. I understand why they aren’t “necessary” but it sure was nice to have the unit not hunting for irrelevant sensors since they weren’t in the profile. I’m headed out right now for the first time on bike #2 since upgrading to the 820. We’ll see shortly how the 3.0 firmware behaves. :)
I wish the 820 could integrate with Google Maps on mobile phone via Garmin Connect.
I want to send navigation/route suggestion from Google Maps to 820 head unit. You know, when on the go, inputting destination address on mobile phone is much easier.
Or, could Garmin provide a “remote keyboard” interface to allow me using smart phone with garmin connect to input data?
While waiting for the impossible I recommend using Google maps to get coordinates and type the coordinates to Edge. That is the fastest way to get a location from Google maps to Edge.
On the touchscreen issues – I tried with a screen protector on today, and maybe it was a bit better, but it’s not really the sensitivity which has been the biggest issue. The problem is that sometimes when you touch an item it briefly flashes but doesn’t actually move forward. You keep jabbing away and sometimes if you press and hold that works better. But clearly the unit has registered a press because it blinks blue. That’s pretty frustrating, especially on the bike. I don’t know whether it’s software or hardware, I’ve tried playing around a bit more at home to see if I can nail down a pattern (when does it just “flash” and when does it “take”). So far no obvious pattern other than perhaps when you first go into a menu it is worse, and then picks up. I wonder if it’s a processing overload thing.
I just got one of these and the auto-upload does not seem to be working – the unit seems to be having a hard time maintaining a connection to Wi-Fi. Any view?
Yeah, some folks are having weird issues on the WiFi front. It seems configuration via Garmin Express is less successful than configuration via directly on the unit.
My minor Wi-Fi issue of not able to connect to the work Wi-Fi network has worsened to not being able to see any Wi-Fi network and unable to manually to connect any Wi-Fi network. When I first got the 820, I was able to connect to my home Wi-Fi network via Garmin Express. Now, after deleting my home Wi-Fi network from the 820 to troubleshoot the Wi-Fi issue, I am unable to connect to my home network because the 820 is not finding any.
WIFI used to work just fine for me, but now it won’t connect to my home network. I deleted it and tried to reconfigure from the unit, but no luck. Anyone else been able to make this work? Considering the phone never stayed connected with the 820 for more than 3 minutes, I’ve been pretty underwhelmed with the 820 so far since basically none of the fancy features they advertise actually work.
Excuse me for my first message. It was my presentation
I have the 820 explore since 5 days. But it has got the same problem in Italy. Quote 40-50 meter below the real quote. If you correct it, the quote change in ten minutes and come back to the wrong number.
If you go and come back in one hour, and the wheatther is non changed, you have the same error.
How is it possible, with GPS sat, Glonass sat and barometric cell ?
How can firmrware fix it? The hole is free …. I didn’t find any world about altitude issue in the 520 software history ..
Thank you and sorry for my english
M
Got my new 820 last week and been having trying to set up the incident notification ever since. I guess I don’t understand how to set up emergency contacts in GC. Can anyone help?
@Jeff: The Garmin Connect app for iOS used to have a menu under Settings that allows you to choose your emergency contacts (you must allow Garmin Connect to access your Address Book). That’s how I initially defined it but for some reason, I no longer see that menu in Garmin Connect. I have tried uninstalling and re-installing the Garmin Connect app but that did not reveal the menu. The emergency contact that I configured previously are still there, I just lost the ability to change it.
Hi,
Just to let you know that something i’ve see is that your emergency contact must have only-one phone number. If it have more than one, you will not be able to select it.
I’ve create a duplicate contact with only a mobile number and everything works just fine.
There’s no requirement for the emergency contact to have a Garmin Connect account. On iOS, the contact has to be in the Address Book (perhaps it’s similar on an Android device). I don’t know how Garmin Connect chooses a phone number if the contact has multiple phone numbers. It’s definitely not smart enough to choose a mobile phone versus a landline. So to force Garmin Connect to use the correct emergency contact phone number, I deleted other phone numbers, leaving only one phone number.
@Jeff: If you have the latest version of Garmin Connect, there is a bug that prevents the Incident Detection menu from showing up. The Incident Detection menu is what allows you to add/change your emergency contact/s.
You may have to wait for Garmin to release an updated Garmin Connect app with the fix.
I have just deleted and uploaded the latest version of Garmin Connect and I still don’t see Incident detection menu. Does Garmin even know this is an issue you think? I guess I will continue to use Road ID for now.
@Jeff: If you have never configured Incident Detection (using older version of Garmin Connect), uninstalling and re-installing Garmin Connect won’t work for you.
Last night after finishing a trainer ride using the 820 I was prompted to update the unit to version 3.10. After doing so and restarting a message popped up asking if i wanted to set up incident detection, which I did, but after doing that I opened the GC app and looked for the menu option to update the list and still can’t find that. So who knows what brought that about! I guess it would be good to set up a test “incident” to test it.
I’ve been using the 820 for a couple weeks now, and generally like it. One nice feature missing from the 800:
– When one is navigating a course, and on a normal data screen, then the 800 would pop over to the map screen to display the turn.
– The 820 just puts up a notification on the bottom of the data screen.
I found the former far easier to read, and much more informative, e.g. quick right-then-left turns across a main road, or tricky multi-way intersections. So when I’m seriously navigating, I’ll just leave the 820 on the map screen, and thus not have access to the rest of my metrics.
Have I missed an option?
P.S. I also accidentally discarded one ride; the save/discard UI does seem more fragile than the 800.
I have noticed this also. i actually missed a turn this weekend at a quick left then left again. I also noticed with the latest release update the unit is indicating turns when there are no streets around. Seems like they have introduced a navigation bug.
same here, switched from the 800 to the 820… Would not recommend this. the navigation in busier places is simply broken!
the old 800 and still available 810 are better. Especially with the not so responsive touch screen, constantly switching between data and map pages is not fun!
I haven’t seen anything related to metabolic profiles and the Edge 820, so I I might as well ask about it.
I have a New Leaf metabolic profile loaded on my Edge 800. Is this portable to the Edge 820? Or is there a newer, better, more accurate method of measuring work output / calorie output on a ride using the Edge 820? If so, what the hell is that method?
Thanks again for a great review, but more importantly, for all of the follow up answers that you provide.
Unfortunately after New Leaf went out of business a few years back, then Garmin stopped supporting it in new devices (kinda logical). There’s really been nothing since then.
The closest you’d get would be Kj, using a power meter.
Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t support something or someone that went out of business either.
That being said, does that mean that Garmin Training Center will no longer work to upload the file to an 820? Or is it now completely useless?
Thankfully I do have a powermeter, so I can always go the route of converting Kj to calories. Along those lines, any opinion on this article by Sean Burke regarding this exact same subject? link to crankcycling.com
I found it a little strange. Equating kJ to Calories is probably about the right thing to do for the level of accuracy you can achieve outside of a laboratory, but he insists that everyone (everyone!) is exactly 21% efficient all of the time, no matter external conditions (altitude, temperature). Yes, your Garmin is lying to you about calories, but so, to a lesser extent, is your power meter, because your efficiency on a particular ride probably isn’t knowable and probably isn’t constant. And that leaves out the question of whether your power meter is accurately measuring the work you’re doing (probably in most cases, but not if you don’t have it calibrated right).
Yeah, the other problem is using a 7 year old device as the baseline, a lot has changed then. For example, had a HR strap been used on an even semi-current device it would have leveraged FirstBeat for the calorie pieces, which is a heck of a lot better than just doing simple distance*weight calculations.
Today a new Garmin box with a 820 arrived to replace my 800.
I make rides between 120 and 200 km and most of the time upload and follow tracks.
I thought my 800 got slow and battery dies after 4 to 5 hours.
So full of enthusiasm I updated to the newest release and uploaded 2 tracks to the 820.
A 180km track took 90 seconds and a 70km track still took 60 seconds.
Then when finally the track was uploaded the map reacts really really slow if you change the zoom level or move the card around, to for example see on the screen where the track is going.
With the 800 this was only a few seconds, and moving the map around was not perfect but kind of acceptable.
In all the earlier comments only a few people complained the new 820 is slow. I have a hard time to believe that a 5 year newer model takes much much longer to upload tracks.
So now my question is whether it’s only my 820 that is that slow or do all 820s take 1 minute for a small course of 70km?
Thanks for your considerations!
Having an hard time deciding between 810 and 820… Is the 820 really worth almost double than a heavily-discounted 810..? I understand the 810 UI & touchscreen might be less responsive?
I ordered both 820 and 810… but will have to decide b4 the goods arrive. I assume the 810 is already obsolete, but I wonder if it would be just a Good enough cheaper alternative to 820.
Hi,
Are you still expecting to review this month. I’m thinking of replacing my Edge 800 and I’m really interested in how they compare especially with the Vector Pedals.
Nick
Cant even get my new edge 820 to finish booting up. Just freezes at the Garmin screen while turning on. Out of the box, was able to connect to computer, switch to an openstreet map and add some routes. Disconnected from computer now can’t get it to turn on. Not exactly happy with the 820 so far. Any tricks to get this thing to turn on???
How long did you wait before giving up? Usually after loading a new map, it take a little bit longer for the start-up process to complete. If it’s still frozen, try pressing and holding the power button for 10 seconds.
Hello Joe, had the same behavior with my 820 device freezing while bootin up. In my case it was the map files that were somehow corrupt. Deletet them somehow, then all was fine..
Ray, great review on the 820. Just a question, which continent/country do the pre-loaded base maps come standard with? Is it based on where you purchased the unit from?
It’s based on the region it’s sold in. So in the US, it’s the US maps, while in Europe it’s the European maps. But you can add maps if you need to for free using the usual 3rd party free maps method.
Noticed there’s a bug in displaying the distance when creating a route in the navigation section: distance is in miles even when metric is selected. It says kms however. Free 50% bonus!
Just got my Garmin 820 yesterday. I’ve been using a Sigma Rox 6.0 and iPhone with Mapmyride+. Hopefully this unit works ok. I’ve used Garmin products for years and they work ok. I also bought a POSMA DB1 v4.0 BT cycling computer for its BT sensors. (I want the iPhone Mapmyride+ to work properly)
I liked your review of features. The 820 is a bit pricey compared to other units, but it has more features.
Can anyone verify that Garmin’s Training Calendar works on the Edge 820? I have one, and no matter what I do I can never load my calendar on there?! (I’ve got the workouts loaded under workouts, but not under the calendar for some reason?)
I’ve contacted Garmin but funnily enough, no reply.
I have been reading that a lot of people were having issues with wifi. For some reason I thought that mine was working the whole time so I didn’t look into it until the other day. I saw that it was not connected but had my network listed. I clicked the button and it searched for my network. It found it and was connected for like 5 seconds, then it went off. I tried again, and the same thing happened. It will not hold on to my network. Does Garmin know about this problem? Has anyone figured out how to make it work?
I had similar problems with the wifi on my 820 when I set up my wifi networks with the Garmin Express app on my computer. I deleted my wifi networks from the device and then set them up on the device directly instead and it worked fine. Maybe it was just luck, but that’s what worked for me back with the previous version of the firmware (2.40 or something?). I love wifi because I don’t need to run the Garmin app on my phone to upload a ride – I get home/work, stop the device and woosh it’s uploaded. The device will also update Strava live segments if you have strava premium, and it will download software updates over wifi (which it won’t do if you sync via your phone). About the only thing you can’t do easily is download a route from strava/ridewithgps/etc onto the 820 – still need to plug your 820 into the computer for that, alas.
See that’s what weird, mine automatically uploads to my phone, then Strava right after I save it on the 820. That’s why I was wondering if I was missing something. I have also been able install updates right from the device. Is this correct, without wifi?
You need to be running the Garmin app (or have recently run it — so it’s still active in the background) on your phone for uploads etc to work. But yes, if you have it there, it all works the same as wifi. (I didn’t know the 820 would get software updates via the phone though, I thought that was wifi only. My mistake.) I agree it works well without wifi, but the wifi removes the phone as an intermediary step for all of this.
If you want to test if the Wi-Fi setup is working correctly, disable Bluetooth on the 820, start a ride and then save it. If that ride gets uploaded, then your Wi-Fi setup works.
I have both the Edge 820 (bought a few weeks ago) and the Edge 1000 (bought two years ago).
The 820 has some newer software features that the 1000 doesn’t have. It seems to have a finer grained recovery advisor than the 1000. I don’t remember seeing anything on my 1000 about having a vo2 max estimation, but Ray’s features list says it does so maybe I just missed it. The 820 has Group Track and Ray’s article says the 1000 will get that around the end of the year. The 1000 doesn’t (today) have a Battery Save Mode like the 820.
The screen size difference is significant. I think the 1000 looks a bit ridiculous on my road bike. It looks right at home on my Surly bikepacking bike with Jones Loop H-Bar handlebars. The 820 looks too small on the Surly. If you’re middle aged ish, and reading smaller text is not easy, the larger screen on the 1000 is a nice feature.
The tech specs for both units say 15 hours of battery life, but I get consistently 10 hours of battery life on the Edge 1000 without using navigation (I have this superstition that running nav — or maybe having the maps / elevation pages open — may increase battery use. I have not tested this carefully and I could be completely wrong about this). Last weekend I went on a thirteen our ride with the 820 running nav the whole time, most of it watching the maps/elev pages, and I ended up enabling Battery Save Mode the last few hours to get home with 7% left. It was great to have that feature, it wasn’t supposed to be a thirteen hour ride and was worried about losing my nav before I got back to familiar streets if the battery pooped out. :)
Ray’s article talks about the 1000 v. 820 a bunch, but these are the differences that have mattered to me.
I bought Garmin Edge 820 last week but I have returned it today because it had two major prbolems with elevation and temperature readings.
(1) Temperature: temperature shown was always at least 5°C higher than room temperature as shown by thermometers and by Garmin Edge 800. Nothing to do with my hands, this temperature difference persisted even after leaving 820 alone on the desk for hours. Once I grabbed the device, temperetaure shown would rise very swiftly. This is normal with all devices, but very dramatic with Edge 820: if room temperature was 20°C, Edge 820 would show at least 25, then rise to 32-33 after I was losely holding it with my fingers for one or two minutes. This sincerely seems too much to me
(2) Elevation: after adjusting elevation to the known altitude of 14 meters of my house, the Edge 820 would reach about -30m in 5 to 10 minutes. No matter how many times I set the correct altitude, the device would always be adamant to go back to -30. If I switched the GPS off, this problem would disappear leaving me pretty puzzled, since the device seemed to rely only on (incorrect) elevation data from the GPS and not at all on the barometer. I also didn’t manage to find the setting to automatically adjust elevation when starting recording at a place of known altitude. All along, the Edge 800 sitting next to the 820 would perform pretty consistently with and without GPS.
I decided I should wait another six months before buying the Garmin Edge 820 again.
On #1 – I think it’s something with the 820 temperature sensor needing airflow. Basically, without airflow the internals of the device are heating up and causing higher temp readings. I noticed something similiar sitting in the sun a week ago waiting for a buddy to come out, the temp rose like 15*F in 10 mins. The second I started moving it went back to normal within a few minutes.
I think to me this falls somewhat under the camp of testing GPS accuracy by putting a watch in a garden and seeing how much distance it accumulates – it’s just not a test of any usefulness. I’m much more interested in how it performs outside. Now in my case, that does show an issue because merely using the device sitting still for 5-8 minutes shouldn’t show that much of a bump. Whereas inside holding it at a desk is less realistic.
I agree that this is not typical usage, but I still think it makes sense to use a thermometer as a… thermometer even it’s on a cycling device: to check temperature while you wait for your buddy, or you’re touring and stop for a sandwich, and so on. Also, what happens when you are cycling very slow and airflow is minimal? I think the thermometer in the Edge 820 needs better insulation. I’ve never been very happy with the Edge 800 taking more than ten minutes of cycling to go down from, say, inside temperature of 15°C to outdoors temperature of 7°C but now I think I really appreciate a bit of inertia…
I bought the 820 as I mentioned in a previous post. I returned it.
Problems:
display too sensitive.
Maps slow (not that having a micro screen helps much for guidance compared to an iPhone/Google maps with a gorilla battery which lasts all week)
Sometimes the expensive toy contacts the emergency contact when a hard bump is hit.
Garmin bike sensors for cadence and speed are just as slow to react as using a BT cadence / speed sensor with an iPhone.
Altitude is off.
I stayed with my small wired speedo/altimeter on the handlebars with a Quad Lock an iPhone 6s+. I have a Gorilla 20,000 mah external battery pack in my little bike pack. During a 500 mile ride a few weeks ago, the pack powered the iPhone all week.
The iPhone has real weather, real up to date moving maps with Google maps (other apps exist too) and if one wants Strava live the mobile networks are just about everywhere to be live(if that’s what you want)
And best of all, the display isn’t the size of an oversized matchbook for stats and maps.
I put the Quad case and cover on the iPhone 6 during rain/wet operation and it worked fine.
There is so much more a real computer (the iPhone is “real” compared to the Garmin which costs almost 1/2 of what an iPhone costs) there is really no comparison.
The tiny sized Garmin may work for some, but not for me.
– lastly the temperature wasn’t correct either on the Garmin, and it doesn’t play music. And the Garmin “radar” tailight is way over priced for what it is. It’s a dim unreliable tailight which doesn’t reliably give a traffic report of what’s behind your bike. IMHO, you’re better off getting a super bright bike tailight and a helmet mirror.
@Steve J: There’s no longer bike profiles. It’s just activity profiles now on the 820. If you want, you can certainly use a specific activity profile for a specific bike.
My last computer was a 500 so.. On the 820 I have the re-calculating of a course/satnav functions and they work fine on post-production model. The re routing is slow but not impractical. IT was continually trying to get me off an A road but this may be a setting of avoid main roads that I haven’t tried turned off since my test ride. I’m disappointed by the battery life.
When the device reaches a known wifi it automatically uploads new recording to Garmin Connect, so you don’t need to attach to it to a PC: It is pretty neat, but one can live without it
I thought I would briefly share my experience with the 820 which I just returned this morning after some frustration. This was a replacement for a fairly reliable 510 which suddenly quit recording distance of any type and thus became a brick on the front of my bike, and additionally I was excited to have turn by turn and maps for courses.
I didn’t experience the touchscreen or wifi issues that everyone else has been commenting on (although found the persistent wrong-elevation glitch), but I got something even better: impossibly abysmal battery life. I would pull it off the charger after a whole night showing a full charge and within 3-20 minutes of starting my ride (linked to HR strap, power meter, speed, and phone via BT) it would just shut down. Back on the cable it would reveal a completely depleted battery and go through hours of charging just to repeat the process.
In general I like the Garmin ecosystem and design language and the 820 ticks off all the boxes for me, but sadly it’s too unreliable to deal with. It just seems like this product is far away from release-ready and yet here it is. I might try the Wahoo Element (sp?) but the RFLKT+ left a very, very bad impression on me before I switched to the 510. Best of luck with this device!
I returned it for wrong elevation and wrong temperature problems, but I actually had also an issue with battery: I left it switched on on the desk in the evening to find it completely depleted in the morning. I could see the 820 switches to powersave mode after a few minutes of inactivity, but I imagine it would never completely switch off. I haven’t investigated on how long the battery would actually last or if there’s a setting for automatic switch off. I can certainly say, though, that the battery was completely empty after less 12 hours in powersave mode sitting on my desk.
On the battery only lasting 20 minutes, obviously, there’s something wrong with that specific unit. Just a lemon (and the first I’ve ever heard of that on any Garmin actually).
As for desk-battery burn, it’s hard to say if it went into sleep mode or just turned off the display. There is a powered off mode. Also, if you have GPS on while indoors, keep in mind that GPS units are smart enough now to actually increase power draw to assist the GPS when they can’t find signal. And lower it when signal is strong. So indoors, you’d burn through more batteries than not.
All of which sorta goes back to my statement on test as you actually use a product. Meaning, if testing GPS accuracy, then do it while moving (not sitting in a garden). And if testing battery life, do it while outdoors. And so on…
I still can’t help noticing that the Edge 800 stops looking for satellites after a few minutes of unsuccessful attempts. Also, if I forget to switch off the 820 once back home after one or two hours cycling (I might even leave it on the bike since it now it uploads everything by itself), I wouldn’t want to find it drained the day after.
But it does turn off automatically assuming the default settings aren’t changed. I leave my Edge 820 on all the time, and it’s always fine the next day when I find it again.
I’m not very clear on this: you say that battery will drain quicker when I have the device sitting on my desk because it keeps looking for signal. Fair enough. But you also say that you keep your 820 always on, also overnight when presumably you keep it indoors. How can it happen that in the morning your 820 is always fine while mine was drained?
As a follow up, I did end up swapping out the first unit for a replacement and the first one was indeed a lemon. The new has worked a charm so far and if it can keep up the good work then I’ll be a very happy Garmin customer. Battery life on the replacement unit has been excellent – on par with the 510 – and I especially like using the Connect IQ apps as data fields.
Can the internal maps be removed (and replaced with OSM) to add more space? Does it support transfering map .imgs over wifi from phone or do you need to use usb?
So i did. I deleted the original maps (just via Windows Explorer, them are those big *.MAP files) and installed OpenMTBMaps or OpenStreetMaps via Garmin BaseCamp. Works fine.
OK, so just bought the 820 and note that it comes with the European base map. Great for the UK (and Europe). However, how do I obtain/upload/add additional mapping if i’m abroad and riding in the US and Australia? Tried searching the web, but cant seem to be able to find an answer.
Have a trip coming up and the ability to download and install additional mapping would be extremely useful, if not a deal breaker.
Yes, install the OpenStreetMaps, you can do it via BaseMap (this is the appropriate Garmin software) .. you can get it here link to www8.garmin.com . If you are Mountainbiker you may like these maps link to www8.garmin.com
Hello! I did not remove the original maps but I installed my local country topo maps that have been converted to the format Garmin uses. I placed the .img file to the Garmin folder and when I browsing to:
I can see five different maps:
1. Standard Basemap, NR
2. Garmin Cycle MAP EU 2016.11
3. Edge DEM Map EU 2014.10
4. Garmin Geocode Map EU 2016.10
5. The map I installed
Now, for the “Road bike” activity profile I would like to use Garmin Cycle MAP but for “XC bike” and “Fatbike” profiles I would like to use the map I installed. Is this possible? Enabling and disabling maps seem to affect all profiles even though the selection is done under the settings of a certain selected profile. To tell you the truth I actually can’t tell if it is displaying the correct map even when I have all the others disabled and only the map I installed is enabled…
I was just trying to make the same decision, and I decided to buy the 1000. The only notable differences in the 820 currently are (a) incident detection, (b) live tracking display (coming on the 1000), and (c) better battery life. But the 1000 is already stable and doesn’t have the issues that are being reported in these comments on and on the Garmin forum. So far I am happy with the 1000.
“The Edge 820 is self calibrating and the sensitivity could be impacted if anything is touching the screen during power up. Please try turning off the Edge and then power it back on without touching the screen to see if that improves the screen response. If you continue to have issues we can create a case to have your issue researched further by our engineering team.”
As long as you are connected via Bluetooth to phone and have signal it will upload ride once saved. Otherwise it can also upload when you are in wifi network previously connected. Good luck hope this helps.
Karim, thanks for that the reason why I ask is I have a edge 800 which I used on LEL2013 after around 400km the dam thing switched itself off, had to do a hard reset hence lost all my data. So I want to save my rides to strava as I go then delete from my new chosen garmin device.
Harry
Is it possible to enable strava live segments only in a particular activity profile but not in others? I believe that I managed to do this in the 520 but can’t in the 820.
I was getting frustrated by not finding the incident detection & begin
I am happy to help. We are aware of this issue. To resolve this you should uninstall the Garmin Connect App and Reinstall this. After you have done this the feature for Incident detection wilning to think I’d gone loopy, so I emailed Garmin.
This is their response and it worked;
“Thank you for contacting Garmin Europe.
I am happy to help. We are aware of this issue. To resolve this you should uninstall the Garmin Connect App and Reinstall this. After you have done this the feature for Incident detection will be working again.”
So I’m seeing several sales on the 1000 this week, where I can get it for $399. So if the 820 and 1000 are the same price, what is the pick? I currently have a 500. My biggest gripe is that I can’t ride a course and see my speed on the same page!
I am really liking my 820 and had the same choice to make. I was concerned that the smaller size would be an issue as I need reading glasses No worries though it’s easy to read and the contrast is great in direct sunlight. Something my 510 was terrible at. The screen switches with an easy swipe like you would expect using a smart phone again the 510 was useless to change pages so I wouldn’t during a ride. For navigating a course I have a screen that shows:
1. power
2. speed
3. heart rate
4. distance to next turn
During any ride your navigating you will get a screen prompt blacked out with direction arrow and street name so easy stuff. You can have it do that and go to the map screen as well if you prefer. A neat option is if you run audible alerts through your phone you get directions like a car “Nav” speaking to you with directions like “turn left onto Main Street in 150 meters”. That’s broadcast through the phone speakers though so you need a phone loud enough to hear or other options.
Thanks for the input Sean! In an organized event, I wouldn’t use the map, but there are plenty of rural roads around me and I want to be able to go out exploring with some degree of confidence that I can find my way back home. In your experience, is the map of sufficient size that you can ride with the map screen on (and tell what you are looking at), while still displaying speed and another field (cadence, HR, etc)? At this point, the screen size is really my only debate. Though after only knowing the 500, the 1000 looks HUGE!
Thanks a lot for the review.
I was convinced and now I own my new Garmin Edge 820.
Now my problem is that I live in Mexico City and the Navigation feature does not work with the preloaded map.
So, how can I load a local map to my divice.
Thanks and regards.
First of all thank you for a great hands on review.
I’m the happy owner of a 820 edge now :-) The unit is great, but I have come over one error that i would like to hear if you have experienced the same. First i thought it was a hardware error so garmin gave me a new unit(great service by the way) but the new unit have the exact same error, so i suspekt it is a generel problem.
the error: If you need to ajust the altitude (unit says f.eks. 100 meters and you know you are in 150 meters so you go in and set the altitude to 150 meters) then it is like the unit don’t accept the new altitude and slowly without you moving or anything the altitude “slides” with 0,1 to 0,4 meters a minute until it reaches the altitude it had when you startet (100 meters in this example)
The altimeter itself is correct if you dont adjust it the decent/ascent is the same (+/-) a meter or two, but if you adjust it and god for a few hours ride you will have a difference about the same as your adjustment.
I’ve notified Garmin on the problem and my suspiscion that it is due to a software error so I was just wondering if you have experienced the same ?
Exactly the same problem here. That and indicated temperature being way too high convinced me to return the device and wait another six months before buying it again (see my post earlier on). If I switched the GPS off then the problem would disappear: the altimeter would accept any altitude I set and stay more or less there. My conclusion is that there is some software bug in interpreting altimeter and DEM. And also deciding who gets priority…
@Gennaro & @Ulrik: many have elevation errors (elevation drift – falling peak altitude on a multiple lap course, wrong altitude by 30-60m, non-working location,…). See the link bellow for detailed descriptions. Nobody knows whether this is a systemic issue that will be solved via firmware update or just a bad production series that concerns only certain units, so I have to say that Garmin communication is far from perfect. I returned my unit due to the problems mentioned in the link, just got a new edge 820 from Garmin but have yet to test whether it is working properly. Some of the users said that even their replaced units had exactly the same issues, so I will just have to test and see how it goes.
Does anyone have any success with strava live segments working correctly? For me it always thinks the finish line is about 500ft farther than it actually is. The really weird thing is when I complete the segment, the time gets corrected to the right value, so it “knows” where the actual finish line was. So I’ll spend most of the segment thinking I’m significantly slower than I actually am, and then get a nice surprise when I’m done. I always use the glonass and regular satellites. I never had this problem with my 810. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the “noise” that is inherent in live segments where the time can dance around a little bit depending on how good the KOM recording is. I’m talking about the 820 always putting the finish line well past the actual finish, and the times during the segment reflecting this.
On a related note, does anyone know if there is a place on the garmin website where we can list the things that they need to be addressing in future updates?
I only did a Strava Segment once on my new 820 and its the same with me. Kewing where the finish line was, it made me to climb another 150 the mountain. Theoretically no Prob, but after a mountain TT 10k/800m it kan kill ;-) you.
I wanted to know whether the the 820 was able to group track a 520 if the 520 was connected to a phone and Garmin Connect? Or does group track only work between 820 devices?
Also, I need to get my wife a device. I currently have a 520 and was thinking of giving that to her and getting the 820 for myself. Is it worth the extra bit of cash – it sounds like it is?
I’ve had this unit for a month now.
My first Garmin and I am really enjoy, however few annoying issues which I am trying to find the solution online or even calling Garmin Customer Service.
1. When you select a POI as City, it comes every single main road around where in live in the UK than actual Towns/Cities, so looking for Cities through POI is a waist of time at the moment. Another thing is that many post codes are not recognised in the map, and they are old post codes in the area where Garmin Nuvi for car and any other map recognises.
2. Froze twice in 5 weeks. I hope this stops since last time took 5 minutes to restart.
3. I am not sure if this is a bug or behaviour of the device.
When I load a route/course, but I am not at the starting point or if I cycle back more than 100 meters following a course, the directions towards the destination stop and it always wants me to return to the beginning of the course even when I opt “NO” for the prompt message to guide me to the beginning of the course.
This is weird because even though the turn by turn stops working and telling me to go backwards on the part route I have just done, the Virtual Partner goes in the right direction.
Imagine you are doing a 80 mile route and on the 70th this issues happens and you have no turn by tun notification anymore like it happened with me… :(
Does anyone know if it is possible to ride a couse, not from the start, and Garmin still giving you turn by turn to the destination?
Someone had a defective one a while back that burned through the entire battery in like 20 minutes. So ring up Garmin support (phone is always best/fastest) and have them swamp out.
Now, if it’s something more like 3-4 hours, then triple-check that the backlight isn’t on 100% – since that’ll burn through battery super-quick.
I couldn’t get the unit to re-route when I went off course either so I contacted support. Here is their response:
“…that route re-calculation is only available if your Edge 820 calculates a route for you from one place to another. If you’re doing a pre-planned course as you’ve indicated, if you go off-course, the Edge 820 will not recalculate the path to get you back on course. You will have to go back to the point where you went off course in order for the course to track again.”
It is pretty dumb!!
When I was following course and took a wrong turn it took me a while to notice 820 shows “off course”. I had to stop, pull out cellphone, and check my route. Once I got back on pre-planned course Garmin just continued turn by turn navigation.
It’s doubly absurd considering it was a course created in their god-awful course creator on Garmin Connect. You’d think the two would work together but obviously that’s some crazy pipe dream.
I just checked with Garmin on this, apparently the feature will be re-introduced in an upcoming update. It was previously there is all earlier Edge mapping units.
I’m using my GPS to ride a specific tour e.g. La Marmotte with friends. Navigating a track is not a good option, in such a situation.
Firstly the navigation is map-dependant, so everybody should use the same map, including the originator of the track.
Secondly the many map-errors will send you away from the track e.g. if the road on the map has a discontinuity or the bicycle tunnel you want to pass is not on the map. Map-errors occur frequently on maps especially with fine mazed bicycle roads like in my country, The Netherlands. Obviously the Garmin software engineers are not aware of these problems, otherwise they should not emphasize their GPS design so much on “navigation”.
Normally I use a track with cuesheets to warn for turns. The used file is a course (tcx) with trackpoints and coursepoints and works well on an (antique?) EDGE705 as training. Many friends use this also on a EDGE 800 and (with much difficulty) on an EDGE 810.
My question: Is it possible to ride a track on a EDGE 820, without navigation and with cuesheets an warning whenever you deviate from the track?
If so, how can you do it and must I change the tcx-file?
Interested in hearing any replies to your questions. I have the “antique” 705 myself and would like to upgrade for the VIRB camera control and better connectivity options..
One things the 820 has that the already aging 1000 doesn’t is VIRB camera control As the new owner of 2 VIRB Ultra30s , that sells me on the 820 over the 1000 hands down. I had old GoPro HDs with no Wifi and wanted to gt current on connectivity and features. I decided to go with the VIRB Ultra30s over Hero Blacks. No regrets at all.
Are you sure about that? When the VIRB’s first came out, Garmin issued an update for the venerable Edge 800 so that it can control a VIRB, and I think every Edge since then has been able to. My Edge 800, Fenix 1, and Epix can all control a VIRB. The 1000 is listed as a “compatible device” on the Ultra 30’s page at buy.garmin.com. (The 820 is not, but I’d be surprised if that were actually true.)
I can understand how it happened in this case though. The Edge 520 announced with support for it, and then the Edge 1000 didn’t get it till this past winter in a firmware update. So nobody double-checked the specs page since.
Umm, do you know who forum formatting of replies by subject works? I guess not.
See the indents under my post which are all on the VIRB topic? Notice they are indented under my post and not yours above.
Notice that if someone answers your questions in a reply it will be indented under your post? But your reply is under my “VIRB” topic yet you are wondering why my thread is talking about the VIRB?
I have just used my 820 to navigate on a 5 day bike ride through Tuscany. The 820 screen size is very small to navigate from when you zoom out the map past 800m, to 1.2 or 3km. This is the zoom you will need if you want to zoom out to see a for eg. a 60 km route to check it against a paper map to make sure that you are in fact hitting all the villages you want to hit or avoid industrial areas etc. A friend on the ride with me has his 1000, and the additional screen size makes it much better for navigation. The 1000 was also much quicker calculating routes and re-rendering the map size while zooming. The 820 is VERY slow at both re-rendering and calculating a 60-80km route. If you want a gps primarily for navigating, id say the 820 match box sized screen is too small. However if you want something for training, with the occasional bit of navigation, the 820 will work for both.
Thanks for addressing the 820 screen size and slow GPS signal and location capture.
Now that the firmware is updated for the 1000, I’d choose the 820 only if I didn’t want the larger unit or didn’t care about navigation.
I hope Garmin will fix all software related bugs and glitches sooner rather than later. Both 1000 and 520 were released with bunch of bugs, most of them were fixed within a few months…
The new iPhone 7 is waterproof. With a robust case and the right apps, one could do nearly everything the Garmin computers can do except GPS with no cell service and ANT+ sensor connectivity (BTLE should take care of that eventually). I would love to have one device take the place of a my GPS devices instead of funding Garmin’s 2-3-year product cycle and waiting months and months for bug fixes and having to buy maps for each device. Maybe a phone manufacturer will offer a model with a built in GPS chip set as good as Garmin’s then I could stop device clutter and simplify my life. I wish. Maybe one day
I have the same idea, kind of open source GPS device to split the hardware and the software. I only wouldn’t want to be depending on apple for the hardware……
I used to use a cell phone to record rides. The GPS is good enough. It works even if there isn’t cell reception – the assisted gps is more about attaining location lock faster using cell phone towers initially. Battery life is a big problem – none of the phones can run as long as an edge 820, even with the screen turned off. If you want to put it on your handlebars and see data about your ride — that is, turn the screen on, then you’re really going to see some battery life issues. You could get a Wahoo Fitness RFLKT head unit which shows data from your phone, but that only works with certain apps and I found it to be fiddly when I used an RFLKT+ years ago (like, there was only one app that had a nice way of laying out the UI for the RFLKT+ AND was any good at recording, so I didn’t have the app interchangeability I thought I would get.)
Also, just my opinion, putting your phone on your handlebars, especially with the size of phones today, looks a little ridiculous.
Anecdotally, I periodically had problems with apps on my phone crashing and losing the ride data. It didn’t happen often – but it drove me crazy when I was on a long ride and it would happen. The garmin units do crash occasionally, especially if you have a newer one that is still rough around the edges, but I’ve never lost ride data with a garmin. It restarts and my ride is paused right where it left off.
If you’re depending on the phone’s mapping capabilities, you’ll need an app that can download the maps for your entire route while it has cell phone reception. I’ll often go riding in the mountains away from cell signal and my Edge 820 has all its maps built in – no problems there.
For shorter rides, a phone in the back pocket works great as long as your sensors all broadcast BTLE, but I’ll stick with a garmin computer, it’s better at everything I need it to do.
Good points. Bought me bakc odwn to Planet earth. Maybe, as Nils said above, Garmin or somebody will make a sensor/gps/map “hub” that uses a cell phone display and provide long battery life. Or maybe not.
You can have all that on Android already. There are several waterproof phones from Samsung and others. As well many phones have ANT+ meaning you can read from your existing sensors.
(By the way neither the iPhone nor Android needs cell service for GPS, it just helps with getting an initial lock faster.)
I will often start a bike ride/rally doing one distance, and then depending upon how I feel and how the routes diverge/converge, sometimes switch to a shorter or longer route from my current route. Assuming the 820 had enough storage for the multiple routes, how easy or difficult is it to switch “on the fly” so to speak, from one route to another and have it pick up at your current waypoint/location for subsequent directions?
You can switch/start/stop routes mid-ride. To stop a route, on the map screen there is a red “X” stop sign. To start a new route, press the screen when you’re looking at a data page and the “Home” icon will appear at the bottom of the screen. Press that and you’ll go back to the home page where you can then go to Navigation and pick a route you want to follow. If you’re mid-route, when it says “Navigate to beginning”, say no. I can’t remember if this kicks you back into the data screens or to the home screen — if the home screen, press the activity name (“Ride” or whatever) and you’ll be back on your data screens.
I am now about to teste the 820 for the first time.
When I was making the Setup the FIRST thing I noticed… is where are the Bike Profiles?..
No bike profiles?… I have to use activity profile like it was an bike profile…. that way I get ODOmeter for each bike?…. How Can I EDIT THE ODOMETER (in this case Activity profile) for each bike?
That was an really important function… to know how many km´s I have on my bikes… to control maintenence….
I hope you understand my doubt…. or anyone that reads this… please tell me what you think about this…
This is something really important… Garmin SHOULD develop this thinks like add a way to put a chain marker to know when replace your chain, chainring….. etc….. Do you see ???
If you sync up your ride activity with Garmin Connect or Strava, they both allow you to choose a specific bike for your activity and they both keep track of the mileage.
The more important thing for me regarding this feature being removed (given the capability to record mileage being there in GC) is that I have different sensors on each bike. The 810 allowed me to simply define each bike profile separately with its own sensors and then I could switch between them with a single swipe. It doesn’t appear that the 820 provides this. Has anyone been able to switch the 820 “seamlessly” between bikes with different sensor arrays?
I believe Ray has mentioned this before but the Garmin units of the last few years all use a “pool of sensors” model – your 820 would know about the speed/cadence/etc sensors on all your bikes, and would pick up which ever are available in any given ride. It works well – as others have noted, you need to specify in garmin connect / strava after the ride which bike you were using. I use my commuter bike every day of the week so that’s the default bike for me – with my weekend road bike I need to set it manually in GC/strava after the ride.
I have the last firmware and cant get it to work….
There is an way to see the history and order the device to upload that ride to web using WIFI ?
Because when i end the ride I am no close to an WIFI point, it would be nice to be possible get in house and upload the rides I want from history.
I had to set up my wifi on the device directly – doing it in Garmin Express on my computer didn’t work. But I’ve heard other people who were able to set it up with GE, so that may be an issue specific to me (I also can’t get wifi to work with my Forerunner 920 watch via GE…).
I think the 820 doesn’t search for wifi continuously like the garmin edge 1000 does – probably a power saving measure. You can force it to connect to wifi. Drag down from the top of the screen to get the list of controls (I forget the proper term for this screen), once it’s up you can scroll up & down on the list of controls until you see Wifi. There is a circular connect button there – press it, it’ll highlight and you’ll see it searching for your network and then it won’t say anything. swipe up to the top of the screen to clear this controls page and now at the top of the normal screen you’ll see wifi status updates like “Connecting” or “Uploading” or “Transferring” or whatever, assuming it is associated with your local wifi network.
Apologies in advance if this has already been suitably answered, but I’ve just taken delivery of my Edge 820 and wanted to share some of my knowledge on mapping.
I’ve been fiddling with quite a few disc image maps recently, across a range of units (Edge 800, Edge 820, Etrex 20x etc) and have found that the 820 *WILL* definitely display and follow routes across GB Ordnance Survey mapping.
With a slightly expanded storage on the unit itself, it means that there was about 6GB free onto which the disc image could be added. I did this via dragging onto the device memory “Garmin” folder – rather than via Basecamp [for which you would need an installed map…] The 520 would NOT have been able to accommodate this task.
I think the challenge comes when it comes to licensing etc and moving maps around. I had an old micro SD GB Discoverer map set which came with a Dakota 20 hiking GPS unit. This SD card was locked to the unit – there ARE however applications which can unlock the SD card and re-lock to a new device / SD card. The new disc image was named for the maps it represented, rather than the generic ‘gmapsupp’ naming protocol…
The OS maps quite happily sit alongside any other map sets on the internal memory and you just need to go in and enable / disable them as you would on any other Garmin device (as a for instance, my etrex 20x has a 32GB sd card in it featuring – deep breath – full GB OS coverage in 1:50k, Full France topo coverage [*not* IGN though], N Ireland OS coverage, Eire 1:50k Discoverer series, Garmin Western Europe Topographic Map and Garmin CityNav – and I just enable / disable which I need. I’m never quite sure why one map takes precedence over another when two are enabled, but in my experience it seems to be the OS that wins out… )
Clearly the Edge 820 has limited memory so I’ve stuck to OS coverage for South East of England. But on a bridleway yesterday it was clearly showing where I was – was redrawing in zoom reasonably quickly – and following a pre-set TCX course (I have yet to create a course on it..via bridleways etc but I will) The 1:50K GB Discover set *should* fit in the free space ok, and if you want to unlock your existing (and paid for, I should think) disc image, then a quick google search should help you.
In short, the main issue is that they don’t make it easy, even for those of us who have PAID for the map data already. That older SD card might be a little out of date, but you could just as easily be using an old paper map couldn’t you? I suspect – in fact, I KNOW – that to achieve what I’ve done might be frowned upon copyright wise, however, it works and as proof of concept is definite proof that it does what I want it to…
Sorry for waffling on but I know a lot of people are interested in the topic.
Anybody considering buying this should take a long pause. I am about to return this thing because for the 4th time in 3 weeks of ownership it’s gone from booting up in 30 seconds to over 4 minutes. The only way to fix this is to do a factory reset, and then go through the steps of repairing your phone/sensors/etc.
The other day my phone said it was paired, the 820 said it was paired, but the Garmin Connect App said there was no connection so it wouldn’t sync up. Had to forget the device on my phone, restart both, and re-pair to get it to work.
The new software update seems to have added re-routing for user created courses, but that stopped working 1/2 way through my ride, so much for that.
I can’t believe anybody tested any part of this thing before releasing it to the public.
That’s probably the reason why the announced “full in-depth review” for august is somewhat delayed. The 820 software is at the moment still in a premature state, with insufficient functionality..
Nope. A busy August preparing stuff for Eurobike and Interbike, alongside a new baby is the reason it’s not out yet.
Fwiw, I haven’t had any bootup issues. I’ve had relatively few issues overall with it, despite a lot of usage. A few quirks, but no show stoppers for most scenarios.
DC congratulations with your baby! Looking for a bike for him/her?
The actual problem is possibly a (hardware?) error in the GPS-part calculating the elevation, which is difficult be correctd by software.
The error can be found by comparing the GPS height with the actual height. The GPS height will be shown directly when you input 99999 as value for the height. In my case the GPS was 60 m too low, -36 m vs 24 m. Garmin offers to change my EDGE.
Maybe DC’s EDGE is okay, but I read a lot of complaints about this issue.
Long story short… It is not the best time to buy this device until it gets much more stable.
I’m returning mine to Garmin as part of the warranty period today, expecting a new one in 10-15 working days.
– battery save mode freezes the screen after few minutes;
– elevation issues as reported by many;
– cities in the UK using POI shows in fact all roads around;
– automatic route uploaded started to switch off the device after latest firmware.
Enough reasons to not spend 329 GBP at this moment.
I too finally have thrown in the towel and returned the 820. Now I’m without since I crashed with my 800 and the screen is totally fractured. Should I go for an 810 or another 800? The screen size on the 820 was very difficult to read maps on, and I didn’t have trouble reading maps on the 800.
The Edge 1000 is your solution. It has almost exactly the same features as the 820, but it has a bigger screen, it’s more readable than the 800 (I just upgraded), and the bugs have already been worked out. It’s still being maintained with new features like Connect IQ etc.
Agree with Hamish, I have an Edge 1000 I bought two years ago and I have an 820 now too. They’re basically the same, I like them both. I think the Edge 1000 looks great on my bikepacking bikes, big beastly things that they are. I think the Edge 1000 looks oversized on my road bike. The 820 looks great on the road bike, I think. I’m fine with the size of the 820 screen – but I’m also in my mid-40’s and I can tell that I’ll prefer the larger screen in the not-too-distant future!
I like the power saver mode in the 820 – when I go on 10-12+ hour rides, I often have problems with the batteries in either the edge 1000 or 820. I know they’re quoted at 15 hours, but the way I use them I seem to get closer to 10-11.
I’ve had no problems with the Edge 1000 (after the initial software updates ;) – but then, I’m real happy with my 820 too.
As a bonus, the price of the Edge 1000 has come down quite a bit. It was $600 two years ago, now it’s mid-$400’s (USD) it looks like.
Thanks for your comments! I’m old and not that tech savvy, however I had few issues with the 800 (although Garmin connect/Express is another story).
I agree with a lot of the commenters here that the 820 is just not ready for prime time. I could never understand why loading a gxp route would take forever on the 820, while they would load in less than 30 secs. with the 800.
I’ll look for a 1000, however it IS a rather large beast. Why no love for the 810?
I’ve never used an 810 so I can’t really say (the Edge 1000 was my first garmin). I like the capacitive touch screen on the 1000/820, I also used a 520 which is a side-button non-touch-screen device and I found that UI harder to use. The 810 is the older style resistive touch screen which is not nearly as nice, but at least it’s not the side-button UI. The 810 uses a “Mini USB” connector, I prefer the newer “Micro USB” connector used on the 820/1000 which most of my other electronics use (micro usb was designed with the shortcomings of mini usb in mind to have a much longer lifespan in terms of insertion/removal connections). The 820/1000 can show you text message / phone calls incoming on the phone while you’re riding, the 810 can’t. The 820/1000 can upload your ride over wifi – I love this feature, I get home/work, press Stop and save the ride, and whoosh it’s uploaded to Garmin Connect & on to strava. The 810 can upload to your phone over bluetooth, but you need to launch the Garmin app, etc. Not a huge burden, but it’s one less thing I need to do with the newer devices. I love the software updates come over the air over wifi too with the 820/1000. I still need to connect the devices to my computer to update the built-in map (a ~6GB download here in the US) or to load a course I’m going to ride in a gpx file (ugh, I wish I could transfer this via the Garmin app on my phone without having to use garmin’s course creator feature), but otherwise I just plug them in to recharge. The 820/1000 have strava live segments if you have strava premium. (I like live segments, it can spice up a ride when you have a 30s-2min segment in the middle of a long day, it can encourage you to sprint it and beat your best time.) wait, does the 810 have live segments? I think it might. Scratch that one.
I’m sure there are more differences, but those are the ones that come to mind for me. I think the 820 is a very nice device, I haven’t had any problems with mine, and I wouldn’t want to buy an 810 new if I had the option of an 820 or 1000. As for a route taking a little while to load on the 820 – it doesn’t matter to me. I usually know the first mile or two of a route I’m riding, and I can ride while it’s still computing the route. I’ve gone on ride where I didn’t even start navigation until I was half-way through the route – that works (when it says “navigate to beginning of route”, say no), you don’t need to start at the beginning or stand around while it’s calculating things.
You should probably just get an Edge 20 then. Since the 8xx/1000 are designed to be used for navigation, having the smallest possible screen is a silly criterion.
And now it’s gone from 4 minutes boot time to just sitting on the splash screen indefinitely. I’m done with this thing, I’d rather go with the ELEMNT and pay $$ to replace all my K-Edge mounts than deal with this thing any more.
Garmin should be sued for releasing anything in this state.
I’ve done a factory reset 5 times now, it solves the problem for a few days then inexplicably starts taking longer and longer to boot up until it just hangs.
I followed your guide to get some more detailed maps on there since according to Garmin’s support my turn-by-turn stopped working on one ride because the maps they ship are so sub-par that I would have to load better maps if I wanted TBT out in the countryside.
Lulu,
Plenty of issues for my Garmin 820, however most of them fixed for the last software upgrade.
Unfortunately the main one now is that on battery save mode the screen freezes after few minutes and you have to stop and reset the device. This happens usually when I go off route and by the time Garmin will recalculate the route it is time to switch off the screen, so garmin keeps the screen on and off for alerts and few minutes later it freezes for one of these turn alerts.
Garmin asked me to send my device back to them since software upgrade has not fixed this issue.
I think 820 will be really good… But not yet with this issue and other minor I posted here before.
Would it be safe to assume their won’t be an in-depth review of the Garmin Edge 820, busy or not, CES or not, Interbike or not?
Wow, that sounds like condescending, derogatory and downright negative! Sorry about that, didn’t mean to; I just wish there was even more info than we already have from this article.
Hey Frank
Make sure that you have both Bluetooth Chanels connected on your iPhone in settings in Bluetooth. Specifically you need to connect to both “BT_Edge 820” and “BLE_Edge 820”. If you are connect to these Chanel’s then try deleting the app, hard reboot phone and reinstall and reconnect.
Just trying to make a final decision, about 820 or 1000. The clincher might be the storage. I’m native to Europe but do a lot cycling in the USA. On the 820 is there space for both sets of maps?
Last quandary is that i can get a garmin refurbished 1000 for the same price as the 820. Thoughts?
I’m interested in the out front mount the comes with the 820 in the article. It swings the other way compared to almost all other mounts of this type. It is interesting to me because I want to be able to charge my Edge 1000 as I ride and since all other mounts swing to the right to left they obscure the 1000 usb charging port. Do you know if the mount would work with the 1000, or of any other mounts that swing left to right?
Anyone else having turn by turn issues? My 820 won’t advise upcoming turns (turn left in to xxx steet). I have everything enabled correctly – turn guidance = on, and guide text = always display. Seems like it’s acting like an Edge 520!? I have open street maps Singapore. Will garmin paid maps make a difference?
Ray, in your next round of questions for Garmin, I hope you will be able to ask them about the status of the overly sensitive touchscreen on the 820. As it is now, it is rather unusable. When my 820 gets sweat on it, even with a screen protector on, it has the effect of touching and holding on the touchscreen with my finger, which causes the 820 to pop up a menu to change the data field. When I first contacted Garmin a while back regarding the overly sensitive touchscreen, I was told it may be resolved by a firmware update. There has been several firmware updates for the 820 since and none of them has addressed this issue. My questions for Garmin:
1. Can the screen sensitivity issue be resolved by a firmware update?
2. If so, when does Garmin plan to release such an update?
I second Changren’s comments. Sweat or rain starts messing with things in a big way. It took me awhile to figure out why my screens kept changing, and sometimes my data fields would even get set to different values, but drops falling on the screen activate it. Also, in dense fog or 100%humidity situations it is completely unusable. No matter what I do, I can’t switch screens. Swipping doesn’t work, and tapping to get the arrows doesn’t work either. I didn’t have any of these problems with either the 800, or the 810.
1) Yes, it can.
2) Yes, they’re working on one. They’re looking at a few options, including potentially a slider for sensitivity as well as a different lock-screen option. But nothing is final yet.
It’s an interesting problem, and I chatted with them a bit this week about it. For me, I generally don’t have issues with the touch-screen. And yet some people definitely do. I also don’t have issues with rain or sweat on it. But again, some people definitely do. They do understand it’s an issue.
I’ve had the 820 about three months now. I have sort of got used to the touch screen, not great but it more or less works. Battery was dead today (my fault) and so I took my old 800 out. I had forgotten how much nicer that touch screen was!
I can do just most things on the 820 now I am used to the screen, but selecting new fields on a bumpy road is impossible, as the screen recognises the jiggles as swipe attempts rather than push attempts I think. The map display and refresh rate is still pretty rubbish compared to 800, I really hope they can update that with firmware. In reality the screen real estate for maps is the same on both units because the 800 dedicated the lower portion to menu and scroll buttons which are ‘soft’ on the 820. It just feels like the 800 used its layout better.
In the end though I still ride with the 820 just for the fact that I can see phone messages coming up, and I like the wireless transfer at the end of the ride. I turned off live segments as they became too distracting.
I am looking for a gps cycling computer. Wondering if the 820 is useful for riding MTB, and navigating different trails and courses? I would like to ride for instance on a MTB course that has been a racecourse but is not marked out, so I would need to navigate with the device. Or is the navigation better for roads, and not so much singetrack trails?
Can this gps or another have multiple users? For instance easy to use for me and then swap profiles so my wife can use it?
Also looking on the Lezyne Super Gps that seems quite competent.
I don’t have an 820 (I use an 800) but in general the answer is that if you can find routable maps of the area in question with the trails you want on them then you can get turn by turn navigation. If you can’t, then you can usually navigate by following a track on the map, but it’s not going to be as pleasant as turn by turn navigation (at best you’ll be warned when you go off course). So it depends on how popular the course and trails are. If lots of people have ridden them, then there’s a chance that maps from OpenStreetMap will have them, and maybe they’ll even be routable. Routable trails in my area (pretty much every one) are on the OpenStreetMap maps for my area, but I can’t say that will be true everywhere.
It works best if only one user uses a device. You can probably swap user profiles in and out, but that’s an extra step that’ll likely be forgotten at times. Way simpler if you each have your own.
Wonder if a Strava segment or uploaded course from people who have ridden a specific course counts as a routable course? Because there are still no streets or trails on the map.?
Rode with a friend a while ago and he had an older Garmin unit that did not show turns only the map picture and a warning when you where off course and no help how to get back on it
Again, the routableness depends on the map, not the course itself. If the roads/trails that the course follows are routable on the map, then the device can do turn by turn. A Strava segment can be routable if the roads it follows are on the map. Given the segments in my area, I don’t see why you’d want to route a segment, since none of them are that long and they rarely make turns.
Older Garmin devices (my 800), and I’ll bet certainly the 820, allow you to choose how to follow a route. You can do it as a “route” (turn by turn, “Turn left on Main St.”) or a “course”, where all it does is put the course as a thick line on the map and warn you if you’ve left the course, expecting that you’ll navigate the course yourself.
Have recently upgraded by trainer from an Elite Qubo Digital to a Tacx Vortex Smart to get all that ANT+ FEC and Bluetooth Goodness.
I’ve added the Tacx as a “Trainer” in devices, so I was expecting to see Power / Wattage in both the information on screen and also uploaded to Connect, but neither seems to be the case. Power analysis is stored in the Tacx app but not really much use to me there.
Am I doing something “wrong” or am I expecting something that just isn’t there?
Thanks.
1. Connect a speed sensor to the 820. The 820 MUST be connected (not just paired) to the speed sensor.
2. Go to Settings –> Sensors –> Select your speed sensor –> Sensor Details
Here’s the change log:
– New Feature! Added support for LiveTrack Auto Start.
– Added Touch Sensitivity setting to improve touchscreen performance with gloves and in wet conditions.
– Added the ability to swipe through data screens while recording a ride while the screen is locked.
– Improved elevation recording due to poor initial calibration and drift throughout a ride.
– Fixed an issue where position could be reported incorrectly on an iOS device.
– Fixed calibration for ANT+ Indoor Trainers.
– Fixed Auto Sleep setting to be specific to an Activity Profile.
– Improved Lap Summary page load time.
The big ones for me are the Touch Sensitivity setting and the restoring of “Auto Sleep setting to be specific to an Activity Profile”. I tested changing the Touch Sensitivity to “low” and it appears the device needed a power cycle (turn it off and then on) for the change to take effect. Now with the Touch Sensitivity set to “low”, the screen no longer reacts without a physical touch.
This is great too. I’m probably going to write up a (highly incomplete) review of the 820. The screen sensitivity issue was really annoying. I don’t understand how the product can be released like that… but I guess they took the decision to release it, knowing they could improve it via firmware later.
I have another issue right now. I can’t get the 820 to connect to the computer. It’s either in charging mode or it’s on. It never goes into mass storage mode. So I can’t update the firmware (I can see the update in Garmin Express). I don’t know how to fix it. I’ve rebooted the 820 many times, tried plugging in the USB cable when it’s off, when it’s on, etc. Nothing works. It used to work fine :-(
Have you tried with a different USB cable? Or perhaps even a different USB port on your computer? If you have Garmin Connect app on your phone, you can also use it to wirelessly install the new 4.10 firmware update.
What a pain this is. I have a new route that I’d like to ride tomorrow. I connect the 820 to the computer and it (the 820) just boots up as normal. If I turn off its power it goes into charging mode. If I turn it back on, it starts as normal. No sign of it going into mass storage mode so I can put a new route file into the Garmin/NewFiles folder :( I’ve switched ports, switched cables (both the port and the cable work fine with my phone) and even rebooted. I’ve tried on 2 other computers (windows and mac). Nothing.
Frustrating as hell. I paid a lot of money for the privilege of not even being able to load a new route onto this device – not to mention all its other problems (see link to blogs.fluidinfo.com for some examples).
I’m going to write my own review. And it’s not going to be pretty.
I contacted Garmin support about this. They replied the next day telling me to send it to them and they’d replace it. I sent it off today. When the replacement arrives I’m going to give it a chance, but I think the probability is very high that I’m going to send it back (to Wiggle) for a refund. The touch screen issue is also unworkable – I need the thing to work when I use it with gloves on. The 810 was flawless in that regard. The 820 has taken a huge step backwards re touchscreen.
Be careful, I spent two months trying to get my 820 sorted out and finally gave up, sending it back to Backcountry. They would not refund, but gave a store credit expiring in two months. Not exactly a service oriented company.
Update…. Garmin sent me a brand new replacement 820. They were very prompt in replying to my mail to customer service, and no-questions-asked sent me a new one. So far so good.
BUT… the replacement also did not go into mass storage mode! I just upgraded to 5.10 with the same result. I do know what I’m doing – it’s not so hard to get a Garmin into mass storage, just plug it in. I have this situation on two different computers with a USB cable and USB ports that are known to work (I’ve just been using them with my phone and one with a USB stick – absolutely no problem).
My 820 is going back to Wiggle on Monday. I’m going to try an ELEMNT.
That is incorrect. You can load free OpenStreetMaps for any country onto the 820. Indeed, I have a friend who purchased an 820 from Europe which came with maps of Europe and has loaded the free OSM for Australia.
I’ve seen this kind of comments from time to time. I think this is a lack of respect for Ray’s work. His website is free, so you can’t ask for the same as something you would pay for, even if Ray’s content is amazing. In my opinion, his first article is fine for most people interested in the device, and going through the comments allows to get more information about the current situation of the device. Full review would be a nice to have, but is not a must have (IMHY).
Don’t demand, but is useful to ask (guessing he can post the best way to do so since comments may not be the best way). He tends to concentrate on what people ask for so if no one asks he may not do it.
Yup, I had hoped to have it knocked out in August. But between the new baby and lots of Eurobike/Interbike/etc post prep, it didn’t quite happen. September flew by with three different weeks of trade shows (and the gazillions of posts out of those).
However, the next few weeks you’ll likely (well, gosh hopefully) see lots of reviews coming out as I put fingers to keyboard on all the devices I’ve been using for months but just need time to be in one place and be able to finish.
Most times reviews are held-up when I need a few last shots and/or accessory things/concepts/whatevers to test but don’t have access to while traveling. It could be other units for comparison pics, or a specific hardware thing I wanted to try with it. Or a specific situations.
That was my thought as well. There’s really no point rushing to do another review of the 820 since the bugs won’t be fixed for some time. Any honest review right now would have to be very negative on the 820.
There’s really no issue with me giving a negative review of a Garmin Edge device. One only need see the last Edge review for an example of that (Edge 1000).
That said, I actually don’t have touchscreen issues, as I’ve shown in a few videos in the rain, etc. Generally speaking I really don’t have many notable Edge 82 issues that I see myself.
I did a couple simple test this morning following the update for the screen sensitivity. So far the only issue I’ve had is display changes with drops of sweat and it going bonkers during a rainy ride. For indoor training I have moved the mount away from the sweat zone.
One with the sensitivity set to low and the other set on medium. The one on low is not impacted as bad as the medium I feel is not good. I will use the Garmin 800 in the rainy weather. Other than mine being a fair weathered unit I have no other complaints.
I’ve had the same issue with raindrops – it sucks! A good option is probably to lock the screen. You can still swipe through data screen with it locked (see the Features above for the latest firmware). To lock the screen on the 820 you hold the power button – very counter-intuitive, since this turns the 810 off. Also note that having the screen locked doesn’t disable the lap and start/stop buttons at bottom, which I think it should also do.
I had a fantastic test this morning with touchscreen sensitivity at low. There was rain, mud and sweat at the Magnuson Park Cross race in Seattle and I have zero issue with the touchscreen being activated accidentally. That said, with the sensitivity set to low, it was harder to use the touchscreen with glove. But hey, I was racing so there was zero reason to use the touchscreen.
Thanks and I plan to do that if caught in a surprise rain storm with the 820. I rarely change screens from my main display so locking won’t be an issue with locking the 820. If I start in the rain I think I will just use the 800.
Early on, I ran out of battery on a 100-mile ride with the navigation screen on. That just seems to be a bad thing to do: updating the map image seems to consume more power. So I don’t do that anymore. I really do miss the Garmin 800 behavior of popping into the map screen for an upcoming turn; incredibly useful!
Maybe I’m paranoid about battery life now, but I tend to sleep the device at snack stops. I think there are GPS glitches when I resume the device. Strava seems to be smart enough to mostly correct for that, but one can see it in different tools like VIRB Edit and Revive. (And I have one Strava ride that shows it: link to strava.com at mile 89.6.)
Sometimes the device seems to power down all the way when I think I’ve just slept it. But it recovers state OK; just takes longer to come back to life.
Sometime when I unplug the device from the USB charging cable, then start a ride, it comes up in a not-quite functional mode. I press the “Ride” profile, which shows the first data page as it should, then I press the start button, and it doesn’t really start. A power-cycle (~10-sec press on the power button) fixes that.
I have seen instances where the device will “lose” a sensor such as Cadence. (Perhaps after sleep and wake; I haven’t pinned it down.) I can go into the sensor menu and re-connect.
I did try the new touch-screen sensitivity control, and “Low” seems too low; I had a lot of trouble swiping screens with gloves on. We’ll see if Medium is happy :-).
Other than that it’s working pretty well. My wife really likes the Live Track feature; knowing that I’m still active and when I’m about to return. Relative to the 800, I think it is convenient not to have to manage bike profiles, and I can rely on Strava to maintain per-bike mileage. So far I haven’t seen any value for me in the Connect IQ available apps, but it seems like an interesting capability for the future.
Richard, I’ve seen closer to 10 hours of battery life with nav running on the 820 or my old 1000 too. I used to bring a battery-pack-charger for the 1000 to top it up on long 12-13 hour bike rides. I tried the 820’s battery saver mode on one long ride, and it did a great job at extending the battery life. It still shows turn-by-turn navigation prompts when in battery saver mode – it turns the screen on for a short period when you’re approaching a turn. Haven’t seen any problems with losing connection with accessories, although I rarely sleep the device mid-ride, I let it record zeros while I’m stopped for lunch & whatnot (it’d be better for battery life if I didn’t do that, I know, but I’m just as likely to forget to turn it back on when I get on the bike again). The next time I go on a long ride with the 820, I’ll probably put it in battery saver mode for the parts of the route that I mostly know, and turn off battery saver mode for the bits I need to see the map on.
Hi, I recently replaced my ageing Polar watch with a Vivoactive HR. As I am now considering getting an Edge 820, I was wondering if it will pair with my Vivoactive, so that I don’t have to go back to wearing a chest strap in order to get heart rate info on the screen? It would feel such a backward step to me!
Garmin 820 with gloves: Today and yesterday I rode with both an 810 and an 820. Weather was dry and cool (50oF). Both GPSs have the latest firmware updates. For cool weather I use long fingered Gore windstopper gloves. They are uninsulated. Using both the 800 and 810, the screen is completely responsive to these gloves. On the present rides, the 820 completely unresponsive to touch of any sort with these gloves. The screen sensitivity setting has no effect. I do not know if the prior firmware revision would work with gloves–I hadn’t tried gloves until yesterday. Can anyone who has had success controlling the screen with gloves, post the type of gloves they are using? Also, if anyone knows how to revert to the prior software version, please let me know and I can try that with gloves. Also, if anyone understands what properties of gloves lend themselves to touch operation, please describe. I guess now I must adjust my wardrobe to the new GPS or continue using the older models.
I use Pearl Izumi full finger gloves (I guess they’re insulated, they’re rated for 40 degrees F and up) and they work, you just have to be a bit more deliberate with your presses than using your bare finger. They have the “power” symbol on the index finger tip so I assume they are designed to be used with cellphones so they may work better than other gloves.
I have solved the touch screen issue. The 820 uses a capacitive touch screen. The touch screen responds to contact with an electrically conductive object, such as a finger. For example, if you touch the screen of the 820 with a car key, you can control the screen. If you touch the screen with a plastic object, nothing will happen. The Gore gloves are not electrically conductive. Therefore they cannot control the screen. Various gloves have conductive threads or other conductive materials inserted into selected finger surfaces. The presence of the conductive materials allow the screen to be controlled. I purchased Bontrager Circuit gloves. The thumb and forefinger have conductive pads on the tips. If you touch the screen with these pads, it can be controlled. The other fingers cannot operate the screen.
DC, good review! Can the 820 be used and charged at the same time? Say you were out on a long ride and needed to charge it and still ride, can this do it? I have heard mixed reports of this. Thanks
Can the 820 have both Europe and USA maps on it at the same time? Also when I remove the gmapbmap that takes the basemap away how do I add just Augusta maps to my device without removing the basemap?
DC rainmaker, I am sure you are busy and my comment slips through the cracks but can you please help me? I have been trying to put Augusta GA maps on my 820 and I have followed your directions on the other post to the T. However all I can seem to do is take the basemap off it will not show the Augusta maps at all. Is there something else I can try? Or another way to do this. I have Europe maps on it now and they work just the Augusta ones will not show up
Thank you. I was just curious because I use an Edge 1000 with the Connect IQ app from Specialized as control panel for my
Turbo Levo electric assist mountain bike. And was wondering what the Edge 820 could do better since the table entry indicated that it provides better support for e-bikes than the 1000.
Have you been able to test the 820 indoor trainer functions? I have a Tacx Vortex and I tried them today and for some reason the resistance option works fine but the set target power option don’t work very well. It takes two or three attempts before the trainer actually set the resistance to the desire wattage.
Ray or anyone else: If I live in the US but order an 820 from a European supplier because of the 25% savings (even with shipping costs), what would the best way to get the US map on the device? The seller indicates that “Of course it comes ready with the base cycle map of Europe and the RoundTrip routing functionality.” Will the OpenStreetMaps data be the best way to get turn-by-turn directions and all the other functions working in the US? I’d hate to order from Germany to save money and turn out not to be able to use this properly.
Do the OSM maps offer the same features/function as the native Garmin maps?
Any one else had an issue with the 820 where the battery runs out mid ride, and now will not power up at all? Been pluggex in to charge for > 2 hours no luck, have looked at other forums and tried a couple of suggestions but nothing works.
Thanks
Hi, does anyone have the same problem to enable the smart notifications? I have all kinds of notifications activated in the android connect app. But no message (whatsapp) showed up…
On the Edge 820 I can’t find a configuration entry for the notifications. I only can see sms & text alerts.
Any idea what I can have missed?
I was planning on buying the 820 soon but I have been reading a lot of bad reviews and problems with the touch screen. The garmin forums are filled with touchscreen, battery, and general performance issues. And it seems like every new firmware release is getting worse for people. Have you experienced anything similar?
I’m not Ray & can’t speak for him obviously, but I bought the 820 last week and have used it for two outdoor rides and two indoor trainer sessions so far. It’s a great unit and I’m thrilled with it. Coming from an iPhone 7, the touch screen is certainly not as good. However, it has an outstanding feature set. I had to get a new HRM since I was using a Polar one that didn’t do ANT+. I settled on the Wahoo TICKR, which works flawlessly with the Garmin and has trouble connecting to Wahoo’s own app. Take that for whatever it’s worth, but I can tell you that as a new Garmin owner I’m quite happy. I plan to use it with a Stages power meter once it arrives and expect it’ll be great.
The touch screen sensitivity seems to vary person to person, kinda odd.
However, Garmin did introduce a firmware update about 2-3 weeks ago that gives you options to change the sensitivity, so that might address those that are having problems.
Beyond that, I haven’t really had any issues with mine (up until they broke FE-C control).
The firmware update did improve touchscreen sensitivity, but now its basically unusable in a different way. Even with the sensitivity set to the highest setting, it barely works with bare fingers, and its worthless with gloves. The good news is that sweat drops don’t activate it anymore, the bad news is it doesn’t seem like anything else does either. I am definitely missing my 810 and regretting my decision to purchase an 820.
I spoke too soon. The screen is still activated by drops of sweat. So now I have a touch screen that takes multiple swipes, or endlessly stabbing at it to get the arrows to appear, to change screens, but random sweat drops make it go crazy. Couldn’t be less impressed now that Ive been using it for awhile.
I also like my 820 a lot – when it works correctly – which is rarely. I’ve had it since June and have logged 1271 miles with it so far. There are a number of frustrating problems with it though.
1) As mentioned a lot of places, the touch screen is worthless (for me) in any type of high humidity or rain situation – including sweaty fingers. The recent screen sensitivity firmware updates did little to solve the problem. Nearly EVERY ride has had some issues with the screen.
2) Turn-by-turn navigation has some issues. Example: make a wrong turn in the middle of a ride and some times it is fine when you get back on course. But most of the time it gets confused and thinks you are at the start of the ride. It isn’t smart enough to see you are in the middle and adjust to your next turn. This is especially bad on an out-and-back route. It says stuck waiting for you to make the FIRST turn – that you did 50 miles ago.
3) Mystery screen appears between navigation and elevation screens with no apparent way to get rid of it. This appeared with FW update 3.something if I recall correctly.
4) (Not a bug – more of a change request: ) When the screen is locked, and it’s asking you a No (X) or Yes (check) question, it would be nice to use the [Lap] or [Pause/Resume] buttons on the bottom instead of having to stop, completely dry/clean the screen (not possible in the rain), then unlock the screen and answer the No/Yes question.
5) When a text or email notification comes in from my cell phone, and the screen is locked, there is no way to remove the notification from the screen. One workaround I tried is to Pause/Resume. This gets rid of the notification – and completely confuses TBT navigation. (see #2.)
6) When the screen is locked because it’s raining, rain drops cause a message to constantly pop up saying “The Screen is Locked …” which blocks all other useful messages like TBT navigation or cell phone text messages.
The list goes on but that’s what I can think of at the moment. I keep hoping they’ll get the firmware right eventually but I’m gradually losing hope on that front.
I have not had significant battery issues but I’ve not done rides over about 8 hours with it yet. Although I’m planning to do a 10+ hour ride in 2 days. I”ll switch to GPS only instead of GPS+GLONASS to save some battery.
Between the garmin forums and even reviews from other site I think there are enough red flags to scare me off the 820.
Thankfully Ray just posted that there will be a reasonable sale off the 1000 soon. I will probably just deal with a proven 2 year old device instead of a risky new version.
I don’t think that anyone who works at Garmin actually uses their products, there’s no way.
The new update that re-introduced TBT re-routing on a pre-planned course is something else. The algorithm they use inevitably (for me, anyway) ALWAYS just comes down to “Make a U-turn” and go back to where I turned off. It’s so bad I ended up just turning it off.
Loading a course used to take 30 seconds or so, now I can literally bike 1-2 miles before it finishes “calculating” the course.
On a long ride the other day the TBT stopped working when I went off course by 100ft or so to get some water at a gas station. When I started riding again and got on course, it wouldn’t tell me the next turn I had to take, I had to keep it on the map screen to follow the course. Re-loading the course usually fixes this, but when it loads it asks if I want to be routed to the start, I said no and it still would just tell me to go to the start. I tried 3 times and it kept doing that, so I just gave up and kept the map screen on. During this same ride the battery then died. Now this isn’t strange given how long the unit was on, but A)The battery icon was at least 1/2 full so I didn’t think anything of it. B)How about a warning at 30% and offering to go into power saver mode? C) Power saver mode wouldn’t have helped me because TBT had stopped working and I needed to keep the map up to get home.
I mean, it’s not like there are better options out there, but the best I can say about this one is it’s the shiniest turd in the punchbowl.
I switched from an 810 to the 820. Have to say that being long sighted, I prefer the screen size of the 810. Live Track on the 820 however, does work without the glitches of the 510, 520, 810 and 1000. The screen can be overly and at times under sensitive making navigation through them hit and miss and despite evidence that the screen can be operated with gloves on, I’ve had no such success. Downloading some of the Connect IQ apps has helped with vision issues and the only issue I’ve encountered on rides, is the auto pause, where the device seems to set itself on a data screen and won’t budge without pressing stop and start again.
can you tell me soom times when come cafe run and leave garmin on come there a red arrow on the right hand side how do you get it to go away and continue your ride thanks jocky
Just replaced my 810 with the 820 and everything is better on the 820 with a major exception. The navigation does not work properly for GPX course loaded from Strava / RidewithGPS / etc. After some time the TbT directions just stop even thought the map of the course remains correct.
I would stay away from upgrading until this is fixed if you use navigation (which I am betting you will, otherwise you would be shopping the 520).
Has anyone had any problems with the touch screen not working when the unit gets hot? When the temp hits around 30° or if my bike is in the sun the touchscreen stops working. If I cool it down with water it works again.
It’d almost be interesting if folks Down Under were to try rolling back to a firmware update prior to October (pre sensitivity settings).
I say that because all summer long it was hot in the Northern Hemisphere, and nobody once said anything about that (heat) being an issue then. Makes me wonder if something changes when the new sensitivity settings were added.
Just got an Edge 820 and a 2016 Kickr (both with latest firmware). The Edge paired with the trainer fine, and I performed the spindown using the Edge (as well as the Wahoo app). When I try to do a power target workout, the Kickr resistance goes to infinite. If I try set the target power manually, it does nothing. If I try to set resistance manually, it works properly.
The Wahoo Fitness App controls power correctly, but does not run workouts so that is kind of useless.
So screen sensitivity seems to be an issue that’s all over the map. Up until they upgraded the firmware to “fix” the unit from being too sensitive, mine worked great. After the upgrade however, even when I set sensitivity to high, I have to swipe the screen multiple times to get it to respond, and changing the screen with gloves isn’t even worth trying unless you have a pair with the special “conductive synthetic leather”. Now that the weather has turned cold, I’ve got another issue. The temperature on my last two rides was between 32-36 F, and about 15 minutes into ride 1, the screen starts hopping around from one “data screen” to the next with no touches at all. It even started getting into the settings at one point, and changed one of my data fields (I thought I might have to perform an Exorcism on it). Then it got into the Navigation, and when I stopped to get the unit back to my “ride screen” the screen was so sensitive (cold unit, warm hands? who knows…), I couldn’t get it to respond correctly. I put the unit in my glove for a bit to warm it up, and eventually I was able to get back to my ride screen. I then set the sensitivity to low hoping that would help, but a few minutes back on the bike and it was hopping all over the place again acting like it was possessed. Ride 2, Let’s try it again, maybe that was just a fluke…Nope! Only a few minutes into the ride and it started jumping around again. I stopped and “locked” the screen and was able to finish the ride without the unit going all poltergeist on me. I’m beginning to miss my old Edge 705 (buttons and no touch screen). That puppy worked flawlessly even when the temps were in the 20s.
I think Garmin need to take another stab at fixing the sensitivity issue…
Anyone else have any issues like this?
Yep. Mine is completely non responsive in direct warm sun. I’ve already done a complete reset and started again, it made no difference software is the latest version. Tonight about 15 min into my ride it started changing screens by itself, found its way into settings and turned of GPS… then started renaming something choosing a bunch of random letters. while it was happy to make these changes on its own it would not respond at all to my touches of the screen. I got it in august and its gotten worse to the point I think I have no choice but to return it. I’ve tried a bunch of settings and restarts, reloads etc because I want it to work but its a turd.
I almost sold my 810 for getting an 820 but I decided to keep the 810 until Garmin launches the “825” or “830”; I do not think they are going to be able to fix the 820 just with new firmware.
BTW, I have a yellow (easy to find) Garmin silicon cover/case for an 820 that I’d like to swap for an 800/810 case, if anyone has “upgraded” to an 820. FWIW, I “downgraded” to the 810 and very pleased with that choice. I have very little of the issues plaguing the 820, and most of the tech data that I need.
Still using my Edge 500 but I would really like something good for maps. I commute every single day. Using my phone just doesn’t cut it. How does this device fare for maps/commuting? Is this for me? Budget isn’t a problem.
You could save courses/routes on it (Edge 500), and then follow them bread-crumb style.
With the Edge 820, you’d be able to enter an exact address and then it’d route you there automatically.
The one challenge with commuting vs touring/general riding though, is that I find as a bike commuter you tend to ‘optimize’ your riding route over time with all sorts of little shortcuts that the average GPS unit won’t think about. Whereas in general riding, you rarely do this.
Quick question. I can’t get my suunto Bluetooth smart sensor heartrate strap to pair. It never recognizes it. Is there a compatibility issue that anyone knows if?
Just got 820 last week. I’ve logged 15 hours so far. The touchscreen is bad, really bad. I mean really, really bad. Do you still remember those 1st gen car navigation touchscreen devices from ages ago. These were actually good compared to the 820.
Tolerable for a 50€ product but not at this price point. Does Garmin actually test the products?
I can also confirm that the routing feature is not really working. Though I haven’t really looked into the settings for this (if there are any). The touchscreen does not really invites you to play around with the device.
I just got the edge 820. Is it possible to add the map of Europe the same way as the Edge 800? I was using your tutorial to go on the website and get what I needed and use a mini card. This way, when I was travelling in France, I had a map to follow my route. How does it work with the 820?
Hi, i would like to know ifh the Edge 820 is Bluetooth smart compatible? I have a Suunto Smart sensor (HR monitor) that is BT smart compatible and not ant+. Will it work with a Edge 820? Anyone knows?
Ah, to bad, thought about buying without the bundle and keep my HRM from Suunto to save some cash, as it is very comfortable. The garmin looks a lot bigger.
Well, thats interesting, if that works, woudl it connect to a smart sensor.. ? hm Would need to know for sure. Or is it that it works against a smart trainer but nothing else?
It connects to your trainer via ANT+. The Tacx units broadcast both ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart concurrently.
Garmin units *cannot* connect to any Bluetooth sport sensors. Period, full stop, end of the road. That’s largely (entirely) because they own ANT+ (Dynastream), which is seen as a competitor.
The good news is that virtually all sensors these days are dual ANT+/BLE, so it doesn’t much matter.
I believe it connects to both ant+ and Bluetooth sensors. The power meter world is predominantly ant+ but speed, cadence and HR sensors can be both. Garmin can confirm for you.
Do you have an Edge 820? If so – can you post video of your specific touchscreen issue? No, not someone else’s, but yours.
In general, I see a few buckets of Edge 820 touchscreen ‘stuff’:
A) Those with legit issues on current firmware. No doubt, some have issues. It’s not clear to me if it’s a manufacturing tolerance thing, an environmental thing, or something else.
B) Those that may have had issues months ago on older firmware, but no longer do and simply have never posted again.
C) Those that have iPhone like expectations of a touchscreen on a device that simply won’t work that way. It’s waterproof and designed for different conditions, just like past Edge devices don’t ‘feel’ like a touch screen.
I’ve posted actual videos (including here) of it working fine for me in some pretty crappy conditions. This week in Australia I’ve used it on days up to 40*C (100*F), again, without issue. Heck, I even went on a ride with Shane Miller and on the latest firmware his seemed to be functioning fine. I’ll defer to him for any other experiences there.
The only hardware issue I’ve had has been breaking the USB port recently, but I’m about 99% sure that’s my fault. Software-wise, my only major problem has been Garmin breaking FE-C support (which they fixed about 45 days ago), and I was pretty vocal about them sucking there.
My point is – if you’ve got some widespread issue, then feel free to post about it. Or, if you’re still seeing something odd. But if you don’t have a device yourself, then I’m not entirely sure I get why you’re saying it doesn’t work.
If only “some” users are experiencing the problem (as Garmin says) that tells me they
have been manufacturing the unit using different screens (the screen itself and the top capacitive digitizer layer used for the touchscreen feature come as one piece).
This problem can be seen many times i.e. on the PC monitor industry when the same monitor model can be equipped with different brands of screen panels (see i.e. link to hardforum.com).
If this is the case with the 820 Garmin will try to fix the “hardware” issue with a new firmware (5.20) but this firmware will only mitigate the touchscreen problem on some units while making it worse on some others. Garmin FW surely does not have a way to know which screen is populating a particular unit that’s why the “one solution fits all” magic FW cannot be produced.
Garmin does not clearly say what’s going; then if your 820 works well do not upgrade FW, if it does not work well you got screwed; wait for the new replacement of the 820 or buy a cheap 810.
I suspect some users (like me) just lose interest in commenting, accept what they have and become used to its quirks, and just get on with it.
I find the touchscreen much trickier to use that my 800, particularly on the move. You have to be very careful how you touch it, particularly when making selections. I suspect the involuntary movement of your finger when you are on the bike makes the unit interpret it as a swipe type motion instead of a selection.
There is also some lag sometimes when selecting an item (I suspect software), so you go in for another press, and get an unexpected result. This takes a bit of getting used to.
I haven’t been in temperatures over 30c so can’t comment on that.
Mine does suffer from random selection when big drops of sweat fall on it, but it manages OK in the drizzly British rain we get here. I haven’t been out in a proper summer downpour.
I have the 5.20 firmware. I didn’t notice a change (to touch screen usability) with the FW update.
I’m not expecting it to be like an iPhone, but there is no question the 820 touch screen is a much worse user experience than the 800.
The 800 did a much better job of map display, and handled panning and zooming in and out much faster. The 820 is quote slow to refresh particularly when zoomed out (more detail). It’s surprising the more modern unit is much slower. That makes is quite hard to figure things out if you get lost, so best not to get lost!
So overall, it does function, but the touch screen is much “trickier” than the old 800 which used a different technology. If you spend a lot of time on the bike without touching the screen, and avoiding big raindrops, it’s not an issue.
I still have my 800, but on balance I prefer to use the 820 because of the wireless features an integration with my telephone.
Quote: “I suspect some users (like me) just lose interest in commenting, accept what they have and become used to its quirks, and just get on with it.”
Boy am I in full agreement on that one! Uhm, actually on those two.
>How many people are left still having problems on the most recent firmware?
Well you should also ask how many people “started” having touchscreen problems with the most recent firmware.
>The 800 did a much better job of map display, and handled panning
>and zooming in and out much faster.
Comparing with the 810 the hardware is more modern but also includes more screen resolution and a smaller unit size; then the only way to achieve a decent battery life is “under-clocking” the CPU. That’s why the user experience is slowwwwww…
On top of that it seems the software was not developed by the same team; there are missing things that used to work well and the overall software approach looks somehow different. The 820 is definitely not an evolutionary product of the 800 family and “as we know it” it shouldn’t have ever passed the concept/prototype phase.
Hopefully Garmin is going to solve this soon.
touchscreen has got better. One of the releases around Nov2016 left it unusable.
At least now I can use it. which is nice
currently, when using indoors, when sweat lands on the screen, the screen changes. normally either to the annoying config screen or the map screen. It is set to medium sensitivity.
I hope Garmin **never ever** release a device that only has touchscreen operation.
I have sometimes been riding along fiddling with it to get it to work and just though to myself “someone is going to have an accident doing this”. so I stopped.
The 820 is AWESOME *WHEN* it works. it has THE most awesome functionality and more besides. I just can’t trust it as things stand (Jan 2017). I ALWAYS have a backup unit.
Here’s an update on the screen sensitivity issues I was having (Dec 3 post). After doing a hard reset, and “possibly” a FW update (I don’t recall when 5.20 was released), my touch screen is vastly improved. Cold temps had become quite problematic (cycling in WI gets a bit on the chilly side), but in recent weeks the screen has been really stable (even with temps down in the teens). No more rides with the screen lock engaged to prevent a seemingly demon-possessed computer (screens changing on their own) from ruining my ride. The hard reset (and new FW 5.20) seem to have “exorcised” all the 820’s demons. The touch screen does seem to be a bit more responsive with temps in the 30s but that may be due to thinner gloves as well. Spring is coming and the screen is much improved — don’t give up hope!
Naturally, it’s important to remember that not everyone is having issues with the touch screen on their 820. I am one of those who haven’t had any of the issues that have been complained about (fingers crossed and knock on wood). Further, I rode out in the rain this weekend and the touch screen didn’t do anything strange or quirky.
I’m not discounting the fact that people are having trouble, I’m just trying to remind people that there are some percentage of 820 users who have had no issues to date and therefore not much reason to comment on product support forums. I would hope that the majority of the rest of the users have had no troubles (like me) and that those that do have trouble can find resolution in short order.
Hi,
Following your comment I contacted Garmin about my problems. As always they were very helpful. They sent me some software to load. This seems to have solved the problem.
I had software 5.2 before and was waiting for an update to resolve the issue. The additional software doesn’t change the release – its still 5.2. but just updates some touch screen firmware. I wasn’t aware that this fix was available. If I’d known they could do this I’d have contacted them in December.
My issues seems to be resolved – at least with the limited testing so far.
I do think they should put a note on their forum about this. As you say – fixed in short order. It was my false assumption that I had to wait for a software update to resolve this.
On my 820, the touchscreen works much better than it initially did but it’s still not perfect. I haven’t ridden in the rain lately but the next time I do, I’ll try and get some video of the failure.
What is still 90% broken is Turn By Turn (TBT) navigation. It’s easy to re-create. Start with and “out and back” type of route or, better yet, a “lollipop” shape route with the first & last parts the same roads with a loop in the middle. During the first quarter or so of the ride, intentionally go off course a little bit until it complains then return to the course. This usually works OK. However, do the same after the half way point and TBT gets stuck thinking that you’re still on the first half of the route. My work around is to break up the route into 2 halves and navigate each one separately.
I have the 820 since dec16, after the initial problems with the touchscreen I made the updates and it worked fine. But I just did the cape epic and again the drops of sweat made the screen change. So I changed to minimum sensitivity and locked the screen, but the screen kept on changing from one page to the other, and there was not enough sensitivity to change with the fingers… useless. Thankfully I had a spare 510 that I used to finish the race.
I returned the 820. The touchscreen only worked 1 out of 10 times. After changing from statute to metric, the laps were still 8.05km (5m) That bit I could change to 5km, but the laps were stated in time, not average speed.
I only got 6 hour battery life out of it. Yes, with the screen on, backlight off. No TBT, simply recording my ride.
The whole experience was just crap, so I reluctantly returned it. I really was hoping to have found the best bike computer there is, but for me it turned out it wasn’t. YMMV.
wouldn’t count on that: I’ve had the Edge touring, now the 820, they are about the same regarding performance: they update just as slow and no firmware update did anything to improve map performance since I have this device (august).
I just bought a pair of PowerTap P1 pedals and can’t seem to find a setting for crank length (I used to own an Edge 800 and it did have such a setting). Is there a crank length setting on the 820? Thanks for your phenomenal reviews…I never buy anything related to triathlon without consulting your website first.
When I connect my P1 pedals to my 820 and select sensor details, all I see is wheel size. I still can’t find crank length – I checked my user’s manual and it does not appear there anywhere.
Good question. I’d got a couple of data fields downloaded for my new(ish) 1000 & got those working easily enough. I can download Widgets OK but I can’t see any way of making them do anything (unless I’m missing something obvious)!
i am from Singapore and lately i just bought a edge 820. the problem that i am facing now is that i am unable to see the maps on the device. also i couldnt do the proper routing. Did i miss out on anything ?
Hmm, I’m not sure exactly which device SKU/region Singapore falls under – but the first thing I’d be checking is whether the unit you bought is actually supposed to cover Singapore (in terms of maps).
If not – not biggie. Just download the right maps here and add to your unit manually (free): link to dcrainmaker.com
I have other Edge devices (520 and 800) and they constantly freeze on rides over ~90 minutes. Have others had this issue, and gas the 820 frozen door anyone?
In the vast majority of cases with Garmin Edge devices, when you get freezes, it’s due to some sort of corruption on the Edge disk/drive. The best solution is almost always a hard reset. Ensure it removes the older workouts/courses/activity files.
I’ll try removing all the files and hard resetting both units and use them on my trainer rides (in addition to my 910xt which is flawless at data capturing though less feature rich) and report back. Thanks for all the effort.
Was there ever an update as to why no “In-Depth Review” was released for this device? Ray been too busy to get this out with all the other goodies out there? Are we going to stick with this as the final article for this device?
Thanks for asking this; I chickened out on asking, as I thought he doesn’t really have the obligation to write an in-depth review. But no, I couldn’t find it either, so I am hoping he did wrote it up but simply forgot to post(!)
It’s something I’d definitely like to get done. But as Chris somewhat noted, there ends up being so many other new things to touch on and toy with.
Still, I know there’s interest in the unit – and by and large it has become my ‘main’ GPS unit. Though, mostly because I continue to put miles on it, not so much because it has anything that I use day to day over the pile of Edge 520’s I have.
As far as I can see the 520 hasn’t had an in depth review either.
A tips and tricks post covering both units would be awesome Ray, since your reviews and posts are vastly more informative than Garmin’s documentation (or any other source I’ve found).
Currently I’m using my 520 instead of my ageing-with-cracked-screen 310XT, but I can’t help feeling I’m not really making the most of it since the only things that I get over-and-above the 310XT are; a couple more data fields, a map under the route line when following a route, automatic upload of rides and my Virb starts recording when I start a ride. All good stuff, but I suspect that there are useful connect IQ and other features that I just haven’t come across yet (despite browsing the list of connect IQ apps etc.)
If I’m reading this correctly the bike profiles feature has gone? Does that mean that bike sensors are now just pooled and it’ll connect to whatever sensors it finds (eg if i have 2 bikes with cadence sensors I just pair to both of them at different times and it’ll find the one that is alive at the time?)?
You have to create “Gear” profiles for each Bike (or pair of trainers or whatever) and then when you upload activities to Connect you have to switch the Gear used from the default where applicable.
Bit of a pain in the arse if you have two (or more) sets of wheels for the same bike of course, but simpler with the new speed and cadence sensors in my experience.
I’ve not tried o/s maps on mine, but there is a decent amount of storage on there so shouldn’t be an issue.
And we’re trusting you more than Ray based on?
You’ve made the exact same point three time in quick succession, but my experience – with both trail gloves and winter road gloves – is not the same as yours – works fine for me,
I generally agree with you Mik F. In my experience it depends a bit on the type of gloves you use, however, this is the same as with most smartphone displays. My 820 works with gloves same good or bad as with the naked finger. Sometimes delays, sometimes need to touch twice, however, it does work, even not optimal. I would not agree to generally repeat that kind of “nothing” is working perfectly on this device. I think it’s a great concept. I love the size, battery time and functionality in general, however, it has far too many hick-ups and is a bit remotely from a perfect device. Talking about my “perfect” iphone it has a similar pattern of things I’d like to see much better working, but still most iphone lover-people believe it is perfect…
2) I agree on the iPhone: in my view it’s an excellent phone, but does have some bugs/design flaws. Especially in the Photos bit, but that extends to the web and desktop version of the app.
3) I’d love to read up on what hick-ups you’re experiencing with the 820: I’m in the market for a new bike computer and can’t decide on the 820 or the 1000. And perhaps I should look at a non-Garmin device, but that’s a whole different discussion.
That must be it – I agree it works with smartphone compatible gloves but a) most of my off road gloves are not smartphone compatible and b) what happens when my fingers get muddy…
To my mind Garmin have just produced a road rider’s device. For off road use there are too many limitations.
@PhilBoogie. I started to forget about the hick-ups and do not record them anymore. However, here are a few:
1) elevation errors – I just know how “high” the Züri lake is, and cycling next to it having differences between 10-20m is not great. Once I was cycling 200m below, but this seemed a one off, fixed by resetting the device and loosing ALL DATA and records on it, they are still on Garmin Connect or Strava
2) segment end point error (stopped the clock on display somewhere else where the segment wasn’t over – forgot if it was before or after – strange thing)
3) touch screen sensitivity – sometimes delayed reaction on a touch, and sometimes no reaction with or w/o some gloves and yes, we all have our own, different gloves as well as different fingers :-)))
4) Battery run time varies – but this is the same on all more sophisticated devices (1000 & 820)
5) This is actually a new “problem” – It told me after the reset already 6 times: Cannot calculate ftp, try again. This while being on a trainer, running flawless the ftp program and I think the 820 just doesn’t wanna do it anymore after the reset. Maybe next reset helps with set-up time of 3h after and loosing most data again as it is what it is…
6) Probably some more, also the “antenna problem” compared to the 1000 where the Di2 wireless sensor, once installed in the seatpost is not recognized anymore, BUT again – convenience problem, and you just mount the sensor somewhere else and then it just works…
7) Slow routing calculation – sometimes I already went for 5km before the route was calculated on a “pre-loaded” routing file, not from scratch! That’s freaking long…
8) Any other problem I haven’t yet found out about.
9) Any other problem which is not related to cycling – depends what you use it for
To answer your question. I love the small size, I love the map and routing build in and once it works I just go so relaxed on my rides. I also love the general functionality, even my Vector 2 pedals are meanwhile great. If you have bad eyes and you are not to sensitive re size, buy the edge 1000, still works a bit more stable, but battery is shorter. Once you do not plan to cycle ultra (>250km on one day) and the bigger the better the display, buy a 1000, otherwise stop thinking about complaining and go for the 820, or wait until infinity and get the most tested, best developed and 120% working next model… :-)
RE: FTP Calc fail – Is that with a power meter (or trainer with power data) connected? I’m guessing so with Vector 2 on your bike, but just wanted to double-check. Do note that I believe the algorithm only triggers when certain events occur in a workout.
RE: Di2 in seat post – Yeah, you’re just up again simple signal stuff there being confined.
BIG thanks for elaborating this much!
1. Yeah, the elevation thing in these devices shouldn’t be taken as fact. Sure, some have proper hw, others use GPS, but the ones with proper hardware also can fail big time. Oh well, as long as the device gives me a reasonable accurate ascent/descent info. Though once uploaded to Garmin it differs as much as 25% with what Strava is saying. And they simply get the data from Garmin. I know they calculate things with their own algorithms, but for barometric readings this shouldn’t differ. Weird.
2. I haven’t used segments on rides, due to lack of hardware. Though, interested if it’s ‘fun’ or not.
3. As far as touch screens go, I think Apple creates the best – bar none. I don’t mind to occasionally having to tap again on my Garmin, but if it’s a hit or miss, as is with my Oregon 550t (admittedly, a resistive touchscreen), it’ll become an aggravating experience.
4. Battery should work for my 6 hour bike rides. My 8+ hour rides are rare nowadays, for which I can take a BatteryBank with me. For those rides I have a rugsack anyway.
5. I don’t have any fancy FTP thing going on…
6. Aldo no Di2 for me…
7. Slow routing calculation – that SUCKS. That is quite sad to read. No, not sad, that’s ridiculous. I presume you did wait for a ‘proper’ GPS signal?
8. –
9. Only for cycling. I currently use my Fenix but the missing suntan on one wrist looks plain weird.
Thanks for the closing paragraph: I think I’m better off with the larger display on the 1000 model, due to eyesight receding ever so slightly. I think my 4.7” display on my phone is too large, but on my bike I’d like the largest available. That is, if the font size can be adjusted. As I understand it, that is possible. Just not to choose a font, which kinda sucks on my Fenix.
Thanks Ray for picking up – FTP calc (just the program…), regularly it updates after I did great on a ride… And yes, the ftp calc program I do with the vector 2 installed and sticking to the comments re too low or too high & the bar indication of the power range. Next time I make a photo of the error message. I’m more confused about this has worked before I had to do the reset which actually improved the elevation thing. One better, the other worse, as always. However, I do not care too much about this one problem.
The route calc delays are more annoying once you are in a rush to meet up with friends and you wait and wait and don’t know where to go. At least, I think as a small improvement it shows you now a “line of the route” and the GPS arrow ones you start cycling and as it’s current position & moving you could already start. Kind of realized this as an improvement recently…
Thanks! Yup, decided to get the 1000 model. Still, feels awkward to buy a two year old device. Not that I feel things are missing now, but I will feel bad if they announce something next month with either features I’d love to have or a discount on the current model.
Oh well, I guess that’s what reflects excellent on me: I always tell people to buy now instead of waiting for the Next New Thing, or wait for a new version if there is no time pressure of any sort.
Its clear that garmin either used different vendors for the touchscreen, or had really bad quality control, because people are having wildly different experiences with the 820. I can say emphatically that mine will not work with gloves. It sort of did (multiple swipes eventually moved the screen) before some of the recent updates, but the tradeoff for that was it didn’t work in the rain or sweat, or fog, or pretty much any real world experience. With that said, it will work with e-tip gloves. My 810 worked like a champ all winter long, no matter what glove I was wearing. I definitely miss the touchscreen on the 810. At least for me, it was superior in every aspect.
Hi Ray,
Have you any plans to update this first look with a review? Have you experienced any of the touch screen problems users are suffering or have you heard anything from Garmin?
Ray,
Great review and video – got my 820 for Christmas and you’ve shown me more than I’ve been able to find myself.
Like you, I’m a Paris cyclist but I can’t figure out how to make the mapping “drive” on the right!? How did you do it?
Mapping send me the wrong way on one-way streets, the wrong way around roundabouts and the 820 is forever trying to change my route if it thinks I’ve gone the wrong way on a one-way street….
Thanks
Hi Ray,
Wife bought the Unit from Evans UK. I’m only using the pre-loaded maps. However, the problem also exists when planning a route/course in Connect!!
Spent a good hour last night trying to plan my routes on authorised routes, but it insists on sending me “British” way……. Hopefully the attached doc works so you can see…
I see the attachment didn’t work, so trying again.
You will know the area – the attached plan is from West to East, so I should be on the RHS. Connect plans illegal routes and the Edge 820 tries to send me on them….!!
Very old problem. Ironically, I had the reverse issue with routes planned in UK (where I live) taking me anticlockwise round roundabouts. Not a good idea…
I tinkered with manually reporting these anomalies through drag and drop, but in the end figured that if I went the right way around the roundabout it would give an alert, but then calm down again when I was “back on course”.
Not so easy on the one-way street issue of course :/
The odd alert from being off course isn’t too bad, but being routed the wrong way is. Not so bad whilst I’m playing with my new toy during the commute and I know the roads, but it is blooming annoying on weekend rides into the unknown, when it tries to send me the wrong through village one-way systems.
I have previously read the garmin forum thread you provided, but assumed as these were complaints / concerns from 2012 that Garmin would ahve sorted them by now…..!!??
I’ll try using the other mapping recommendations in the thread. I’ve recently downloaded Ray’s recommended free maps and have yet to ‘play’ with these to see if it works better….
How about maps in foreign countries. I am moving to Thailand and ride 5-8k miles a year. I am not planning on touring but do want to see where I am and where I am going. When I talked to Garmin, they suggested getting the unit there (in Thailand) so that the maps would already be loaded on. Since I spend the summers in the US I want to have the ability to have those maps as well. This makes me think the 1000 is the way to go (because of the sd card slot). I am also curious about the language of the maps in foreign countries.
Thanks for the great info on your site. I am a new visitor but love your reviews and general info.
Almost a year after it was released, I have come to the conclusion this new Edge 820 is only good for road and indoor use. The settings it is capable of make it less than ideal for mtb use. You can either manually turn it on and off or have it auto start and stop at 6mph. In the mountains there are times when you’d be traveling at under 6mph for a short period. It also takes too long to start back up after it stops. After 15 miles, the Edge 820 has me 1.5 miles under those of my riding partners on a consistent basis. I contacted Garmin about the issues I’ve had with this new release and they ensured me it was developed and tested by actual riders and while I have no proof otherwise,this has got to be a lie. To say I’m disappointed with this $399 unit that does no better than a $199 unit would be a drastic understatement. I’m now going to invest more in a mtb specific unit that can be uploaded to Strava. Any suggestions?
What about switching off some of the auto-functions for your MTB profile? I thought of “auto-pause” for example. Then it shouldn’t stop and start below a certain speed. It just doesn’t stop the clock when you eat a sandwich while having a break.
Does the 820 have speed zones? What seemed to do the trick with my 800 was to lower the lowest speed in the lowest speed zone to 1 mph (can’t do zero). I didn’t have any trouble with it after that. The 1000 that I got last October has never given me any low speed trouble with auto pause, maybe because the speed zones become part of your user profile and they got transferred to it (I’ll have to check sometime).
Just turn that auto start/stop nonsense off. Strava figures out your real average moving speed when it uploads anyway. Unless you need to see your moving average at all times (hint, you don’t) there’s no need to have that feature on.
Hi Ray! I got the edge 820 last month and it is updated with the latest firmware. It responds very slow to any command because it is always downloading and transferring something in background. It is annoying, every couple of minutes it beeps with a ‘download complete’ message but no info on what was downloaded and why is provided. I suspect it is data from strava segments because I have several marked as favorite (~=100). Obviously, it happens when connected to wifi/bluetooth only.
Is it normal? Other users have had the same issue?
Got the Edge 820 for my birthday last month, but just sent it back to Amazon for a refund. On 3 out of 4 60 mile rides it lost TBT Navigation functionality when it sensed me being off course. While it was set to “Not Recalculate” the route, the Garmin Edge 820 apparently has some software bug and recalculates regardless of how you have it set up. Of course, any attempt to reload the route wouldn’t restore TBT Navigation. It seems odd that the unit can redisplay the route correctly on the map, reload the cue sheet at the proper point where I was on the route, and display the correct distance to the finish of the route on the cue sheet, but can’t restart TBT Navigation. This is something Garmin needs to fix!
For the one good ride, every time the Garmin sensed me being slightly off route, like when I pulled into a gas station for food, it went thru some crazy recalculation routine to get me back on route. I ignored what it was doing and when I got back on the route, it resumed TBT Navigation normally. Again, I have route recalculation turned off, so this shouldn’t happen. I think this is somehow related to the Off-Course Warning functionality, under course options settings.
What good is a GPS that can’t reliably navigate a course. The software code for TBT functionality was perfected years ago….Does Garmin attempt to re-write to code for each new product iteration?
I buy an Edge to a) record rides so I have a month by month / year by year record of what I have done and where I have been and b) for the TBT prompts to get me around. On the latter this latest device utterly fails, which considering it’s high price tag is astonishing.
Everything is fine until you take a slight detour off route. Yesterday I cut a small corner off a planned route as I didn’t want to go to the cafe I had originally routed to, and the whole TBT became a shambles. First it resorted to my final destination as the next waypoint, it lost all details regarding mileage left etc, then would randomly get stuck on the road name I was on when I took the detour.
Reloading the course didn’t help at all.
After coming from the 800, I am shocked by how bad this thing is at doing one of it’s core functions.
Just out of curiosity – how are you creating the routes and/or transferring them to the unit? And is it with the default maps on the unit?
I only ask because last night for example I totally ignore routing instructions for miles at a time being not on-route and then connected again. Even in cases where the route was lollipop in nature which some have reported triggers a failure when you rejoin.
While it did take a heck of a long time to calculate (something I noted way back here in this post in July), it did find it’s way just fine. In my case I created all routes on Garmin Connect and using the default provided maps.
I download the TCX files from Ride with GPS and place the files in the New Files Folder. Yes, I’m using the base maps on the unit. And yes, the units have the latest software downloaded on them.
The last ride I rode with the Edge 820, I had my Edge 1000 mounted on the bike as well. I was navigating the same route on both units. Both units showed me going off route for some reason even though I was on the correct road. The TBT Navigation on Edge 820 blew up, but not the Edge 1000. Further down the road, the Edge 1000 showed me coming back on route and resumed TBT Navigation normally.
When you try to reload TBT Navigation on the Edge 820, it draws the route correctly on the map, reloads the cue sheet to the correct point on the route where you are, but TBT Navigation wants to start over from the beginning of the route. The only saving point is you are able to navigate based on the breadcrumb method to finish your route.
So it really seems that Garmin doesn’t reuse the same code for TBT Navigation on the Edge 820 that works flawlessly on the Edge 1000.
I have to say that I have countless friends with the exact same issues with the Edge 820 :(
I haven’t noticed that issue with mine, although I was using a course saved in Garmin Connect and sent to the device. I went off course because I knew a shortcut, and it recalculated the route just fine.
I also figured out my issue with the speed display lag – the custom data field I use (DozenCycle) shows a 12 second average by default. RTFM
I know you are replying to jcs_396, DC Rainmaker, but I will add that I also am using the base maps, I use RidewithGPS to plan the route, but unlike jcs_396 I save as GPX (tbh I’ve never got my head around the actual difference between tcx and gpx on an Edge unit).
I can say my experience is exactly the same as jcs_396, something I do not experience on the 800.
I have contacted Garmin and their usual defacto response being to reset device to factory settings and update to latest software.
There has been another software update since I posted so have followed Garmins advice and will do another ride in the next couple of days and go off route to test again, but am not holding much hope.
Its strange how some, including you DC, are not experiencing this.
I have the same problem when going off course. When I return the course notes seem to have been reset to the beginning. I use Strava to create a gpx file which I load to my 820 via the New Files folder.
Is it possible to manually set the left/right balance, if you are using a single power meter?
– On my Pioneer SGX-CA500 I can manually set this left/right balance value.
Do you anticipate Training Effect coming to the Edge series?
I find it really odd that watches have TE, and Edge devices do not. This reduces the usefulness of TE to their best customers — those that use Edge to record bike rides and FR/Fenix to record runs.
While Garmin has a method of sharing step counts between units they don’t have a way to share the advanced data from the first beat algorithms so recording some exercise with one device and other exercise with a different device will cause both devices to calculate wrong as neither knows about how much exercise you really do
On second ride with my new Garmin 820 Edge, it sat on the handle bars next to my Ibike Newton. On climbs there was a significant lag in registering the initial gradient with the Garmin compared to the Ibike. If the gradient became more constant, the Garmin would catch up. It would miss, however, short pitches up or down in the road. The lag was also present in descending.
I cannot locate any information on how to perform a dynamic calibration for my bepro power pedals using the Edge 820? Can it even be done with this model? Thanks!
What happened to the full review on this? I’ve had one for a while now and my thoughts are mixed. I don’t have the erratic touchscreen issues that many people experience, but a couple of things bug me:
1. Speed update is slow – I have a Garmin Vivoactive HR that I use to broadcast my heart rate to the 820, and when comparing the two I can see that the VAHR updates the speed much faster than the 820, which lags behind a couple of seconds.
2. Data fields don’t scale for easy viewing – I had the Edge 800 before this, and it would dynamically adjust the field size, so the first few were larger and easier to read. The 820 makes everything smaller, so it’s harder to see at a quick glance. Having said that, I have found a workaround in the form of a ConnectIQ field called DozenCycle, which has a very good layout and shows pretty much everything.
Overall it’s OK but it doesn’t match its high pricetag IMO. Good thing I got it a lot cheaper than RRP!
The 820 is something we have to forget…
I also have a VAHR and an 810, the 810 is million times more reliable thab the 820 in all fronts.
I see always the same speed on my VAHR and the 810.
Be sure to consult Shimano’s D-Fly compatibility charts in detail tho. To get my 820 working with D-Fly, I had to: (1) buy the wireless transmitter and an additional Di2 cable and their special tool, (2) replace my battery mount, (3) buy a new front junction box and two more new cables, (4) do firmware updates on every piece of hardware in the Shimano system, (5) make three trips to the LBS over the course of a month and make three calls to Shimano tech support, (6) all at an extra cost of over $450 just to tell me what gear I’m in. Had I known that up front, I never would have bothered.
Funny Garmin can’t seem to make a decent GPS device which actually does what it’s built for which is navigate. My Garmin 810 constantly crashes if I use a pre-determined course. Want to setup and ride against segments…. whoops that doesn’t work either. The device constantly fails on me any time I run near a roundabout because you know GPS devices have no idea what those are. I’m very scared to upgrade because I moved from a 800 to 810 thinking it would do this crazy thing called navigate my rides. However, it is one of the worst decisions I ever made as I have lost so many rides and data it makes me sick. Now I see the 820 and it intrigues me but I have been burnt so many times by Garmin it’s disgusting. Here’s an idea instead of making a new device which has these “Group convergence” options we make a device which can actually do what it’s built to do well instead of crashing 90 miles into a 206 mile ride. The second I can get a phone to read my GPS, Power meter, Heart Rate, and cadence and be able to last for a 200 mile ride from Seattle to Portland I am going to drop Garmin like a bad habit.
These bike devices from Garmin are pretty crappy indeed. I tried the Edge 1000. Turned on TBT, 1 second recording, and left the display on. Total usage time: 3 hour 52 minutes.
So I tried the 820. Gave me battery life of just under 5 hours.
The touch screen on these devices are plain crap. A total miss or hit, seemingly random, but failing 8 out of 10 times.
Then there’s the software. Indeed, these units crash every now and then. And who the frick sets a default to have the unit shut down after 15 minutes of use? When TBT is on. It would seem Garmin doesn’t have a QA department. Or at least don’t dogfood. At least for their bike computers, as I do think the Fenix3 is a good device. Did take them many fw updates, but after about 10 months (v6 or v7 I believe) the device became really good.
I gave up on Garmin for my bike and ordered a Bolt.
It seems that the Garmin 820 fails to navigate the return leg of an out and back route. On the return leg it continues to suggest a u-turn to get you back on course. This is based on using tcx files and I was wondering if you knew of a fix
Hmm, I haven’t tried it with a TCX route, though I have very recently tried doing an out and back course with the Garmin Connect (online) creator and the Edge 820 and it worked just fine (including sections where I specifically went off-course).
I just wish they made it easy (or even possible) to upload .TCX/GPX/etc files to Garmin Connect to create courses from them.
The Garmin tends to get confused which direction you are going on an out-and-back route. This happens on my Edge 1000 as well. This usually happens when you go off of course for whatever reason, and then when it finds the course again, it may be that you are going in the opposite direction of what the Garmin thinks. The best thing to do is to split the route into two separate routes.
This is from another post I saw someplace else on how to load files to the Edge from your phone……
I have been using Routecourse app for the last several months and it works great for Garmins like the 1000 that have wifi. You need to download the app to your phone or ipad from link to dynamic.watch
You also need to download routecourse into your Garmin, follow the steps. Then it is a simple matter to grab the URL of your ride, from either Garmin Connect or from Ridewithgps and paste it into the “import” box at link to dynamic.watch and it will add it to your list of rides.
Then the next time you turn on your 1000 and wifi connects to your phone, go to the IQ section on your Garmin, select Routecourse, and it will populate a list of your rides and the new ride you just imported will be there for wireless download. Works well, once you remember the steps from the tutorial in the right order.
When a course overlaps at some point seems like Garmin units in general don’t always pick up the right one. Really wish they had a simple option where you could long press on the triangle and pick which section of the course you are on.
Jeff, with the newer connectIQ I would hope they come up with a way to get the file from your phone without needing a wifi connection. (i.e. if I’m at a ride start and forgot to load my garmin I could get my phone to get the course from Ridewithgps and upload to my device over bluetooth
Hi, I was wandering if you are aware of the process for downloading the free Garmin maps for the 820? You article refers to the 520. I have a preloaded Australia map but have now moved to Portland Oregon and the names of the files appear different so im reluctant to delete anything on the Garmin in the event I lose it/.
I rename gmapsupp to gmapbmap, and after backing up the current gmapbmap file on the unit, replace the file with the new mapping file. I have removed all Garmin maps and only have 1 gmapbmap file which I keep up to date, and the unit runs quickly and navigation is good.
Hi it’s probably been asked before but is it possible to set the 820 edge up for 2 different bikes, so I can see how many miles I’ve done on each bike.
Thanks in advance.
I bought an 820 from my lbs….the 820 is garbage. This is my 2nd one. Many many issues. Total piece of crap. Both of them.
Won’t pair with phone, turns itself off, I have never paid so much to get so little…
Lbs, tired of trying to make it work.
Had issues with:
Pairing
Picking up sensors
Vertical gain
Temperature
Turning itself off
bad support from Garmin
I have searched the entire web and haven’t found any answer. How can we record multi-day rides with Edge 820? I am not worried about the battery, as I can charge it through a power bank.
Put the 820 into Sleep mode using the power button or lock the screen.
However, I’ve had loads of issues with Sleep mode – including the 820 locking up, losing cadence.
My 820 is going back to Garmin, In my opinion it is utter garbage.
If you want to record multi-days in one activity-file, then you press the stop-button at the end of the day and switch the unit off, power-off.
Switch it on the next day and press the start-button when you begin your next ride.
That should work.
Can you please advise me on battery life on these devices ?
I tried nearly all of them and when power meter, cadence and heart rate are connected, the battery life goes down to 8 to 10 hours. Not enough ! I tried Edge 1000 / 820 / 520 and actually my old edge 800 functions the longest !
Do you think that the Edge 510s 20h predicted battery life could result in longer GPS outings, like 15 to 17hours with 3 connected sensors ?
(I know stages has the longest battery life, but I want to stay with Garmin, and no, I don’t want to ride with an extra battery in my pocket.)
This device is pretty useless in rain. Yesterday, 3 hours MTB race in the mountains. Latest firmware, low touchscreen sensitivity, display locked. It was raining almost the entire race. No heavy rain, quite gentle actually.
Constantly this message “display locked” popped up. Stupidly I had put my 3-sec power in the lowest display field so it was blocked through this message.
I haven’t experienced this in my training rides yet. However, my Train profile has several data screens. When the display is locked it would shift from data screen to data screen like crazy. And of course, if the screen is not locked the rain creates a total mess in all the menus.
This happens in low sensitivity setting as well.
Apart from this I have trouble with switching off the device. Sometimes hitting “switch off” causes a restart of the device.
If I charge the device it boots up. If I unplug it afterwards and hit “switch off” it almost always restarts. After restart hitting “switch off” is successful.
The switch off is a minor annoyance, the rain issue is a big, big annoyance. In particular when considering the price point.
I’d ring up Garmin and have your swapped out. The problem is the manufacturing process is very very very fickle for the screen. Plus your other issues sound odd.
I have two 820’s, and have ridden a crap-ton in the rain this year with them (Paris isn’t exactly dry), and haven’t really had any issues with what you describe.
Fully agree. I’ve had the same poor responsive touch screen. 8 out of 10 times the screen just wouldn’t register what I tapped, be it in the rain or not. The screen itself is also hard to read on a sunny day. I’ve had this poor experience with the 500 & 800 series. Then I tried the Edge 1000, still the same: the touch screen and the readability of the screen is simply crap.
I gave up on Garmin for my cycling device and got a Wahoo Element Bolt instead. I think that is a great device. And using dedicated buttons instead of the screen makes it work. Always. In rain or not, with gloves or not. The screen is readable in any kind of weather.
I do use a Garmin watch for running/triathlons. The Fenix 3, which I think is a good watch. Or at least after a year of so after getting a boatload of updates and bug fixes. But the Edge series for the bike is complete crap.
For about $45 you can buy the Edge Remote to change data screens in wet conditions. I tend to perspire a lot in the summer heat and when my fingers get wet, changing the data screen is near impossible. The remote solves all that and lets me change data screens at will.
Battery life is a joke. 15 hours only if you never need to look at the screen. Those who want to look at heart rate or cadence throughout a ride without having to press a button get 4.5 hours max. Who buys a sophisticated GPS and cycle computer to ride with the screen off? I’m returning this.
I keep hearing this random 4.5hr number that a few people have referenced in a forum or something…
If you’re getting only 4.5 hours it likely means you’ve set the backlight brightness to non-auto and to full brightness. That’s the only way that anyone has been able to get that low of battery. Almost everyone here reports 10+ hours (depending on settings).
It’s sorta a blend between an Edge 520 and an Edge 820 from a mapping standpoint. There’s plenty of other pros and cons, which I detail a bunch in my BOLT review.
Do be sure to fully understand the nuances of mapping between a BOLT and an Edge 820/1000/800/810/705. For some people those nuances won’t matter at all, whereas for others, they’ll matter a lot.
Ray- I’m hoping you or some the could give me a little direction. I’ve had the 520 since its release with no major issues. I would like to go with the 820 because of the few software differences but mostly for the touch screen. I just think its an easier interface.
I have read your reviews and almost all the feedback over the past year. Has there been a resolution to any of the touchscreen issues i’ve read? I don’t usually ride in the rain so I don’t see that issue being a problem if it still exists.
Has there been any major improvements to the screen?
Personally, I’d stay with the Edge 520 and the buttons over the 820 touch screen.
I generally don’t have too many issues with the 820’s touch screen, but every time I use it I’m reminded how much I enjoy the 520’s screen. It’s just not finicky.
Things have gotten better for most folks on the 820’s screen. Garmin added a sensitivity setting, along with a few other tweaks. That seems to have resolved most peoples issues. There do seem to be a handful with odd issues still (someone recently noted rain was problematic for them, whereas it’s not at all an issue for me – nor has it ever been).
I suspect this is a manufacturing issue. I’ve heard through the grapevine a bit that the manufacturing process on this specific screen is actually really tricky, and is leading to some of the variability on why it’s fine for some and less awesome for others. I’d argue if someone’s screen doesn’t work in the rain, they should ring up Garmin and have them swap out the unit. End of story.
Having had an 820 with no screen issues, I’d say buttons are always the preferred option. Even though my 820 worked fine in the rain, it still had a slow response to touches. I found the best way was to hold my finger on it for a fraction of a second before swiping, as that gave the most reliable inputs. Part of the issue is that the unit seems underpowered, especially on the map screens, so even when you do swipe correctly, it doesn’t respond instantly like you’d expect on a smartphone.
I’ve since swapped to the Elemnt Bolt and have been very impressed with it so far. Buttons are easy to use and navigating through the screens is super quick in comparison. I’ve also preordered the Hammerhead Karoo, as I still like the colour screen option and that looks to have an excellent touchscreen.
Thanks to you both. I have the Varia Bike Radar rear light and love it so i’d prefer to stick with Garmin, but thanks of the feedback on the Bolt. Sounds like the cpu needs a boost. Hopefully they will come out with an upgraded version soon.
Thanks for the feedback. I originally went with the 820 so that I could use it for various on-foot and on-bike adventures in Europe since my phone data plan was prohibitively expensive.
I’ll read up on the nuances, and go from there. If it were you, which would you get?
I searched on your blog but could not find a final review, have you done it? will you post it?
I am thinkin in buying a GPS for the bike, after reading this article, your 2016 christmas post I think the 820 is winning for the moment, not sure if with just the 520 will be ok….
I haven’t actually done a full review on it. For no particular purpose other than being flooded with other products, and by and large this post sums up my feelings pretty well.
I like both the 520 and 820 a lot, and use them a lot (usually both together on the same bike on all rides). In general I prefer the non-touch screen aspect of the 520 over the 820, but I do prefer the mapping options on the 820.
Thanks a lot for the quick reply… I will wait to see the new 1020 (if that’s the name Garmin uses…) and if not I think the 820 when it lowers its price a bit will be an excellent choice.
Just will like to know your opinion in some reviews I have read in Amazon and other spanish web sites about the problems of the 820 some times blocking it self, or stopping to work.
I heard it had something to do with the software, and that it will be fixed, as it is a year old already maybe they have been fixed, maybe this will help new potential readers and buyers to know if this is solved…
When I first got my 820 (Mar 2017) it spontaneously shut down a handful of times. However, that stopped a week or two later, and I haven’t had a single power-down since. I suspect it was fixed in one of the software updates.
But if there’s anything I’ve learned from owning this unit, it’s YMMV…
My 520 went through the washing machine. In its’ defence it lasted a few months after that before the charging/port issues started to appear. It’s now bricked and I will probably buy another one as they are great value right now. The screen issues of the 820 have put me off.
The 1030 and the 1000 are too big for a TT bike IMHO and way too much money. The ONLY thing Garmin needs to do is add more memory to the 520 so that I can download larger openstreets maps on to it. They would then have several years more sales out of that device…but I am sure they won’t cannibalise 820 sales by doing that!
After some extensive reading I decided to buy the Garmin Edge 820 in May and I have no regrets. Screens works good in the rain and for maps and GPS I think Garmin is very good. You can’t compare the screen to the screen of an iPhone or other smartphone but to me it works well enough. I’m satisfied with the Edge 820.
If you need a bike computer I think you should buy one; I can’t think Garmin will introduce a new bike computer in autumn/winter. If you can buy the 540 or the 1000 with a big discount you can buy them. Otherwise I would choose for the 820 since it is newer and Garmin doesn’t support very long “old” gear.
You can always wait for a new faster computer but in the end you end up with no computer because every year there is a better one. So you need to decide if you need a bike computer this year or not ;-)
I also have a Garmin Fenix 3 HR which works flawless with the Edge 820; the Fenix is my heart rate monitor. You can use the Fenix while transmitting your heart rate. I always record my ride with the Fenix and the Edge; in Garmin Connect and Strava I delete one activity since you otherwise have duplicates.
I’m coping with a dilemma, in search for new navigation. I like the size, appearance and (colored) navigation options of the Garmin Edge 820; filling in an address and go. However, I’m hesitating to buy the device because there are a lot of complaints about it: frustrating touchscreen, rather long loading of routes (even up to 5 minutes), etc.
What to choose?
On the market is also the Garmin edge 520, but it only has the option of loading in routes, not navigating on the spot. There is also the Wahoo Element Bolt, which looks great and had much of the options the Edge 820 has. I saw an update now allows you to fill in an address and it routes. Does it also (quickly) reroute after taking a wrong turn?
Get the 820. I wound up getting it and it’s much better than the 520 as far as mapping. I haven’t had any issues so far but it’s only been a week. I purchased mine through Clever Training and they have a 60 day return policy. If you don’t like it you can always return it. I think the last firmware fixed a lot of the problems earlier issues. Just my take.
Thanks for the reply @Jm2020! That sounds promising, great to hear that you are not experiencing any problems and frustration; especially in regard to the touchscreen and loading-time of routes. What is your experience with the battery-life so far? I don’t want to be without juice during a ride… The stories I heard so far, where not that promising.
My regular “day out rides” are around 8 hours. Using routing this chews about 50% of battery from full charge.
If I’m not using routing it uses maybe 25%
I don’t do multi day rides without having opportunity to recharge in-between, but I’d hazard that battery drain is a lot faster if you started from 50%
I’ve done a couple of thousand miles since I got my 820 and since the sensitivity fix I’ve had no issues, and we do get a lot of wet weather here in Yorkshire :)
Hi Mik F, thanks for replying! Same weather conditions here in the Netherlands, so I feared the touchscreen-sensitivity. Good to hear you’ve had no issues so far since the fix. In regard to the battery-life, the 50% en 25% sound very reasonable as well. I ride around 4 hours, so I don’t have to fear that the Edge 820 would be fully drained during that. Sharing your experiences helps me a lot, thank you!
I have had mine since September and have not had most of the issues people have – elevation seemed to get fixed early on. Touch screen is definitely not perfect, and often requires more pressure than expected, but I’d never say it was non-functional. I do find the map screen very slow and frustrating to zoom around on, and I’m likely to stop and pull out my phone if any complexity in this is required.
I’m in Vancouver, Canada and use it every day rain or shine…that’s a whole lot of rain!
I’ve never had worries about battery life, I cannot imagine myself riding longer than the battery lasts – I think I’ve used it for ~7 hours once and it was far from dead. I usually ride with GPS+GLONASS and a bluetooth connection to phone, but without a active navigation, just the map available for me to look at when needed – often just having the reference of what the next cross-street is suits me.
If you sweat on the screen expect the display to go nuts, often switching data display fields in a rapid fire succession (the salt I guess makes it conductive). When the screen is wet, good luck swiping to the next page or anything really. Sometimes swiping pages is responsive, other times you have to be super deliberate while concentrating on it swiping to the next page like you’re trying to do some Jedi mind trick.
The altitude is hilariously inaccurate at any thing over 1000′ over sea level. I was recently in the French Alps and the elevation gain was consistently 1000+ feet below what Strava and the other person who I was riding with who was using an Apple Watch registered. I had to do an elevation correction on every ride in Strava while I was out there.
Pressing a “button” on the display will often make it change color, so it obviously knows a button got pressed, but nothing happens until you press it several times.
Navigation mostly works, but if you go off course for an extended distance (because you might know a better way or whatever, I’ve turned off re-routing because the 820’s idea of re-routing is ALWAYS make a u-turn regardless of geography) it will often get stuck and tell me to proceed to some road 20 miles back. Going off course again it will tell you you’re off course, the map will show you when you’re on the course, it knows where you are, but will not under any circumstances bring up the next turn, just insist that you go back however far to whatever random road it decided to get stuck on. This is my second replacement unit, so unless I have really bad luck, this is par for the course.
I am firmly convinced that nobody that works at Garmin actually uses their products.
As far as the refresh rate when the map is building, it’s a little slow but fine after that. I found the battery to be better but i’m pretty sure thats because I have the 820 on auto brightness mode. I rode for 1.4 hours yesterday (24 miles) with a heart-rate monitor, speed and cadence sensor and I only used 14%
Because last night I rode in the French Alps as well, and the Edge 820 and Wahoo BOLT had total elevation ascent within 25m of each other.
Like others, I’ve never had issues with sweat changing the display on any of my Edge 820’s, nor rain. I’ve ridden in temps over 104*F with it (40*C), all without issues. If you haven’t, I’d suggest checking out the sensitivity settings on your unit to see if that might assist.
Now I do agree the touchscreen can be finicky, but I wouldn’t say it’s terrible. I’d also agree some folks had issues back last year, but almost everyone I know that was having issues had those resolved with the series of firmware updates between October and January.
I’d also agree that for some reason the sustainability of a routing session seems to vary based on how you created that route. It seems that routes created on Garmin Connect tend to be flawless, whereas other sites/files tend to cause the unit more trouble. I have no idea why.
As for comparing Garmin to Wahoo, I’m trying to wrap-up a post for probably Thurs or Friday on the topic, though it’s slanted more at Bolt vs Edge 520. But I do cover some of the Edge 820 bits in there. Similar to my previous GoPro vs Garmin action cam post from this past winter.
The experiences so far vary from good to frustrating, I read above. However, making it even harder for me to choose which device is the better option for now. The touchscreen and slow/troubling routing seem to be the most common irritation factors. Almost makes me wish Garmin made the 820 with buttons instead of touchscreen.
However, it seems to me that the Wahoo Element BOLT comes close to meet the 820. The device now has live-tracking (check Ray’s article of yesterday: link to dcrainmaker.com), you can fill in an address and go while riding, Strava implementation looks to be superb, etc. One of the few disadvantages are the black and white screen, and the difficulty of seeing the turns to make. Right?
Are there people with firsthand BOLT-experiences? I would love to hear from you, so it can be set off against the Garmin.
PS: Ray, I’ll look forward to your article on the Bolt vs. the Edge 520/820.
trying to get the time seated working on the 820 It worked well on the 810 but the 820 it has the screen but does not start when moving.
What am i doing wrong or what setting needs changing.
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Ray,
link to thisisant.com lists the Edge 820 as having the ANT+ EXD profile (the only other device is the varia hud) do you know if this is accurate?
How would this work? As a field or total control of the device? Or am I overthinking a simple mistake.
Could be some interesting possibilities if this actually accurate and implemented correctly….
What kind of maps are on this unit? As you seemed to indicate, 10GB is used for maps, does that mean the map quality is good?
Just wondering whether I will have to follow your previous instructions and create maps for my areas. Assuming that you’d have to add the maps as a system image ala the 520, unless of course you can just drop them in.
I finally upgraded from my old Edge 705 to the new 820 and I love all the new “stuff”. However, since the 820 no longer has a bike profile, I’m wondering how you adjust for tire size. I use 700x25c or 28c rather than the typical 23c. How do I tell my 820 that the wheel circumference is 2105mm not 2096mm?
Thanks, Joe
You configure the tire size for the speed sensor. The Edge 820 must be connected to the speed sensor for the configuration menu to show up.
Sadly no equivalent for Crank Length on the cadence sensor.
Not sure that it makes a hill of beans worth of difference, but when transitioning from Bike Profiles on the “old” 810 to Sensor Pools on the 820 it kinda jars a bit.
I’ll live :)
No hill of beans. The setting was never used by the cadence sensor, but rather by a handful of power meters (mostly pedal ones). Now the Edge is smart enough to simply only show you the setting option if your connected power meter actually uses it.
Riding off Road..
Riding all the time
I have a big issue withe 820 and elevation data. 1) Compared to my 800, i doesn’t determine the (almost) correct altitude, not even after 5 MInuten, free, open and sunny sky ! My 800 is 1% – 2& Correct, The 820 shows about 80 meters instead of 130, which woukld be the correct altitude.
Then, when i enter a correct location, and i start a unit, i does’nt take on the altitude of the location (GPS is 2-5 Meters accurate).
3rd issue, when i enter the altitude manually, and i ride a completely flat track of about 3 km, it is going up and down and adding about 15 Meters elevation data at the end. Look slike GPS determination where it shouls have barometric.
That’s all stuff where i thought it would be eliminated with the experiences and the customer feedbacks of the 800 series, 520 and 1000.
So can anyone tell what the hell is going on here?
Cheers Hanno
Same to me. This was also the case in the first release of the edge 520. probably an old peace of software re-used for this one. Normally Garmin needs some more software updates to get it stable.
Generally speaking for altitude issues, I always start by validating nothing is blocking the altimeter holes, since that can hose things up.
Also – was this after a single ride, or happening multiple rides?
definitely multiple. did like 5 rides yet, all about the same. one thing i also noticed today: did a commute ride (in my car) and the 820 was running, start altitude was entered manually by myself. same as before. after 20 minutes, when a arrived at the office, it had abot 30 meters less then the real altitude of that location. then i’ve loadad it up to GC, and i realized that the elevation chart started 30 meters lower than the altitude that i manually entered when i started off.
by the way, what about the altimeter holes??
There is an issue with wrong elevation/total ascent/descent data (see the link bellow), elevation drift. I have the same problem, and it has nothing to do with blocking, cloudy weather, etc. Therefore I sent my unit back to the shop. However, as you can see in the last post, the upgrade seems to solve the problem.
link to forums.garmin.com
The last update only improved the calibration by location issue. The elevation drift is still not solved. The elevation has a tendency to drift to lowerr values, terminating around -40 m.
I wanted to comment that using the navigation on the Edge 820 you can only enter a destination city if the full address is entered. The other options only allow a select cities listed as upcoming list (5km approx). No keyboard appears. this happens to someone else?
how to upload opentaps is the same that is used for the Garmin Edge 810?
I received my new Edge 820 today. Getting a app display to work has been futile as apparently, the format is not supported. Also noticed the Garmin out front mount is very poorly designed. It has the unit sitting up in the wind and at a flat angle at that. I’ve contacted Garmin about this as ,imo, nobody should be expected to shell out $399 and then be forced to buy a third party mount. They also moved the buttons to the bottom which, also imo, is perplexing. This was clearly designed by avid couch sitters. I don’t think this really adds much from the Edge 800 but I will try it out on a ride before deciding whether to return it or not.
Actually, at a flat angle is best for aerodynamics. If you tilt it, it’s a pretty huge hit on aerodynamics surprisingly. I did testing in a wind tunnel on it here: link to dcrainmaker.com
I need help urgently , how can i reinstall the garmin edge 820 software?I deleted one file and now garmin 820 crash
Is that a micro-usb connection on the underside? Is that still accessible with the unit in a mount so that the garmin can be charged by a dyno hub/usb charger ?
Does this device have an “automobile” or “car” mode? In combing over this brief review, video, and owner’s manual, it does not appear to have this capability. As I travel out of town for work on day trips, the ideal device for me would have a mode for driving across state, then switching to a cycling mode so I can ride on some unknown roads before driving back home. It sounds like the Edge 1000 is still the device for this, correct?
You can add a profile and configure it to be used for driving, however if you’re looking at the map to get around, it may prove to be challenging simply form a screen size stand point but the turn by turn directions should still be helpful. The ability to have several different profiles for different purposes without having to change options every time you switch profiles is one of the biggest reasons to upgrade. Without being able to test accuracy yet, the out-front mount is the only downside to the 820 that I have encountered coming from a 800.
Great review as ever so jumped in
Seeing a problem with the training calendar. Send schedule across and the workouts and schedule.fit files are there as per my old 510 but nothing shows on the 820.
Wondering if others have seen the same or just me.
Getting the same issue! The workouts get sent and are visible under workouts, just not on the calendar?!
This is such a basic question I’m almost afraid to ask it. But here goes.
Is there an option to attaching stuff to a carbon bike part other than by rubber band?
Even today I note that Garmin still includes rubber band mounts with their most advanced unit.
The things I want to attach are cadence sensor and EPS interface. I understand rubber bands for ease of replacement but I was wondering about the cleaner look of something like adhesive with velcro.
You can use various 3rd party mounts, companies like K-Edge and Barfly make great ones that I often use.
I just have had the 820 for about a week now. Coming from a Polar M450. I really like it so far, a nice upgrade for me! I also am running the Varia Radar with it and works flawlessly!
The only concern I have would be battery life. Has anyone taken it out on a long ride? I will be doing a century ride next month, and I am not that fast, so the computer will be running for a while!
I did a century last weekend and the battery was still something like 80% or more at the end. I was going reasonably quick, just over 4hrs, but based on that I would expect it would last at least twice that. I was using live tracking (bluetooth) and following a course, but hardly ever on map screen, just HR data etc. I had backlight set to go off after 15s. Wifi was not enabled.
Well after my first ride (mountain), I lost it all. This is a new interface for me, from the 800. With the 800 you simply press reset and hold for 5 secs and it stores the ride. I think a lot of the negative comments stem from the “new” interface (gui) at least I know it is for me.
I was using a map that I had loaded from strava and it worked quite well at telling me when I was off course and when turns were coming up, much better than the 800 imho. The ||> symbol (which seems to signal an upcoming turn) was a little bit annoying but I’m sure there is a way to turn it off.
Bottom line: you have to do your homework with the unit. I didn’t and expected it to be similar to the 800…NOT!
Also, I would like to know if there is a website or software that I can use to edit a .gpx file. I would like to modify (cut/paste) from Strava or similar files.
Fitfiletools.com is a good place to start.
I’ve got a tools site here: link to dcrainmaker.com – but you’re best bet is FitFileTools
Problem is Fitfile doesn’t handle .gxp files. I’m probably too not smart enough to figure out how to convert, so it has to be really simple.
Hi, Does this bike profiles like the 810 has, i.e. support multiple sensors etc?
Thanks
It uses a sensor pool concept, so you can pair numerous sensors and it doesn’t matter as it automatically detects them. You can still have activity profiles though, which are kinda like bike profiles. They allow customization of screens/etc…
Many thanks Ray. Just collected my unit so will play with it later. Regards
Hi Ray –
Thanks for all your knowledgeable comments about this. How does it know which sensors go with which bike when uploading to Strava?
Thanks!
@John: There is no bike profile so the sensors are not associated to any bike.
A word of warning: Have spent six months trying to get Garmin edge 520 to work with a Stages power meter when in the out-front mount. It seems to work okay when on the stem, but has lots of drop outs when in a variety of out-front mounts. Other headunits work fine in the out-front position. Stages customer service has been great in trying to resolve the issue, but it seems Garmin are less helpful. Just got off the phone with Garmin (I had to contact them again as it took over 2 weeks for them to verify I had a problem!) who told me the same issue is present with the 820, and there is no solution on the horizon. I was told neither device was faulty, but as the Stages was a “third party” device they don’t routinely test these before releasing a device. Given that the issue was clearly known about with the 520 before the release of the 820, I’d suggest careful consideration before buying either of these if you have or intend to buy a Stages (or similar) power meter.
@bmonster – Thanks for the information. Maybe I should consider getting another head unit or PM. Honestly, I think the Stages gen2 is the culprit, since all my other Ant+ sensors can communicate with the 520.
Is there an explanation given? Because i ordered the 820 and want to buy the stages pm for my mtb.
@Ray, could you test?
No real explanation given I’m afraid. I was told Stages and Garmin were working on a solution together, but were unable to come up with one!
I have had no such issue with my Stages power meter while using the 520….I just purchased the 820 and do not anticipate a problem. I do have the newest model of the stages so perhaps it’s your model (older? )….
I used the 820 on my bike with a Stages (can’t remember if it’s first or second gen) all this week without problems recording the PM data – maybe 75-100 commute miles. The 820 was in a garmin out-front mount on the handlebars.
I have the newer version of Stages power meter.
I put a screen protector (got one for the 520) on, and it completely transformed the touchscreen. It works flawlessly now. The heat finally broke here, so I probably won’t get a chance to see if the screen protector prevents sweat drops from activating/changing screens like it was before, but I can’t say enough positive things about how much better it works now. If you were having problems with the touchscreen being weirdly too sensitive and at the same time not selecting things when you touched them, try a screen protector, it immediately transformed the 820 into something awesome.
Yeah I agree.
The screen is better than the 1000 already, but the screen protector helped me as well.
Was it a glass screen protector or plastic one? I did a quick eBay search and those were the options. Any link you can post? Thanks.
Here is the one I got. No idea how it will hold up long term, but it definitely helped in the short term. link to smile.amazon.com
Thanks! I will take a look. Have a good weekend :)
Does this do audio turn by turn directions where it talks to you? Or beeps to tell you a turn is coming up? Or are the directions just visual by text? You can disable the crash notification feature right?
Im probably going to get one just for the extra memory. Im tired of plugging into the computer and switching maps so much. Such a shame the 520 had so low internal storage and no micro sd slot.
I was using the turn-by-turn navigation with my 820 yesterday. It pops up notifications on the screen when a turn is coming up, and if you have the Garmin app running on your phone, your phone will text to speech the notification at the same time (I think I had to enable that somewhere on the garmin or on the phone, won’t swear to it one way or the other). The text to speech also tells you, after a turn, how far it is to your next turn (which isn’t displayed on the unit’s screen) which is nice. I have the unit’s beep sounds turned off so I can’t speak to how it beeps when navigating. I haven’t set up the crash notification feature (you’d have to tell it who to notify, at the very least), but I assume you could disable it once you’d set it up.
How can I use the 820 to monitor odometer readings for multiple bikes?
Would you please add a row to your comparison tables to indicate which units have the following features, all of which were present on the Edge 605 and 705 but missing on the Edge Touring (which made it inferior for Touring!):
– Car/Motorcycle routing
– Pedestrian routing
– Off-road (as the crow flies) routing
Thank you.
My bike computer took a dive today so I am in need of getting a new computer… My last computer was a Mio Cyclo505… I got it because it could pair with both Bluetooth and ANT+ devices… This unit was terrible and I want to make sure I dont make the same mistake again…. How does the new Wahoo Elemnt really compare to the new Garmin Edge 820? I like the idea of the Elemnt supporting both bluetooth and ANT+ components but how dose it stand up, head to head, with the newly released Garmin Edge 820? Is there another unit I should be looking for?
Anyone figured out how to turn of the voice announcements on your cell phone (without unpairing) when riding a course? Kinda freaks out the riders behind me…
You do it on the app on the phone. On my iphone, I bring up the Garmin app, hit the “More …” icon, hit Garmin Devices, select the 820, select Device Settings, select Audio Prompts, and there is a “Navigation Alerts” on/off button.
Oh, look at that!
Problem is… Mine was set to “Off”, and it was clearly yelling at me! Looks like I owe a call to garmin support.
Thanks!
Does anyone know whether the 820 needs a special doo-hicky to allow it to rear the gear position of a 2016 Di2 Ultegra groupset, or is it built in now?
Still needs it. It’s because without the doohicky, the Di2 system doesn’t actually broadcast anything.
Ray,
Is there no longer a crank arm length option on the 820 for power meters? Also I found that even when I download Garmin IQ apps, they somehow don’t show up under the apps but as weird looking data fields. When I click IQ it tells me to go to the Web but I have successfully logged in and downloaded apps. Little weird.
Josh
It’s still there for me, but does depend on which power meter you’re using. Previously Garmin units might display the crank length setting for anything,versus now it’s just for power meters that actually need it. What unit are you using?
Ray,
I am using the powertap P1’s. Since the bike profiles are gone I am not sure where the crank length would be.
Thanks,
Josh
Ahh, gotchya. Yup, for that you’ll actually set crank length within the sensor menu. So after pairing the P1’s, in the sensor menu tap on the P1’s and you can set it there. You’ll need to ensure that it’s connected to the P1’s at the time you set it though (so go to your bike and spin the crank arms a few times to wake it up).
Thanks Ray! It worked perfectly. I just didn’t have the power meter awake when I was looking for it. A bit tricky
Got my new shiny 820 from Clever Training couple of days ago.
Used it on few rides so far, noticed over sensitive touch screen like others reported, haven’t used navigation yet.. so, can’t comment on that.
For bothers me the most, at this point, is connection drop. Phone connect/disconnect warnings, no text/email notifications and constant connection drop with Edge Remote.
Remote won’t connect back until I go to settings, disable and re enable sensor.
Does anybody else have remote issues as well?
The 820 has a second Bluetooth “pairing” that need to be setup to enable the 820 to receive txt/call notification from your phone. Check your phone settings and make sure that it is paired with “BLE_Edge 820” in addition to “BT_Edge 820”. I missed this initially in the setup and was having the same problem.
Got mine. I did notice that to get the Text and Call notifications I had to have 2 bluetooth connections. The 820 actually says that under bluetooth, but the print is so small it is pretty hard to read. I made my own screen protector with some 3M Scotchguard Clear Bra Paint Protector. It works just fine. I already had some I used on the bike to keep paint from being rubbed off by cable housings. Navigation works great using a TCX file. I will have to change my pre-turn warnings as they are overlaying the standard Navigation pop-up. Even with being a smaller unit it is easier to read than my old Edge 800. Pretty happy with it!
That’s a great idea, using the clear-bra material. So, was the response really good with the film installed? I don’t find mine too sensitive now, but I would like to protect the screen somewhat. The other concern I might have is removal of the film. On my bike, it’s almost impossible to remove without pulling some of the clear coat off.
I have had no problem removing it so far – in fact it took a couple of failed attempts before I got it installed correctly ( bubbles ). I had a little problem with the screen being too sensitive before the protector – no problems since. I have some issues swiping from page to page. I started using the arrows at the bottom that appear after touching the screen.
I know the size of the 820 and 520 was stated to be identical, however in the comparison photos it appears like the side shape is somewhat different. Maybe it’s just the colors, but I’m curious because I would like to get a silicon protective shell and since the 820 aftermarket items are not yet available can I use a 520 shell?
It won’t fit! Already tried :(
I have OEM Garmin silicone case from my 520 on 820, it does fit but doesn’t stay on. Looks like 820 just a little ticker
Ray, Has the implementation of Workouts been improved since the 510?
I used workout a lot with my 510, but I would love audible alerts of when to start and complete an interval.
Also is it possible to disable on-screen alerts? ie. so it doesn’t tell me if my power is too low or too high during an interval.
Hopefully responsiveness is improved also.
Thanks
I really appreciate your comprehensive product reviews. Thank you.
I’m looking forward to your full in-depth review of the 820.
The faster satellite acquisition versus my 705 is almost worth the price of admission.
A confirmation that the 820 allows for swapping the default map (which I assume is region-specific, depending on where the unit was purchased) with a map for a different region, will seal the deal.
If the default map is swappable, let us know if it is via the same method as in previous models, i.e. by replacing “gmapsupp.img” with a different map image with the same file name.
Best wishes.
The quarter turn mount all by itself is worth the price of admission. It’s much easier than the 705 mount, and, unlike the 705, I haven’t had one break. My 705 mount broke twice (once I caught the 705, once I didn’t).
As for maps, if it is the “gmapsupp.img” trick that has to be used, than the 820 isn’t for me. Earlier Edges, including your 705 and the 800 I currently use, will take multiple maps on board, not just one, and the name can be anything .img. Having to use the gmapsupp trick would be a major step backwards from Garmin.
I haven’t messed with map swappage yet on it, though, I know a few readers have – and one posted the details somewhere in the comments section (was successful). I believe he was just doing the .img swap, but I thought another also did it with Mapsource to add maps.
Had the most lovely response from Garmin today! LoL. We talk about an Edge 820 Bundle (S/N was provided with the request) and obviously latest Software update on. I asked re: WiFi issues, Touchscreen sensitivity issues, connection issues re Ant+ Shimano D-Fly, and super slow routing… Here is what the “pro” answers:
“Please be aware that we have escalated a ticket with Engineering regarding the touchscreen sensitivity on the Edge 820. Customers are complaint about the touchscreen being too sensitive. At this time we believe improvements can be made through a software update therefore we should not exchange customer devices for replacements.
The Edge 820 is not compatible with Wifi so the customer will not be able to set this up on there. The Edge 820 is also not listed as compatible with Shimano on FAQS.
With regards to the slowness calculating and swapping profiles I would advise that the customer check the software on the device is up to date as well as the maps. If these issues persist please let us know so we can look into this further. ”
Kind of speechless!!! I have to say I do not feel quite well understood ;-) @Ray, I donated you your 20$ subscription as I like what you do. Maybe you can have a chat with them, but this is too funny… Response received this morning via Garmin Switzerland.
@JZ Garmin is operated by a third party in Switzerland, so I’m not sure who you talked to.
Correct JC, that was the lovely German speaking gentlemen I was on the phone with. He thanked me for the English message he forwarded to his international Garmin support folks, who responded as you can read c/p from the response email. This response comes from Garmin, and was forwarded this morning with a lovely cover note in German….
Considering it does have WiFi…hmm…well, not surprising.
In any case, yes, I have escalation about the touch-screen 820 sensitivity on my list/to-do items for today with Garmin.
And thanks for the support!
@Ray Did you got the WiFi working? I mean it is obviously build in – my one catches the network for 1 sec and loses it right after and I was able to register the different WLANs via the Garmin Express software. Also the “The Edge 820 is also not listed as compatible with Shimano on FAQS” is a kind of a joke as a) Di2 Integration is on the standard list of functionality, and b) what FAQ is Garmin refering to, no FAQ for edge 820 is anywhere active on their websites. On the Swiss-German or German one there is not even the 820 listed, while on the garmin.com the content is still empty. The issue seems just with the antenna placement or Ant+ signal strength.
I couldn’t get my 820 to join my wifi networks (a home one with a password, or a work one with an open network) – I noticed that in the settings on the device I can enter a network name/password by hand (instead of doing it with Garmin Express). I did that, and now it works great. I tried to do it a few times with GE without success; maybe there was something else happening besides enter-on-device v. enter-via-GE, but it worked for me.
So WiFi is funny.
The first unit I have, WiFi uploads perfectly every time. The second unit I have (configured via GC), shows my network saved, but never fires and nothing ever uploads (even when I force it).
I’ll try the trick above tomorrow on setting manually on device. I may have done that at some point on my first unit, perhaps explaining why that worked fine. Interesting.
(And Changren – I didn’t get a prompt to install any WiFi update this afternoon via GC or WebUpdater…interesting…)
Perhaps it was a half-baked update promptly removed by Garmin :)
@CY / @Ray – Interesting one the WiFi update… My manually set-up WiFi said “Failed to connect to #SSIDname”. Regardless which Network I try… With the pre-set via Garmin Express it tries to connect “searching”, but then just stops w/o failure messages. At least Garmin tried to add the WiFi maybe – remember, they responded to me the 820 doesn’t have it :-)
Mine is connected to home wifi on the device and searches for it when back but never uploads it. no failure message either.
Garmin has some really specific – I would call that limited – requirement for WiFi on the 820. This is from a post in the 820 forum:
2.4 GHz band
802.11 B or G (N and AC are not supported, nor is 802.1x)
WEP / WPA / WPA2 security (WPA-Enterprise is not supported)
Channels 1-11 for North American devices, channels 1-13 for International devices
link to forums.garmin.com
I have attached some screenshots in this post showing how a successful Wi-Fi upload looks like.
link to forums.garmin.com
Hello, I have a Garmin Fenix 3 HR so wrist-based heart rate. Can the Edge 820 display the HR from my Fenix 3 HR? It would be rather dull to have to wear a heart rate monitor to display HR on the Edge 820 since I got rid off the strap thanks to my Fenix 3 HR.
In other words : can I pair the Fenix 3 HR with the Edge 820 to display HR?
I have been using the Edge 800 for the past few years, and mostly I have been very happy with it, except for the navigation during pre-loaded courses. If I miss a turn somewhere, and I go off the course, the device will only notify me that I am back on the course if somehow I find the way by myself. However, if I go off course far enough to not find my way back by myself, the navigation feature will only send me back to where the course started rather then back to where I went off or the nearest point to rejoin the course. Any improvement on this with the Edge 820? Thank you in advance! :-)
Does anyone have any luck installing the Wi-Fi A1 Firmware update for the Edge 820? It showed up in my Garmin Connect app (on my Mac) yesterday. On rebooting the 820, i would see the prompt to install the Wi-Fi update but it would get stuck at 0 (this counter does not progress beyond 0). I left the update running for more than one hour and it didn’t do anything.
Typo: I meant to write Garmin Express, not Garmin Connect.
Looks like this was an older piece of SW, I run already 2.40 I believe and yours shows 2.10?
I’m not sure what the version 2.10 is for. I think it may be for the Wi-Fi software version. My Edge 820 was at version 2.30 before i updated it to 3.0 yesterday.
Hi, I have added a D Fly unit but when setting up on the 820 it only gives me 11 speed option but I have 10 speed -am I missing something?
Thanks
You can configure your gears in settings/sensors/di2/sensor details
Thanks Greg but I meant that I can only see 11 speed on the set up screen.
Picture attached .
Thanks again
Does it matter as long as it can handle enough gears? As long a gear 1 shows as 1 then with 10 speed it *should* work and you will just never see it display 11. The problem would be trying to run an 11 speed system when the settings only went up to 10. (this is all theoretical as I have neither an 820 – yet – or Di2 gears).
Ray or anyone, has anyone figured out how to take courses, like gpx courses downloaded from another site like MTB Project or similar, and wirelessly transfer them to the 820? Garmin seems to want to have you be limited to creating courses in Garmin Connect but I can’t seem to find a way to simply get a file from another website onto my 820 without connecting to my computer and dragging to the New Files folder. Sometimes while traveling I might find out about a route or may decide to try a route that I didn’t preload on my Edge and I don’t want to have to bring a laptop. I always travel with ipad and iphone and would love to be able to do this with one of these devices. Thanks.
Hi Jan, I am also interested to know how to do it (both wireless or connected).
Actually I dont even know how to follow a GPX file put directly into the edge 820 memory. Following your comments I dragged, in file manager, two gpx files no the “NewFiles” folder and it seems the 820 did not respond well. It refused to start afterwards! I then connected it again to Garmin express and it restored, but for some reason the two mentioned GPX files disappeared from the “NewFiles” folder! Maybe this was the reason why the 820 refused to start. Maybe this folder is not for GPX files?!
Anyway, in your case:
– whas this “NewFiles” (you mention “New Files”) the folder you used to put gpx files?
– what was the menu sequence you used to take a GPX track?
Thank you.
Rui
Rui, I just followed the instructions on Ray’s previous post here:
link to dcrainmaker.com
Thanks Jan.
I found those instructions on post #437. I put both GPX and TCX files on the “NewFiles” folder and it showed up on the Courses list of the edge 820. I have to test it!
Thank you!
Rui
OK, so I’ve figured it out thanks to some posts in the Edge 1000 subforum. Thanks to mcinner1 and DAVID.MEI over on this post link to forums.garmin.com…/t-324675.html
“Garmin Connect Mobile does the Job. The easiest is if you plan the trip directly on connect, than you can send it to the device via bluetooth.
Another possibility:
1) upload the file (previously saved on dropbox/onedrive/google drive) on garmin connect to the activities using the web-interface (not the app)
2) open the app, the new activity and save it as a course
3) send the course to the device via bluetooth
This should work theoretically, I often have the problem that the gpx-file cannot be uploaded to garmin connect and sometimes it’s not possible to send the course to the device, don’t know yet the reasons of failure, it seems quite random to me…”
The key is to download the iCab mobile app onto the ipad. This app has a built in download manager and lets you download a gpx file from another website directly onto the ipad, and then from the download manager button, you save it to your dropbox. From there, you need to make sure it has the .gpx suffix, so rename if necessary. Then go over to the Garmin Connect website, not app, and go to your activities page and on the right side of the page is a button to “import” which lets you choose the file from dropbox. Go ahead and upload the file into your Connect account. Open the file in connect by clicking on it in your activity list and on the far upper right side of the page is a gear button which has the option to “save as course.” Go ahead and do that and then when you sync your device with Garmin Connect it will now be available on your Edge device.
Simple, right?
Come on Garmin. Please make this easier. But at least it’s doable now.
Question, Regarding maps for the 820.. there are multiple maps and files loaded > .img and .sum files.
If i want to load OS maps should i remove the factory installed maps? OS maps seem to have more detail
Thanks and keep up the good work !
I am new to strava live segments with the 820 (previously had 800) – I can’t get it to work though, can anyone tell me what I am missing?
I have Strava Premium, starred a bunch of segments, synced with 820, enabled live segments on Strava (can’t remember where), there are a list of enabled segments on the 820 showing up. I am on latest 3.0 software which updated today.
But when I ride, I never get the Go! message. I have definitely ridden over starred segments.
Are there any other pre-conditions? E.g. does 820 have to be connected to phone? Do I have to be riding a course? Any special kind of course? Something else?!
Thanks
I might have answered my own question – if you are following a course segments don’t work, right? I am almost always following a course. I saw this on some very old forum comments about 810 but assumed it might have been fixed by now.
For me they don’t work either. They are listed and enable on my edge but I also never get a message. Independent if I follow a course or not. Firmware v3.0. Any other suggestions?
Just confirming, I rode again today with no course and live segments was working.
Correct, courses and live segments don’t mix on the Garmin devices. They do work together on the Wahoo ELEMNT, fwiw.
Two questions:
1- What is the purpose of the soft button “IQ” that appears on the bottom right of every page? If I press it it only gives some instructions on how to set up Connect IQ. Couldnt this button be used for some more useful function?
2- Are there any proper Manual for this cycling computer? The one provided is just quick start manual, and what I learned about this gadget was in this DCRainMaker page (Thanks DC RainMaker!).
Thank you
Rui
@Rui:
1. That IQ soft button is pretty much useless now. A complete waste of space.
2. Here’s the link to the official manual:
link to support.garmin.com
Thanks a lot!!
I take what i wrote about the IQ soft button back. If you have the 3.0 firmware, you can download a connect IQ application (not data field). Right now, there is only two Connect IQ applications available for the 820. Once you have installed the application, pressing the soft button will take you to a menu listing the installed application.
On my 800 the courses always came up sorted by the closest to my current position first. On the 820 they seem to be sorted in order by course name. Is there a way to change this? I usually have a large amount of courses on the unit and finding the correct one becomes difficult when sorted by name.
Anyone have the release notes for the 3.0 firmware ?
Here:
link to www8.garmin.com
Wifi was working for me, but now with 3.0 software, the unit crashes shortly after it connects. Sigh.
A system reset seems to have fixed the Wifi crash, but now I have to configure it all again.
After installing the latest update bluetooth to my iPhone didn’t work. i finally had the phone “Forget” the 2 bluetooth connections and then re-paired and all is working now. Wifi also started working after the update – I had never been able to connect before.
As we all know, the screen is too sensitive to sweat falling on it. Before the update I was able to Lock the Screen and still scroll through the individual screens. Since the update it seems they took this functionality away from us which leaves us with just one screen while riding. Am I missing something on settings that would go back to being able to scroll (not auto scroll) through the screens while in Lock Screen mode. Pretty useless if you can’t. I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have taken back that Elemnt.
During an activity, iIf you press the ON button for a while (~3 sec) it makes it possible to lock the screen.
Locking it isn’t the problem. In fact I don’t know how you would use this without locking the screen as every time you sweat on the device it messes it up. The problem it before the update when you were operating under Lock Screen you could still swipe between screens. Now since the update when I lock the screen I can’t swipe between data screens. Not very functional.
Ah, OK, sorry but I misread what you wrote. I confirm that when locked one cannot swipe between screens and I completely agree on the usefulness of that functionality now removed (!). I hope in a next update (I believe there will be many) we will get that functionality back!
Good afternoon, after reviewing the comments in regards to the screen sensitivity, it has become apparent that the Edge 820’s screen is far to sensitive depending on the type of rider you are. The way I have found to get around that issue is to lock the screen (Which in fact locks it and allows no other usability with the touchscreen except for the physical buttons on the bottom of the device) and use an Edge Remote. This is an expensive fix, but I have come to prefer the Edge remote to the touchscreen anyways and use it with my older Edge 810 as well. I hope this was helpful!
Hi Ray,All
Had the 820 since 10 days and found that quite a few of the initial quirks were in fact user errors.
A lot of the comments here helped me as the Garmin manual is as usual rather incomplete.
Seems that I’m one of the few who are not unhappy with the Touchscreen, but I can’t reproduce the reports of a finger hoovering 5 Millimeter above the screen activating it. Also my sweat typically goes the others way… ?
Just updated to Firmware Version 3.0 and WiFi works finally.
One thing that is still broken is the following:
When zooming out distance in the elevation data page it gets Stuck at 20 km. Trying to Zoom in again only toggles between 20.09 and 20.0 km. Doesn’t seem like User error, so maybe Garmin could fix that at some point.
Otherwise fairly happy with the device, but I’m a fenix2 User so probably pretty expectations managed…
Cheers
Clemens
I have the 820 and one thing I’m really missing from the 810 is multiple bike profiles. Really bummed that is missing. :(
You might want to check out my latest video on exactly this topic (bike profiles/activity profiles/sensors/etc…). It helps explain things a bit: link to youtube.com
I will check it out. I understand why they aren’t “necessary” but it sure was nice to have the unit not hunting for irrelevant sensors since they weren’t in the profile. I’m headed out right now for the first time on bike #2 since upgrading to the 820. We’ll see shortly how the 3.0 firmware behaves. :)
I wish the 820 could integrate with Google Maps on mobile phone via Garmin Connect.
I want to send navigation/route suggestion from Google Maps to 820 head unit. You know, when on the go, inputting destination address on mobile phone is much easier.
Or, could Garmin provide a “remote keyboard” interface to allow me using smart phone with garmin connect to input data?
While waiting for the impossible I recommend using Google maps to get coordinates and type the coordinates to Edge. That is the fastest way to get a location from Google maps to Edge.
On the touchscreen issues – I tried with a screen protector on today, and maybe it was a bit better, but it’s not really the sensitivity which has been the biggest issue. The problem is that sometimes when you touch an item it briefly flashes but doesn’t actually move forward. You keep jabbing away and sometimes if you press and hold that works better. But clearly the unit has registered a press because it blinks blue. That’s pretty frustrating, especially on the bike. I don’t know whether it’s software or hardware, I’ve tried playing around a bit more at home to see if I can nail down a pattern (when does it just “flash” and when does it “take”). So far no obvious pattern other than perhaps when you first go into a menu it is worse, and then picks up. I wonder if it’s a processing overload thing.
I just got one of these and the auto-upload does not seem to be working – the unit seems to be having a hard time maintaining a connection to Wi-Fi. Any view?
Yeah, some folks are having weird issues on the WiFi front. It seems configuration via Garmin Express is less successful than configuration via directly on the unit.
My minor Wi-Fi issue of not able to connect to the work Wi-Fi network has worsened to not being able to see any Wi-Fi network and unable to manually to connect any Wi-Fi network. When I first got the 820, I was able to connect to my home Wi-Fi network via Garmin Express. Now, after deleting my home Wi-Fi network from the 820 to troubleshoot the Wi-Fi issue, I am unable to connect to my home network because the 820 is not finding any.
WIFI used to work just fine for me, but now it won’t connect to my home network. I deleted it and tried to reconfigure from the unit, but no luck. Anyone else been able to make this work? Considering the phone never stayed connected with the 820 for more than 3 minutes, I’ve been pretty underwhelmed with the 820 so far since basically none of the fancy features they advertise actually work.
A good site for bike lovers
Excuse me for my first message. It was my presentation
I have the 820 explore since 5 days. But it has got the same problem in Italy. Quote 40-50 meter below the real quote. If you correct it, the quote change in ten minutes and come back to the wrong number.
If you go and come back in one hour, and the wheatther is non changed, you have the same error.
How is it possible, with GPS sat, Glonass sat and barometric cell ?
How can firmrware fix it? The hole is free …. I didn’t find any world about altitude issue in the 520 software history ..
Thank you and sorry for my english
M
Got my new 820 last week and been having trying to set up the incident notification ever since. I guess I don’t understand how to set up emergency contacts in GC. Can anyone help?
@Jeff: The Garmin Connect app for iOS used to have a menu under Settings that allows you to choose your emergency contacts (you must allow Garmin Connect to access your Address Book). That’s how I initially defined it but for some reason, I no longer see that menu in Garmin Connect. I have tried uninstalling and re-installing the Garmin Connect app but that did not reveal the menu. The emergency contact that I configured previously are still there, I just lost the ability to change it.
I have the same issue. Does emergency contact need to have a Garmin Connect account?
I would say no. The 820 setup message says it just has to be in your contacts list.
Hi,
Just to let you know that something i’ve see is that your emergency contact must have only-one phone number. If it have more than one, you will not be able to select it.
I’ve create a duplicate contact with only a mobile number and everything works just fine.
Let me know if it helps!
Steph
I have no way idea how to even find the emergency contact menu. Where do you even begin to make selections?
Thanks for the response.
@Daniel:
There’s no requirement for the emergency contact to have a Garmin Connect account. On iOS, the contact has to be in the Address Book (perhaps it’s similar on an Android device). I don’t know how Garmin Connect chooses a phone number if the contact has multiple phone numbers. It’s definitely not smart enough to choose a mobile phone versus a landline. So to force Garmin Connect to use the correct emergency contact phone number, I deleted other phone numbers, leaving only one phone number.
@Jeff: If you have the latest version of Garmin Connect, there is a bug that prevents the Incident Detection menu from showing up. The Incident Detection menu is what allows you to add/change your emergency contact/s.
You may have to wait for Garmin to release an updated Garmin Connect app with the fix.
I have just deleted and uploaded the latest version of Garmin Connect and I still don’t see Incident detection menu. Does Garmin even know this is an issue you think? I guess I will continue to use Road ID for now.
Thanks for the great response.
@Jeff: If you have never configured Incident Detection (using older version of Garmin Connect), uninstalling and re-installing Garmin Connect won’t work for you.
Garmin is aware of this bug:
link to forums.garmin.com
Last night after finishing a trainer ride using the 820 I was prompted to update the unit to version 3.10. After doing so and restarting a message popped up asking if i wanted to set up incident detection, which I did, but after doing that I opened the GC app and looked for the menu option to update the list and still can’t find that. So who knows what brought that about! I guess it would be good to set up a test “incident” to test it.
I’ve been using the 820 for a couple weeks now, and generally like it. One nice feature missing from the 800:
– When one is navigating a course, and on a normal data screen, then the 800 would pop over to the map screen to display the turn.
– The 820 just puts up a notification on the bottom of the data screen.
I found the former far easier to read, and much more informative, e.g. quick right-then-left turns across a main road, or tricky multi-way intersections. So when I’m seriously navigating, I’ll just leave the 820 on the map screen, and thus not have access to the rest of my metrics.
Have I missed an option?
P.S. I also accidentally discarded one ride; the save/discard UI does seem more fragile than the 800.
I have noticed this also. i actually missed a turn this weekend at a quick left then left again. I also noticed with the latest release update the unit is indicating turns when there are no streets around. Seems like they have introduced a navigation bug.
same here, switched from the 800 to the 820… Would not recommend this. the navigation in busier places is simply broken!
the old 800 and still available 810 are better. Especially with the not so responsive touch screen, constantly switching between data and map pages is not fun!
If I buy the Edge 820 as is, do I also need to buy sensors for my wheels for speed?
Nope. Only if indoors and you want speed/distance.
Ray,
I haven’t seen anything related to metabolic profiles and the Edge 820, so I I might as well ask about it.
I have a New Leaf metabolic profile loaded on my Edge 800. Is this portable to the Edge 820? Or is there a newer, better, more accurate method of measuring work output / calorie output on a ride using the Edge 820? If so, what the hell is that method?
Thanks again for a great review, but more importantly, for all of the follow up answers that you provide.
Unfortunately after New Leaf went out of business a few years back, then Garmin stopped supporting it in new devices (kinda logical). There’s really been nothing since then.
The closest you’d get would be Kj, using a power meter.
Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t support something or someone that went out of business either.
That being said, does that mean that Garmin Training Center will no longer work to upload the file to an 820? Or is it now completely useless?
Thankfully I do have a powermeter, so I can always go the route of converting Kj to calories. Along those lines, any opinion on this article by Sean Burke regarding this exact same subject? link to crankcycling.com
I found it a little strange. Equating kJ to Calories is probably about the right thing to do for the level of accuracy you can achieve outside of a laboratory, but he insists that everyone (everyone!) is exactly 21% efficient all of the time, no matter external conditions (altitude, temperature). Yes, your Garmin is lying to you about calories, but so, to a lesser extent, is your power meter, because your efficiency on a particular ride probably isn’t knowable and probably isn’t constant. And that leaves out the question of whether your power meter is accurately measuring the work you’re doing (probably in most cases, but not if you don’t have it calibrated right).
Yeah, the other problem is using a 7 year old device as the baseline, a lot has changed then. For example, had a HR strap been used on an even semi-current device it would have leveraged FirstBeat for the calorie pieces, which is a heck of a lot better than just doing simple distance*weight calculations.
Today a new Garmin box with a 820 arrived to replace my 800.
I make rides between 120 and 200 km and most of the time upload and follow tracks.
I thought my 800 got slow and battery dies after 4 to 5 hours.
So full of enthusiasm I updated to the newest release and uploaded 2 tracks to the 820.
A 180km track took 90 seconds and a 70km track still took 60 seconds.
Then when finally the track was uploaded the map reacts really really slow if you change the zoom level or move the card around, to for example see on the screen where the track is going.
With the 800 this was only a few seconds, and moving the map around was not perfect but kind of acceptable.
In all the earlier comments only a few people complained the new 820 is slow. I have a hard time to believe that a 5 year newer model takes much much longer to upload tracks.
So now my question is whether it’s only my 820 that is that slow or do all 820s take 1 minute for a small course of 70km?
Thanks for your considerations!
Having an hard time deciding between 810 and 820… Is the 820 really worth almost double than a heavily-discounted 810..? I understand the 810 UI & touchscreen might be less responsive?
I ordered both 820 and 810… but will have to decide b4 the goods arrive. I assume the 810 is already obsolete, but I wonder if it would be just a Good enough cheaper alternative to 820.
no – it’s just if you want the latest and great. Apps arent game changers yet either.
Hi,
Are you still expecting to review this month. I’m thinking of replacing my Edge 800 and I’m really interested in how they compare especially with the Vector Pedals.
Nick
Cant even get my new edge 820 to finish booting up. Just freezes at the Garmin screen while turning on. Out of the box, was able to connect to computer, switch to an openstreet map and add some routes. Disconnected from computer now can’t get it to turn on. Not exactly happy with the 820 so far. Any tricks to get this thing to turn on???
How long did you wait before giving up? Usually after loading a new map, it take a little bit longer for the start-up process to complete. If it’s still frozen, try pressing and holding the power button for 10 seconds.
Hello Joe, had the same behavior with my 820 device freezing while bootin up. In my case it was the map files that were somehow corrupt. Deletet them somehow, then all was fine..
Can someone please comment on the Workout functionality of the 820.
Specifically, does it give audible alerts when starting and ending an interval?
This would be very useful for outdoor training.
Thanks
Yes, it gives a count-down timer via beeps.
Ray, great review on the 820. Just a question, which continent/country do the pre-loaded base maps come standard with? Is it based on where you purchased the unit from?
It’s based on the region it’s sold in. So in the US, it’s the US maps, while in Europe it’s the European maps. But you can add maps if you need to for free using the usual 3rd party free maps method.
The lastest update hasnt resolved the lag in mapping. Anyone else experiencing this issue?
Noticed there’s a bug in displaying the distance when creating a route in the navigation section: distance is in miles even when metric is selected. It says kms however. Free 50% bonus!
Sorry, false alarm, distance is correct
Ray,
Just got my Garmin 820 yesterday. I’ve been using a Sigma Rox 6.0 and iPhone with Mapmyride+. Hopefully this unit works ok. I’ve used Garmin products for years and they work ok. I also bought a POSMA DB1 v4.0 BT cycling computer for its BT sensors. (I want the iPhone Mapmyride+ to work properly)
I liked your review of features. The 820 is a bit pricey compared to other units, but it has more features.
Thanks for the reviews.
Can anyone verify that Garmin’s Training Calendar works on the Edge 820? I have one, and no matter what I do I can never load my calendar on there?! (I’ve got the workouts loaded under workouts, but not under the calendar for some reason?)
I’ve contacted Garmin but funnily enough, no reply.
I have been reading that a lot of people were having issues with wifi. For some reason I thought that mine was working the whole time so I didn’t look into it until the other day. I saw that it was not connected but had my network listed. I clicked the button and it searched for my network. It found it and was connected for like 5 seconds, then it went off. I tried again, and the same thing happened. It will not hold on to my network. Does Garmin know about this problem? Has anyone figured out how to make it work?
Is having wifi really that important?
I had similar problems with the wifi on my 820 when I set up my wifi networks with the Garmin Express app on my computer. I deleted my wifi networks from the device and then set them up on the device directly instead and it worked fine. Maybe it was just luck, but that’s what worked for me back with the previous version of the firmware (2.40 or something?). I love wifi because I don’t need to run the Garmin app on my phone to upload a ride – I get home/work, stop the device and woosh it’s uploaded. The device will also update Strava live segments if you have strava premium, and it will download software updates over wifi (which it won’t do if you sync via your phone). About the only thing you can’t do easily is download a route from strava/ridewithgps/etc onto the 820 – still need to plug your 820 into the computer for that, alas.
See that’s what weird, mine automatically uploads to my phone, then Strava right after I save it on the 820. That’s why I was wondering if I was missing something. I have also been able install updates right from the device. Is this correct, without wifi?
You need to be running the Garmin app (or have recently run it — so it’s still active in the background) on your phone for uploads etc to work. But yes, if you have it there, it all works the same as wifi. (I didn’t know the 820 would get software updates via the phone though, I thought that was wifi only. My mistake.) I agree it works well without wifi, but the wifi removes the phone as an intermediary step for all of this.
If you want to test if the Wi-Fi setup is working correctly, disable Bluetooth on the 820, start a ride and then save it. If that ride gets uploaded, then your Wi-Fi setup works.
I see some webshops have dropped the price of the Edge 1000 to as low as 379eu. So that’s 20 cheaper than the 820.
Is there any reason not to go for the 1000?
I have both the Edge 820 (bought a few weeks ago) and the Edge 1000 (bought two years ago).
The 820 has some newer software features that the 1000 doesn’t have. It seems to have a finer grained recovery advisor than the 1000. I don’t remember seeing anything on my 1000 about having a vo2 max estimation, but Ray’s features list says it does so maybe I just missed it. The 820 has Group Track and Ray’s article says the 1000 will get that around the end of the year. The 1000 doesn’t (today) have a Battery Save Mode like the 820.
The screen size difference is significant. I think the 1000 looks a bit ridiculous on my road bike. It looks right at home on my Surly bikepacking bike with Jones Loop H-Bar handlebars. The 820 looks too small on the Surly. If you’re middle aged ish, and reading smaller text is not easy, the larger screen on the 1000 is a nice feature.
The tech specs for both units say 15 hours of battery life, but I get consistently 10 hours of battery life on the Edge 1000 without using navigation (I have this superstition that running nav — or maybe having the maps / elevation pages open — may increase battery use. I have not tested this carefully and I could be completely wrong about this). Last weekend I went on a thirteen our ride with the 820 running nav the whole time, most of it watching the maps/elev pages, and I ended up enabling Battery Save Mode the last few hours to get home with 7% left. It was great to have that feature, it wasn’t supposed to be a thirteen hour ride and was worried about losing my nav before I got back to familiar streets if the battery pooped out. :)
Ray’s article talks about the 1000 v. 820 a bunch, but these are the differences that have mattered to me.
I bought Garmin Edge 820 last week but I have returned it today because it had two major prbolems with elevation and temperature readings.
(1) Temperature: temperature shown was always at least 5°C higher than room temperature as shown by thermometers and by Garmin Edge 800. Nothing to do with my hands, this temperature difference persisted even after leaving 820 alone on the desk for hours. Once I grabbed the device, temperetaure shown would rise very swiftly. This is normal with all devices, but very dramatic with Edge 820: if room temperature was 20°C, Edge 820 would show at least 25, then rise to 32-33 after I was losely holding it with my fingers for one or two minutes. This sincerely seems too much to me
(2) Elevation: after adjusting elevation to the known altitude of 14 meters of my house, the Edge 820 would reach about -30m in 5 to 10 minutes. No matter how many times I set the correct altitude, the device would always be adamant to go back to -30. If I switched the GPS off, this problem would disappear leaving me pretty puzzled, since the device seemed to rely only on (incorrect) elevation data from the GPS and not at all on the barometer. I also didn’t manage to find the setting to automatically adjust elevation when starting recording at a place of known altitude. All along, the Edge 800 sitting next to the 820 would perform pretty consistently with and without GPS.
I decided I should wait another six months before buying the Garmin Edge 820 again.
On #1 – I think it’s something with the 820 temperature sensor needing airflow. Basically, without airflow the internals of the device are heating up and causing higher temp readings. I noticed something similiar sitting in the sun a week ago waiting for a buddy to come out, the temp rose like 15*F in 10 mins. The second I started moving it went back to normal within a few minutes.
I think to me this falls somewhat under the camp of testing GPS accuracy by putting a watch in a garden and seeing how much distance it accumulates – it’s just not a test of any usefulness. I’m much more interested in how it performs outside. Now in my case, that does show an issue because merely using the device sitting still for 5-8 minutes shouldn’t show that much of a bump. Whereas inside holding it at a desk is less realistic.
I agree that this is not typical usage, but I still think it makes sense to use a thermometer as a… thermometer even it’s on a cycling device: to check temperature while you wait for your buddy, or you’re touring and stop for a sandwich, and so on. Also, what happens when you are cycling very slow and airflow is minimal? I think the thermometer in the Edge 820 needs better insulation. I’ve never been very happy with the Edge 800 taking more than ten minutes of cycling to go down from, say, inside temperature of 15°C to outdoors temperature of 7°C but now I think I really appreciate a bit of inertia…
I bought the 820 as I mentioned in a previous post. I returned it.
Problems:
display too sensitive.
Maps slow (not that having a micro screen helps much for guidance compared to an iPhone/Google maps with a gorilla battery which lasts all week)
Sometimes the expensive toy contacts the emergency contact when a hard bump is hit.
Garmin bike sensors for cadence and speed are just as slow to react as using a BT cadence / speed sensor with an iPhone.
Altitude is off.
I stayed with my small wired speedo/altimeter on the handlebars with a Quad Lock an iPhone 6s+. I have a Gorilla 20,000 mah external battery pack in my little bike pack. During a 500 mile ride a few weeks ago, the pack powered the iPhone all week.
The iPhone has real weather, real up to date moving maps with Google maps (other apps exist too) and if one wants Strava live the mobile networks are just about everywhere to be live(if that’s what you want)
And best of all, the display isn’t the size of an oversized matchbook for stats and maps.
I put the Quad case and cover on the iPhone 6 during rain/wet operation and it worked fine.
There is so much more a real computer (the iPhone is “real” compared to the Garmin which costs almost 1/2 of what an iPhone costs) there is really no comparison.
The tiny sized Garmin may work for some, but not for me.
– lastly the temperature wasn’t correct either on the Garmin, and it doesn’t play music. And the Garmin “radar” tailight is way over priced for what it is. It’s a dim unreliable tailight which doesn’t reliably give a traffic report of what’s behind your bike. IMHO, you’re better off getting a super bright bike tailight and a helmet mirror.
Sorry, could get thru the 780 posts for content on this – How many bikes can be loaded on the 820?
@Steve J: There’s no longer bike profiles. It’s just activity profiles now on the 820. If you want, you can certainly use a specific activity profile for a specific bike.
My last computer was a 500 so.. On the 820 I have the re-calculating of a course/satnav functions and they work fine on post-production model. The re routing is slow but not impractical. IT was continually trying to get me off an A road but this may be a setting of avoid main roads that I haven’t tried turned off since my test ride. I’m disappointed by the battery life.
I forgot to add that I have failed to set up the incident detection. The setting is not on the Garmin connect app. Can you give advice please?
If you’re on latest garmin connect app the option is under garmin devices. It’s a device wide option and not under the specific garmin 820 options
A difference between 820 and 820 explorer is explorer doesn’t have wifi.
What does wifi do for me?
Given my experiences to date, not too much… Hopeful that the kinks will be worked out soon and that the wifi ‘feature’ will become that, a feature :)
When the device reaches a known wifi it automatically uploads new recording to Garmin Connect, so you don’t need to attach to it to a PC: It is pretty neat, but one can live without it
How is this different then the auto upload that happens via BT and your phones connection (be it wifi or data plan)
I assume it’s just a feature for those that don’t have a phone? (0.1% of the 820 market?)
I thought I would briefly share my experience with the 820 which I just returned this morning after some frustration. This was a replacement for a fairly reliable 510 which suddenly quit recording distance of any type and thus became a brick on the front of my bike, and additionally I was excited to have turn by turn and maps for courses.
I didn’t experience the touchscreen or wifi issues that everyone else has been commenting on (although found the persistent wrong-elevation glitch), but I got something even better: impossibly abysmal battery life. I would pull it off the charger after a whole night showing a full charge and within 3-20 minutes of starting my ride (linked to HR strap, power meter, speed, and phone via BT) it would just shut down. Back on the cable it would reveal a completely depleted battery and go through hours of charging just to repeat the process.
In general I like the Garmin ecosystem and design language and the 820 ticks off all the boxes for me, but sadly it’s too unreliable to deal with. It just seems like this product is far away from release-ready and yet here it is. I might try the Wahoo Element (sp?) but the RFLKT+ left a very, very bad impression on me before I switched to the 510. Best of luck with this device!
I returned it for wrong elevation and wrong temperature problems, but I actually had also an issue with battery: I left it switched on on the desk in the evening to find it completely depleted in the morning. I could see the 820 switches to powersave mode after a few minutes of inactivity, but I imagine it would never completely switch off. I haven’t investigated on how long the battery would actually last or if there’s a setting for automatic switch off. I can certainly say, though, that the battery was completely empty after less 12 hours in powersave mode sitting on my desk.
On the battery only lasting 20 minutes, obviously, there’s something wrong with that specific unit. Just a lemon (and the first I’ve ever heard of that on any Garmin actually).
As for desk-battery burn, it’s hard to say if it went into sleep mode or just turned off the display. There is a powered off mode. Also, if you have GPS on while indoors, keep in mind that GPS units are smart enough now to actually increase power draw to assist the GPS when they can’t find signal. And lower it when signal is strong. So indoors, you’d burn through more batteries than not.
All of which sorta goes back to my statement on test as you actually use a product. Meaning, if testing GPS accuracy, then do it while moving (not sitting in a garden). And if testing battery life, do it while outdoors. And so on…
I still can’t help noticing that the Edge 800 stops looking for satellites after a few minutes of unsuccessful attempts. Also, if I forget to switch off the 820 once back home after one or two hours cycling (I might even leave it on the bike since it now it uploads everything by itself), I wouldn’t want to find it drained the day after.
But it does turn off automatically assuming the default settings aren’t changed. I leave my Edge 820 on all the time, and it’s always fine the next day when I find it again.
I’m not very clear on this: you say that battery will drain quicker when I have the device sitting on my desk because it keeps looking for signal. Fair enough. But you also say that you keep your 820 always on, also overnight when presumably you keep it indoors. How can it happen that in the morning your 820 is always fine while mine was drained?
As a follow up, I did end up swapping out the first unit for a replacement and the first one was indeed a lemon. The new has worked a charm so far and if it can keep up the good work then I’ll be a very happy Garmin customer. Battery life on the replacement unit has been excellent – on par with the 510 – and I especially like using the Connect IQ apps as data fields.
Can the internal maps be removed (and replaced with OSM) to add more space? Does it support transfering map .imgs over wifi from phone or do you need to use usb?
So i did. I deleted the original maps (just via Windows Explorer, them are those big *.MAP files) and installed OpenMTBMaps or OpenStreetMaps via Garmin BaseCamp. Works fine.
OK, so just bought the 820 and note that it comes with the European base map. Great for the UK (and Europe). However, how do I obtain/upload/add additional mapping if i’m abroad and riding in the US and Australia? Tried searching the web, but cant seem to be able to find an answer.
Have a trip coming up and the ability to download and install additional mapping would be extremely useful, if not a deal breaker.
Any help much appreciated.
@Matthew: Install the free Openstreetmap. DCR has the instructions.
Yes, install the OpenStreetMaps, you can do it via BaseMap (this is the appropriate Garmin software) .. you can get it here link to www8.garmin.com . If you are Mountainbiker you may like these maps link to www8.garmin.com
Hello! I did not remove the original maps but I installed my local country topo maps that have been converted to the format Garmin uses. I placed the .img file to the Garmin folder and when I browsing to:
Settings -> Activity Profiles -> “XC bike” (own creation) -> Navigation -> Map -> Map Information
I can see five different maps:
1. Standard Basemap, NR
2. Garmin Cycle MAP EU 2016.11
3. Edge DEM Map EU 2014.10
4. Garmin Geocode Map EU 2016.10
5. The map I installed
Now, for the “Road bike” activity profile I would like to use Garmin Cycle MAP but for “XC bike” and “Fatbike” profiles I would like to use the map I installed. Is this possible? Enabling and disabling maps seem to affect all profiles even though the selection is done under the settings of a certain selected profile. To tell you the truth I actually can’t tell if it is displaying the correct map even when I have all the others disabled and only the map I installed is enabled…
I want to upgrade my Edge 800 to either Edge 820 or 1000
Which one to buy :Edge 820 or Edge 1000
today I can buy a Garmin :
Edge 820 : 405,71 €
Edge 1000 : 386,28 €
I do not mind (too much) the size of the 1000.
Any reason at this prices to prefer the 820?
Thanks for your opinion/feedback
I was just trying to make the same decision, and I decided to buy the 1000. The only notable differences in the 820 currently are (a) incident detection, (b) live tracking display (coming on the 1000), and (c) better battery life. But the 1000 is already stable and doesn’t have the issues that are being reported in these comments on and on the Garmin forum. So far I am happy with the 1000.
I ditched the 1000 as it crashed several times during rides and the touch screen was far worse than the 820.
Not a patch on Ray but if anyone’s interested here’s my impressions of the device after 3 weeks use:
link to biketrainerlabs.com
Thanks for the feedback , I have ordered the Edge 1000.
Dirk
Hi dc, when is the full review of the edge 820 coming out? You previously said sometime in August I believe and August is nearly over.
The fact that a device priced $399 can not pair with a Bluetooth HR monitor now days is really stupid. Any phone under 50 Euros can do it. Came on!
Is there a screen calibration feature on the Garmin 820
No.
Garmin told me the screen is self-calibrating.
“The Edge 820 is self calibrating and the sensitivity could be impacted if anything is touching the screen during power up. Please try turning off the Edge and then power it back on without touching the screen to see if that improves the screen response. If you continue to have issues we can create a case to have your issue researched further by our engineering team.”
Is there a way to rearrange the “saved courses” on the 820? It seems there is a real disconnect with Garmin Connect and what is displayed.
I need to be able to upload my ride directly to strava wirelessly, while out touring which model do you suggest can do this.
Thanks Harry
i know from myself the 820 is able to to this. Also the 520 and the 1000 i guess
As long as you are connected via Bluetooth to phone and have signal it will upload ride once saved. Otherwise it can also upload when you are in wifi network previously connected. Good luck hope this helps.
Karim, thanks for that the reason why I ask is I have a edge 800 which I used on LEL2013 after around 400km the dam thing switched itself off, had to do a hard reset hence lost all my data. So I want to save my rides to strava as I go then delete from my new chosen garmin device.
Harry
Ray,
When is the full review going to be available?
Cheers
Is it possible to enable strava live segments only in a particular activity profile but not in others? I believe that I managed to do this in the 520 but can’t in the 820.
I was getting frustrated by not finding the incident detection & begin
I am happy to help. We are aware of this issue. To resolve this you should uninstall the Garmin Connect App and Reinstall this. After you have done this the feature for Incident detection wilning to think I’d gone loopy, so I emailed Garmin.
This is their response and it worked;
“Thank you for contacting Garmin Europe.
I am happy to help. We are aware of this issue. To resolve this you should uninstall the Garmin Connect App and Reinstall this. After you have done this the feature for Incident detection will be working again.”
So I’m seeing several sales on the 1000 this week, where I can get it for $399. So if the 820 and 1000 are the same price, what is the pick? I currently have a 500. My biggest gripe is that I can’t ride a course and see my speed on the same page!
I am really liking my 820 and had the same choice to make. I was concerned that the smaller size would be an issue as I need reading glasses No worries though it’s easy to read and the contrast is great in direct sunlight. Something my 510 was terrible at. The screen switches with an easy swipe like you would expect using a smart phone again the 510 was useless to change pages so I wouldn’t during a ride. For navigating a course I have a screen that shows:
1. power
2. speed
3. heart rate
4. distance to next turn
During any ride your navigating you will get a screen prompt blacked out with direction arrow and street name so easy stuff. You can have it do that and go to the map screen as well if you prefer. A neat option is if you run audible alerts through your phone you get directions like a car “Nav” speaking to you with directions like “turn left onto Main Street in 150 meters”. That’s broadcast through the phone speakers though so you need a phone loud enough to hear or other options.
Thanks for the input Sean! In an organized event, I wouldn’t use the map, but there are plenty of rural roads around me and I want to be able to go out exploring with some degree of confidence that I can find my way back home. In your experience, is the map of sufficient size that you can ride with the map screen on (and tell what you are looking at), while still displaying speed and another field (cadence, HR, etc)? At this point, the screen size is really my only debate. Though after only knowing the 500, the 1000 looks HUGE!
The 1000 isn’t really that big. It’s nowhere near as big as a smartphone as some people claim.
Thanks a lot for the review.
I was convinced and now I own my new Garmin Edge 820.
Now my problem is that I live in Mexico City and the Navigation feature does not work with the preloaded map.
So, how can I load a local map to my divice.
Thanks and regards.
cheers:
link to dcrainmaker.com
Hi
First of all thank you for a great hands on review.
I’m the happy owner of a 820 edge now :-) The unit is great, but I have come over one error that i would like to hear if you have experienced the same. First i thought it was a hardware error so garmin gave me a new unit(great service by the way) but the new unit have the exact same error, so i suspekt it is a generel problem.
the error: If you need to ajust the altitude (unit says f.eks. 100 meters and you know you are in 150 meters so you go in and set the altitude to 150 meters) then it is like the unit don’t accept the new altitude and slowly without you moving or anything the altitude “slides” with 0,1 to 0,4 meters a minute until it reaches the altitude it had when you startet (100 meters in this example)
The altimeter itself is correct if you dont adjust it the decent/ascent is the same (+/-) a meter or two, but if you adjust it and god for a few hours ride you will have a difference about the same as your adjustment.
I’ve notified Garmin on the problem and my suspiscion that it is due to a software error so I was just wondering if you have experienced the same ?
BR
Ulrik
Exactly the same problem here. That and indicated temperature being way too high convinced me to return the device and wait another six months before buying it again (see my post earlier on). If I switched the GPS off then the problem would disappear: the altimeter would accept any altitude I set and stay more or less there. My conclusion is that there is some software bug in interpreting altimeter and DEM. And also deciding who gets priority…
@Gennaro & @Ulrik: many have elevation errors (elevation drift – falling peak altitude on a multiple lap course, wrong altitude by 30-60m, non-working location,…). See the link bellow for detailed descriptions. Nobody knows whether this is a systemic issue that will be solved via firmware update or just a bad production series that concerns only certain units, so I have to say that Garmin communication is far from perfect. I returned my unit due to the problems mentioned in the link, just got a new edge 820 from Garmin but have yet to test whether it is working properly. Some of the users said that even their replaced units had exactly the same issues, so I will just have to test and see how it goes.
link to forums.garmin.com
Does anyone have any success with strava live segments working correctly? For me it always thinks the finish line is about 500ft farther than it actually is. The really weird thing is when I complete the segment, the time gets corrected to the right value, so it “knows” where the actual finish line was. So I’ll spend most of the segment thinking I’m significantly slower than I actually am, and then get a nice surprise when I’m done. I always use the glonass and regular satellites. I never had this problem with my 810. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the “noise” that is inherent in live segments where the time can dance around a little bit depending on how good the KOM recording is. I’m talking about the 820 always putting the finish line well past the actual finish, and the times during the segment reflecting this.
On a related note, does anyone know if there is a place on the garmin website where we can list the things that they need to be addressing in future updates?
I only did a Strava Segment once on my new 820 and its the same with me. Kewing where the finish line was, it made me to climb another 150 the mountain. Theoretically no Prob, but after a mountain TT 10k/800m it kan kill ;-) you.
Hi DC!
I wanted to know whether the the 820 was able to group track a 520 if the 520 was connected to a phone and Garmin Connect? Or does group track only work between 820 devices?
Also, I need to get my wife a device. I currently have a 520 and was thinking of giving that to her and getting the 820 for myself. Is it worth the extra bit of cash – it sounds like it is?
I’ve had this unit for a month now.
My first Garmin and I am really enjoy, however few annoying issues which I am trying to find the solution online or even calling Garmin Customer Service.
1. When you select a POI as City, it comes every single main road around where in live in the UK than actual Towns/Cities, so looking for Cities through POI is a waist of time at the moment. Another thing is that many post codes are not recognised in the map, and they are old post codes in the area where Garmin Nuvi for car and any other map recognises.
2. Froze twice in 5 weeks. I hope this stops since last time took 5 minutes to restart.
3. I am not sure if this is a bug or behaviour of the device.
When I load a route/course, but I am not at the starting point or if I cycle back more than 100 meters following a course, the directions towards the destination stop and it always wants me to return to the beginning of the course even when I opt “NO” for the prompt message to guide me to the beginning of the course.
This is weird because even though the turn by turn stops working and telling me to go backwards on the part route I have just done, the Virtual Partner goes in the right direction.
Imagine you are doing a 80 mile route and on the 70th this issues happens and you have no turn by tun notification anymore like it happened with me… :(
Does anyone know if it is possible to ride a couse, not from the start, and Garmin still giving you turn by turn to the destination?
my 820 running out of power over couple of hours…??
Someone had a defective one a while back that burned through the entire battery in like 20 minutes. So ring up Garmin support (phone is always best/fastest) and have them swamp out.
Now, if it’s something more like 3-4 hours, then triple-check that the backlight isn’t on 100% – since that’ll burn through battery super-quick.
Re: your issue with re-routing
I couldn’t get the unit to re-route when I went off course either so I contacted support. Here is their response:
“…that route re-calculation is only available if your Edge 820 calculates a route for you from one place to another. If you’re doing a pre-planned course as you’ve indicated, if you go off-course, the Edge 820 will not recalculate the path to get you back on course. You will have to go back to the point where you went off course in order for the course to track again.”
I have no words to describe how absurd this is.
It is pretty dumb!!
When I was following course and took a wrong turn it took me a while to notice 820 shows “off course”. I had to stop, pull out cellphone, and check my route. Once I got back on pre-planned course Garmin just continued turn by turn navigation.
It’s doubly absurd considering it was a course created in their god-awful course creator on Garmin Connect. You’d think the two would work together but obviously that’s some crazy pipe dream.
I just checked with Garmin on this, apparently the feature will be re-introduced in an upcoming update. It was previously there is all earlier Edge mapping units.
Man, who do you know over there that you get a response almost immediately without having to shame them publicly on Facebook first?
Good to know they’re bringing back something that only an imbecile would think is not needed on a GPS unit.
I’m using my GPS to ride a specific tour e.g. La Marmotte with friends. Navigating a track is not a good option, in such a situation.
Firstly the navigation is map-dependant, so everybody should use the same map, including the originator of the track.
Secondly the many map-errors will send you away from the track e.g. if the road on the map has a discontinuity or the bicycle tunnel you want to pass is not on the map. Map-errors occur frequently on maps especially with fine mazed bicycle roads like in my country, The Netherlands. Obviously the Garmin software engineers are not aware of these problems, otherwise they should not emphasize their GPS design so much on “navigation”.
Normally I use a track with cuesheets to warn for turns. The used file is a course (tcx) with trackpoints and coursepoints and works well on an (antique?) EDGE705 as training. Many friends use this also on a EDGE 800 and (with much difficulty) on an EDGE 810.
My question: Is it possible to ride a track on a EDGE 820, without navigation and with cuesheets an warning whenever you deviate from the track?
If so, how can you do it and must I change the tcx-file?
Interested in hearing any replies to your questions. I have the “antique” 705 myself and would like to upgrade for the VIRB camera control and better connectivity options..
One things the 820 has that the already aging 1000 doesn’t is VIRB camera control As the new owner of 2 VIRB Ultra30s , that sells me on the 820 over the 1000 hands down. I had old GoPro HDs with no Wifi and wanted to gt current on connectivity and features. I decided to go with the VIRB Ultra30s over Hero Blacks. No regrets at all.
Are you sure about that? When the VIRB’s first came out, Garmin issued an update for the venerable Edge 800 so that it can control a VIRB, and I think every Edge since then has been able to. My Edge 800, Fenix 1, and Epix can all control a VIRB. The 1000 is listed as a “compatible device” on the Ultra 30’s page at buy.garmin.com. (The 820 is not, but I’d be surprised if that were actually true.)
The Edge 1000 has VIRB control just fine.
Interesting, the Garmin site has an ‘X’ in that column for the 1000.
Check it out: link to buy.garmin.com
Sorry, correction: that cell is BLANK which indicates no support.
Garmin needs to get their act together on their web site.
Yeah, that’s pretty much the norm for Garmin.com
I can understand how it happened in this case though. The Edge 520 announced with support for it, and then the Edge 1000 didn’t get it till this past winter in a firmware update. So nobody double-checked the specs page since.
Please can anybody tell me what “VIRB” has to do with my original (unanswered) question about the 820?
Umm, do you know who forum formatting of replies by subject works? I guess not.
See the indents under my post which are all on the VIRB topic? Notice they are indented under my post and not yours above.
Notice that if someone answers your questions in a reply it will be indented under your post? But your reply is under my “VIRB” topic yet you are wondering why my thread is talking about the VIRB?
Of course, with such attitude, people would be glad to help you. You are so kind.
I have just used my 820 to navigate on a 5 day bike ride through Tuscany. The 820 screen size is very small to navigate from when you zoom out the map past 800m, to 1.2 or 3km. This is the zoom you will need if you want to zoom out to see a for eg. a 60 km route to check it against a paper map to make sure that you are in fact hitting all the villages you want to hit or avoid industrial areas etc. A friend on the ride with me has his 1000, and the additional screen size makes it much better for navigation. The 1000 was also much quicker calculating routes and re-rendering the map size while zooming. The 820 is VERY slow at both re-rendering and calculating a 60-80km route. If you want a gps primarily for navigating, id say the 820 match box sized screen is too small. However if you want something for training, with the occasional bit of navigation, the 820 will work for both.
Thanks for addressing the 820 screen size and slow GPS signal and location capture.
Now that the firmware is updated for the 1000, I’d choose the 820 only if I didn’t want the larger unit or didn’t care about navigation.
I hope Garmin will fix all software related bugs and glitches sooner rather than later. Both 1000 and 520 were released with bunch of bugs, most of them were fixed within a few months…
The new iPhone 7 is waterproof. With a robust case and the right apps, one could do nearly everything the Garmin computers can do except GPS with no cell service and ANT+ sensor connectivity (BTLE should take care of that eventually). I would love to have one device take the place of a my GPS devices instead of funding Garmin’s 2-3-year product cycle and waiting months and months for bug fixes and having to buy maps for each device. Maybe a phone manufacturer will offer a model with a built in GPS chip set as good as Garmin’s then I could stop device clutter and simplify my life. I wish. Maybe one day
I have the same idea, kind of open source GPS device to split the hardware and the software. I only wouldn’t want to be depending on apple for the hardware……
I used to use a cell phone to record rides. The GPS is good enough. It works even if there isn’t cell reception – the assisted gps is more about attaining location lock faster using cell phone towers initially. Battery life is a big problem – none of the phones can run as long as an edge 820, even with the screen turned off. If you want to put it on your handlebars and see data about your ride — that is, turn the screen on, then you’re really going to see some battery life issues. You could get a Wahoo Fitness RFLKT head unit which shows data from your phone, but that only works with certain apps and I found it to be fiddly when I used an RFLKT+ years ago (like, there was only one app that had a nice way of laying out the UI for the RFLKT+ AND was any good at recording, so I didn’t have the app interchangeability I thought I would get.)
Also, just my opinion, putting your phone on your handlebars, especially with the size of phones today, looks a little ridiculous.
Anecdotally, I periodically had problems with apps on my phone crashing and losing the ride data. It didn’t happen often – but it drove me crazy when I was on a long ride and it would happen. The garmin units do crash occasionally, especially if you have a newer one that is still rough around the edges, but I’ve never lost ride data with a garmin. It restarts and my ride is paused right where it left off.
If you’re depending on the phone’s mapping capabilities, you’ll need an app that can download the maps for your entire route while it has cell phone reception. I’ll often go riding in the mountains away from cell signal and my Edge 820 has all its maps built in – no problems there.
For shorter rides, a phone in the back pocket works great as long as your sensors all broadcast BTLE, but I’ll stick with a garmin computer, it’s better at everything I need it to do.
Good points. Bought me bakc odwn to Planet earth. Maybe, as Nils said above, Garmin or somebody will make a sensor/gps/map “hub” that uses a cell phone display and provide long battery life. Or maybe not.
You can have all that on Android already. There are several waterproof phones from Samsung and others. As well many phones have ANT+ meaning you can read from your existing sensors.
(By the way neither the iPhone nor Android needs cell service for GPS, it just helps with getting an initial lock faster.)
I will often start a bike ride/rally doing one distance, and then depending upon how I feel and how the routes diverge/converge, sometimes switch to a shorter or longer route from my current route. Assuming the 820 had enough storage for the multiple routes, how easy or difficult is it to switch “on the fly” so to speak, from one route to another and have it pick up at your current waypoint/location for subsequent directions?
You can switch/start/stop routes mid-ride. To stop a route, on the map screen there is a red “X” stop sign. To start a new route, press the screen when you’re looking at a data page and the “Home” icon will appear at the bottom of the screen. Press that and you’ll go back to the home page where you can then go to Navigation and pick a route you want to follow. If you’re mid-route, when it says “Navigate to beginning”, say no. I can’t remember if this kicks you back into the data screens or to the home screen — if the home screen, press the activity name (“Ride” or whatever) and you’ll be back on your data screens.
Thanks Jason, that sounds promising.
Hi Ray,
Is it possible to charge this unit whilst navigation is in use, via a USB battery pack or similar?
Thanks
I haven’t tried it on a ride, but when it is plugged into a charger the unit seems fully functional so I would think it would work just fine.
Yes, works just fine.
Hi there Ray.
I am now about to teste the 820 for the first time.
When I was making the Setup the FIRST thing I noticed… is where are the Bike Profiles?..
No bike profiles?… I have to use activity profile like it was an bike profile…. that way I get ODOmeter for each bike?…. How Can I EDIT THE ODOMETER (in this case Activity profile) for each bike?
That was an really important function… to know how many km´s I have on my bikes… to control maintenence….
I hope you understand my doubt…. or anyone that reads this… please tell me what you think about this…
This is something really important… Garmin SHOULD develop this thinks like add a way to put a chain marker to know when replace your chain, chainring….. etc….. Do you see ???
If you sync up your ride activity with Garmin Connect or Strava, they both allow you to choose a specific bike for your activity and they both keep track of the mileage.
The more important thing for me regarding this feature being removed (given the capability to record mileage being there in GC) is that I have different sensors on each bike. The 810 allowed me to simply define each bike profile separately with its own sensors and then I could switch between them with a single swipe. It doesn’t appear that the 820 provides this. Has anyone been able to switch the 820 “seamlessly” between bikes with different sensor arrays?
I believe Ray has mentioned this before but the Garmin units of the last few years all use a “pool of sensors” model – your 820 would know about the speed/cadence/etc sensors on all your bikes, and would pick up which ever are available in any given ride. It works well – as others have noted, you need to specify in garmin connect / strava after the ride which bike you were using. I use my commuter bike every day of the week so that’s the default bike for me – with my weekend road bike I need to set it manually in GC/strava after the ride.
Yep! Just finished re-reading the comments earlier in the thread and saw that. Silly me knee-jerk posted before I finished doing my HW!
Bump. Still anticipating / hoping for a full in-depth review of this unit…
Just purchased an 820. Your posts are always a great help with the learning curve. Hope to see a full review soon.
Is your wifi working well on the device?
I have the last firmware and cant get it to work….
There is an way to see the history and order the device to upload that ride to web using WIFI ?
Because when i end the ride I am no close to an WIFI point, it would be nice to be possible get in house and upload the rides I want from history.
I had to set up my wifi on the device directly – doing it in Garmin Express on my computer didn’t work. But I’ve heard other people who were able to set it up with GE, so that may be an issue specific to me (I also can’t get wifi to work with my Forerunner 920 watch via GE…).
I think the 820 doesn’t search for wifi continuously like the garmin edge 1000 does – probably a power saving measure. You can force it to connect to wifi. Drag down from the top of the screen to get the list of controls (I forget the proper term for this screen), once it’s up you can scroll up & down on the list of controls until you see Wifi. There is a circular connect button there – press it, it’ll highlight and you’ll see it searching for your network and then it won’t say anything. swipe up to the top of the screen to clear this controls page and now at the top of the normal screen you’ll see wifi status updates like “Connecting” or “Uploading” or “Transferring” or whatever, assuming it is associated with your local wifi network.
Apologies in advance if this has already been suitably answered, but I’ve just taken delivery of my Edge 820 and wanted to share some of my knowledge on mapping.
I’ve been fiddling with quite a few disc image maps recently, across a range of units (Edge 800, Edge 820, Etrex 20x etc) and have found that the 820 *WILL* definitely display and follow routes across GB Ordnance Survey mapping.
With a slightly expanded storage on the unit itself, it means that there was about 6GB free onto which the disc image could be added. I did this via dragging onto the device memory “Garmin” folder – rather than via Basecamp [for which you would need an installed map…] The 520 would NOT have been able to accommodate this task.
I think the challenge comes when it comes to licensing etc and moving maps around. I had an old micro SD GB Discoverer map set which came with a Dakota 20 hiking GPS unit. This SD card was locked to the unit – there ARE however applications which can unlock the SD card and re-lock to a new device / SD card. The new disc image was named for the maps it represented, rather than the generic ‘gmapsupp’ naming protocol…
The OS maps quite happily sit alongside any other map sets on the internal memory and you just need to go in and enable / disable them as you would on any other Garmin device (as a for instance, my etrex 20x has a 32GB sd card in it featuring – deep breath – full GB OS coverage in 1:50k, Full France topo coverage [*not* IGN though], N Ireland OS coverage, Eire 1:50k Discoverer series, Garmin Western Europe Topographic Map and Garmin CityNav – and I just enable / disable which I need. I’m never quite sure why one map takes precedence over another when two are enabled, but in my experience it seems to be the OS that wins out… )
Clearly the Edge 820 has limited memory so I’ve stuck to OS coverage for South East of England. But on a bridleway yesterday it was clearly showing where I was – was redrawing in zoom reasonably quickly – and following a pre-set TCX course (I have yet to create a course on it..via bridleways etc but I will) The 1:50K GB Discover set *should* fit in the free space ok, and if you want to unlock your existing (and paid for, I should think) disc image, then a quick google search should help you.
In short, the main issue is that they don’t make it easy, even for those of us who have PAID for the map data already. That older SD card might be a little out of date, but you could just as easily be using an old paper map couldn’t you? I suspect – in fact, I KNOW – that to achieve what I’ve done might be frowned upon copyright wise, however, it works and as proof of concept is definite proof that it does what I want it to…
Sorry for waffling on but I know a lot of people are interested in the topic.
Anybody considering buying this should take a long pause. I am about to return this thing because for the 4th time in 3 weeks of ownership it’s gone from booting up in 30 seconds to over 4 minutes. The only way to fix this is to do a factory reset, and then go through the steps of repairing your phone/sensors/etc.
The other day my phone said it was paired, the 820 said it was paired, but the Garmin Connect App said there was no connection so it wouldn’t sync up. Had to forget the device on my phone, restart both, and re-pair to get it to work.
The new software update seems to have added re-routing for user created courses, but that stopped working 1/2 way through my ride, so much for that.
I can’t believe anybody tested any part of this thing before releasing it to the public.
That’s probably the reason why the announced “full in-depth review” for august is somewhat delayed. The 820 software is at the moment still in a premature state, with insufficient functionality..
Nope. A busy August preparing stuff for Eurobike and Interbike, alongside a new baby is the reason it’s not out yet.
Fwiw, I haven’t had any bootup issues. I’ve had relatively few issues overall with it, despite a lot of usage. A few quirks, but no show stoppers for most scenarios.
I don’t believe anybody has tested the Garmin 820 before releasing it to the public.
I used it during 35 days before returning it to the shop.
The total ascent is always wrong.
Riding in the mountains, my lowest point is always 30 to 90 meters too low and my highest point is always 120 to 145 m too low.
The problem occurs every time and everywhere !
It isn’t a calibration problem.
link to forums.garmin.com
Sorry for my English
DC congratulations with your baby! Looking for a bike for him/her?
The actual problem is possibly a (hardware?) error in the GPS-part calculating the elevation, which is difficult be correctd by software.
The error can be found by comparing the GPS height with the actual height. The GPS height will be shown directly when you input 99999 as value for the height. In my case the GPS was 60 m too low, -36 m vs 24 m. Garmin offers to change my EDGE.
Maybe DC’s EDGE is okay, but I read a lot of complaints about this issue.
Long story short… It is not the best time to buy this device until it gets much more stable.
I’m returning mine to Garmin as part of the warranty period today, expecting a new one in 10-15 working days.
– battery save mode freezes the screen after few minutes;
– elevation issues as reported by many;
– cities in the UK using POI shows in fact all roads around;
– automatic route uploaded started to switch off the device after latest firmware.
Enough reasons to not spend 329 GBP at this moment.
I too finally have thrown in the towel and returned the 820. Now I’m without since I crashed with my 800 and the screen is totally fractured. Should I go for an 810 or another 800? The screen size on the 820 was very difficult to read maps on, and I didn’t have trouble reading maps on the 800.
The Edge 1000 is your solution. It has almost exactly the same features as the 820, but it has a bigger screen, it’s more readable than the 800 (I just upgraded), and the bugs have already been worked out. It’s still being maintained with new features like Connect IQ etc.
Agree with Hamish, I have an Edge 1000 I bought two years ago and I have an 820 now too. They’re basically the same, I like them both. I think the Edge 1000 looks great on my bikepacking bikes, big beastly things that they are. I think the Edge 1000 looks oversized on my road bike. The 820 looks great on the road bike, I think. I’m fine with the size of the 820 screen – but I’m also in my mid-40’s and I can tell that I’ll prefer the larger screen in the not-too-distant future!
I like the power saver mode in the 820 – when I go on 10-12+ hour rides, I often have problems with the batteries in either the edge 1000 or 820. I know they’re quoted at 15 hours, but the way I use them I seem to get closer to 10-11.
I’ve had no problems with the Edge 1000 (after the initial software updates ;) – but then, I’m real happy with my 820 too.
As a bonus, the price of the Edge 1000 has come down quite a bit. It was $600 two years ago, now it’s mid-$400’s (USD) it looks like.
Thanks for your comments! I’m old and not that tech savvy, however I had few issues with the 800 (although Garmin connect/Express is another story).
I agree with a lot of the commenters here that the 820 is just not ready for prime time. I could never understand why loading a gxp route would take forever on the 820, while they would load in less than 30 secs. with the 800.
I’ll look for a 1000, however it IS a rather large beast. Why no love for the 810?
I’ve never used an 810 so I can’t really say (the Edge 1000 was my first garmin). I like the capacitive touch screen on the 1000/820, I also used a 520 which is a side-button non-touch-screen device and I found that UI harder to use. The 810 is the older style resistive touch screen which is not nearly as nice, but at least it’s not the side-button UI. The 810 uses a “Mini USB” connector, I prefer the newer “Micro USB” connector used on the 820/1000 which most of my other electronics use (micro usb was designed with the shortcomings of mini usb in mind to have a much longer lifespan in terms of insertion/removal connections). The 820/1000 can show you text message / phone calls incoming on the phone while you’re riding, the 810 can’t. The 820/1000 can upload your ride over wifi – I love this feature, I get home/work, press Stop and save the ride, and whoosh it’s uploaded to Garmin Connect & on to strava. The 810 can upload to your phone over bluetooth, but you need to launch the Garmin app, etc. Not a huge burden, but it’s one less thing I need to do with the newer devices. I love the software updates come over the air over wifi too with the 820/1000. I still need to connect the devices to my computer to update the built-in map (a ~6GB download here in the US) or to load a course I’m going to ride in a gpx file (ugh, I wish I could transfer this via the Garmin app on my phone without having to use garmin’s course creator feature), but otherwise I just plug them in to recharge. The 820/1000 have strava live segments if you have strava premium. (I like live segments, it can spice up a ride when you have a 30s-2min segment in the middle of a long day, it can encourage you to sprint it and beat your best time.) wait, does the 810 have live segments? I think it might. Scratch that one.
I’m sure there are more differences, but those are the ones that come to mind for me. I think the 820 is a very nice device, I haven’t had any problems with mine, and I wouldn’t want to buy an 810 new if I had the option of an 820 or 1000. As for a route taking a little while to load on the 820 – it doesn’t matter to me. I usually know the first mile or two of a route I’m riding, and I can ride while it’s still computing the route. I’ve gone on ride where I didn’t even start navigation until I was half-way through the route – that works (when it says “navigate to beginning of route”, say no), you don’t need to start at the beginning or stand around while it’s calculating things.
Size concerns about the 1000 are very much exaggerated. It’s not that big.
If you are comparing the Edge 1000 with a modern smartphone, it’s not big. But if you’re comparing it with other bike computers, it’s huge.
It’s not much bigger than the 800. It’s big compared the 820, but is there an advantage to having a tiny computer?
Yes, when I race, I have no use for a large bike computer. I just need a device to record my activity and to display the bare minimal information.
I think most others will disagree with your assessment that the Edge 1000 is “not much bigger than the 800”. It’s much bigger.
link to media.dcrainmaker.com
You should probably just get an Edge 20 then. Since the 8xx/1000 are designed to be used for navigation, having the smallest possible screen is a silly criterion.
No thank you. I have an Edge 820 and I have no problem with its size. The Edge 1000 on the other hand, is way too big.
John, might be worth getting in touch with Garnin as they offer a crash replacement program and may be able to replace you 800 at a reduced cost.
Thanks, didn’t know that.
And now it’s gone from 4 minutes boot time to just sitting on the splash screen indefinitely. I’m done with this thing, I’d rather go with the ELEMNT and pay $$ to replace all my K-Edge mounts than deal with this thing any more.
Garmin should be sued for releasing anything in this state.
If that’s the case, typically on Edge devices it means there is corruption on the disk itself, and/or a given workout file.
It’s pretty easily solved by doing a hard reset, or by moving off the workout/course files to your desktop to see if that fixes it.
Also – did you add other maps to it beyond the defaults?
I’ve done a factory reset 5 times now, it solves the problem for a few days then inexplicably starts taking longer and longer to boot up until it just hangs.
I followed your guide to get some more detailed maps on there since according to Garmin’s support my turn-by-turn stopped working on one ride because the maps they ship are so sub-par that I would have to load better maps if I wanted TBT out in the countryside.
I have the 810 for about 3yrs now and after going through several FW fixes… It’s still buggy.
For those of you that have the 820… Any known bug reported yet?
The big one for me is the overly-sensitive touch screen.
Don’t even get me started.
Lulu,
Plenty of issues for my Garmin 820, however most of them fixed for the last software upgrade.
Unfortunately the main one now is that on battery save mode the screen freezes after few minutes and you have to stop and reset the device. This happens usually when I go off route and by the time Garmin will recalculate the route it is time to switch off the screen, so garmin keeps the screen on and off for alerts and few minutes later it freezes for one of these turn alerts.
Garmin asked me to send my device back to them since software upgrade has not fixed this issue.
I think 820 will be really good… But not yet with this issue and other minor I posted here before.
Best,
I don’t get messages during activities on my 820. Is there a “during activity” button somewhere thay enables this? Any help would be appreciated. Thx!
When’s the in-depth review being published?
Soonish? Sorry, I know, behind. Just trying to clear out the last of the Interbike items.
Would it be safe to assume their won’t be an in-depth review of the Garmin Edge 820, busy or not, CES or not, Interbike or not?
Wow, that sounds like condescending, derogatory and downright negative! Sorry about that, didn’t mean to; I just wish there was even more info than we already have from this article.
FFS: their should be there
My 820 doesn’t relay notifications (text’s etc) DURING ACTIVITY. Can’t find setting to enable it. Can anybody help? Thx so much!
Mine did…then didn’t. It never seemed to perform the same way every time out.
Hey Frank
Make sure that you have both Bluetooth Chanels connected on your iPhone in settings in Bluetooth. Specifically you need to connect to both “BT_Edge 820” and “BLE_Edge 820”. If you are connect to these Chanel’s then try deleting the app, hard reboot phone and reinstall and reconnect.
Hope this helps.
Hi there,
Just trying to make a final decision, about 820 or 1000. The clincher might be the storage. I’m native to Europe but do a lot cycling in the USA. On the 820 is there space for both sets of maps?
Last quandary is that i can get a garmin refurbished 1000 for the same price as the 820. Thoughts?
Hi Ray,
I’m interested in the out front mount the comes with the 820 in the article. It swings the other way compared to almost all other mounts of this type. It is interesting to me because I want to be able to charge my Edge 1000 as I ride and since all other mounts swing to the right to left they obscure the 1000 usb charging port. Do you know if the mount would work with the 1000, or of any other mounts that swing left to right?
Thanks for your help
Tim
BTW, I now have a Garmin 820 Silicon Case in Yellow, if anyone is interested.
Anyone else having turn by turn issues? My 820 won’t advise upcoming turns (turn left in to xxx steet). I have everything enabled correctly – turn guidance = on, and guide text = always display. Seems like it’s acting like an Edge 520!? I have open street maps Singapore. Will garmin paid maps make a difference?
Ray, in your next round of questions for Garmin, I hope you will be able to ask them about the status of the overly sensitive touchscreen on the 820. As it is now, it is rather unusable. When my 820 gets sweat on it, even with a screen protector on, it has the effect of touching and holding on the touchscreen with my finger, which causes the 820 to pop up a menu to change the data field. When I first contacted Garmin a while back regarding the overly sensitive touchscreen, I was told it may be resolved by a firmware update. There has been several firmware updates for the 820 since and none of them has addressed this issue. My questions for Garmin:
1. Can the screen sensitivity issue be resolved by a firmware update?
2. If so, when does Garmin plan to release such an update?
Thanks!
I second Changren’s comments. Sweat or rain starts messing with things in a big way. It took me awhile to figure out why my screens kept changing, and sometimes my data fields would even get set to different values, but drops falling on the screen activate it. Also, in dense fog or 100%humidity situations it is completely unusable. No matter what I do, I can’t switch screens. Swipping doesn’t work, and tapping to get the arrows doesn’t work either. I didn’t have any of these problems with either the 800, or the 810.
1) Yes, it can.
2) Yes, they’re working on one. They’re looking at a few options, including potentially a slider for sensitivity as well as a different lock-screen option. But nothing is final yet.
It’s an interesting problem, and I chatted with them a bit this week about it. For me, I generally don’t have issues with the touch-screen. And yet some people definitely do. I also don’t have issues with rain or sweat on it. But again, some people definitely do. They do understand it’s an issue.
I’ve had the 820 about three months now. I have sort of got used to the touch screen, not great but it more or less works. Battery was dead today (my fault) and so I took my old 800 out. I had forgotten how much nicer that touch screen was!
I can do just most things on the 820 now I am used to the screen, but selecting new fields on a bumpy road is impossible, as the screen recognises the jiggles as swipe attempts rather than push attempts I think. The map display and refresh rate is still pretty rubbish compared to 800, I really hope they can update that with firmware. In reality the screen real estate for maps is the same on both units because the 800 dedicated the lower portion to menu and scroll buttons which are ‘soft’ on the 820. It just feels like the 800 used its layout better.
In the end though I still ride with the 820 just for the fact that I can see phone messages coming up, and I like the wireless transfer at the end of the ride. I turned off live segments as they became too distracting.
Thanks for the update Ray!
I am looking for a gps cycling computer. Wondering if the 820 is useful for riding MTB, and navigating different trails and courses? I would like to ride for instance on a MTB course that has been a racecourse but is not marked out, so I would need to navigate with the device. Or is the navigation better for roads, and not so much singetrack trails?
Can this gps or another have multiple users? For instance easy to use for me and then swap profiles so my wife can use it?
Also looking on the Lezyne Super Gps that seems quite competent.
I don’t have an 820 (I use an 800) but in general the answer is that if you can find routable maps of the area in question with the trails you want on them then you can get turn by turn navigation. If you can’t, then you can usually navigate by following a track on the map, but it’s not going to be as pleasant as turn by turn navigation (at best you’ll be warned when you go off course). So it depends on how popular the course and trails are. If lots of people have ridden them, then there’s a chance that maps from OpenStreetMap will have them, and maybe they’ll even be routable. Routable trails in my area (pretty much every one) are on the OpenStreetMap maps for my area, but I can’t say that will be true everywhere.
It works best if only one user uses a device. You can probably swap user profiles in and out, but that’s an extra step that’ll likely be forgotten at times. Way simpler if you each have your own.
FYI I used my 820 ride cross country MTB In whistler and all the trains showed up. Very impressed and save me as we got on to a wrong trail.
Wonder if a Strava segment or uploaded course from people who have ridden a specific course counts as a routable course? Because there are still no streets or trails on the map.?
Rode with a friend a while ago and he had an older Garmin unit that did not show turns only the map picture and a warning when you where off course and no help how to get back on it
Again, the routableness depends on the map, not the course itself. If the roads/trails that the course follows are routable on the map, then the device can do turn by turn. A Strava segment can be routable if the roads it follows are on the map. Given the segments in my area, I don’t see why you’d want to route a segment, since none of them are that long and they rarely make turns.
Older Garmin devices (my 800), and I’ll bet certainly the 820, allow you to choose how to follow a route. You can do it as a “route” (turn by turn, “Turn left on Main St.”) or a “course”, where all it does is put the course as a thick line on the map and warn you if you’ve left the course, expecting that you’ll navigate the course yourself.
Have recently upgraded by trainer from an Elite Qubo Digital to a Tacx Vortex Smart to get all that ANT+ FEC and Bluetooth Goodness.
I’ve added the Tacx as a “Trainer” in devices, so I was expecting to see Power / Wattage in both the information on screen and also uploaded to Connect, but neither seems to be the case. Power analysis is stored in the Tacx app but not really much use to me there.
Am I doing something “wrong” or am I expecting something that just isn’t there?
Thanks.
Did I miss the in-depth Garmin 820 review that was promised for August? (hint-hint)
Does anyone know how to manually set wheel size on the 820?
1. Connect a speed sensor to the 820. The 820 MUST be connected (not just paired) to the speed sensor.
2. Go to Settings –> Sensors –> Select your speed sensor –> Sensor Details
Great – thanks!
Garmin just released the long awaited – for some – update for the Edge 820 that addresses the overly sensitive touchscreen:
link to www8.garmin.com
Here’s the change log:
– New Feature! Added support for LiveTrack Auto Start.
– Added Touch Sensitivity setting to improve touchscreen performance with gloves and in wet conditions.
– Added the ability to swipe through data screens while recording a ride while the screen is locked.
– Improved elevation recording due to poor initial calibration and drift throughout a ride.
– Fixed an issue where position could be reported incorrectly on an iOS device.
– Fixed calibration for ANT+ Indoor Trainers.
– Fixed Auto Sleep setting to be specific to an Activity Profile.
– Improved Lap Summary page load time.
The big ones for me are the Touch Sensitivity setting and the restoring of “Auto Sleep setting to be specific to an Activity Profile”. I tested changing the Touch Sensitivity to “low” and it appears the device needed a power cycle (turn it off and then on) for the change to take effect. Now with the Touch Sensitivity set to “low”, the screen no longer reacts without a physical touch.
This is great too. I’m probably going to write up a (highly incomplete) review of the 820. The screen sensitivity issue was really annoying. I don’t understand how the product can be released like that… but I guess they took the decision to release it, knowing they could improve it via firmware later.
I have another issue right now. I can’t get the 820 to connect to the computer. It’s either in charging mode or it’s on. It never goes into mass storage mode. So I can’t update the firmware (I can see the update in Garmin Express). I don’t know how to fix it. I’ve rebooted the 820 many times, tried plugging in the USB cable when it’s off, when it’s on, etc. Nothing works. It used to work fine :-(
Have you tried with a different USB cable? Or perhaps even a different USB port on your computer? If you have Garmin Connect app on your phone, you can also use it to wirelessly install the new 4.10 firmware update.
Yes, I’ve tried another cable and port. Maybe I should reboot my computer.
I just upgraded to 4.10 via my phone, as you suggested. Thanks!
What a pain this is. I have a new route that I’d like to ride tomorrow. I connect the 820 to the computer and it (the 820) just boots up as normal. If I turn off its power it goes into charging mode. If I turn it back on, it starts as normal. No sign of it going into mass storage mode so I can put a new route file into the Garmin/NewFiles folder :( I’ve switched ports, switched cables (both the port and the cable work fine with my phone) and even rebooted. I’ve tried on 2 other computers (windows and mac). Nothing.
Frustrating as hell. I paid a lot of money for the privilege of not even being able to load a new route onto this device – not to mention all its other problems (see link to blogs.fluidinfo.com for some examples).
I’m going to write my own review. And it’s not going to be pretty.
I contacted Garmin support about this. They replied the next day telling me to send it to them and they’d replace it. I sent it off today. When the replacement arrives I’m going to give it a chance, but I think the probability is very high that I’m going to send it back (to Wiggle) for a refund. The touch screen issue is also unworkable – I need the thing to work when I use it with gloves on. The 810 was flawless in that regard. The 820 has taken a huge step backwards re touchscreen.
Be careful, I spent two months trying to get my 820 sorted out and finally gave up, sending it back to Backcountry. They would not refund, but gave a store credit expiring in two months. Not exactly a service oriented company.
Update…. Garmin sent me a brand new replacement 820. They were very prompt in replying to my mail to customer service, and no-questions-asked sent me a new one. So far so good.
BUT… the replacement also did not go into mass storage mode! I just upgraded to 5.10 with the same result. I do know what I’m doing – it’s not so hard to get a Garmin into mass storage, just plug it in. I have this situation on two different computers with a USB cable and USB ports that are known to work (I’ve just been using them with my phone and one with a USB stick – absolutely no problem).
My 820 is going back to Wiggle on Monday. I’m going to try an ELEMNT.
Don’t buy the Garmin 820 from any US store if you do not live in the US.
It comes with the US maps, to buy the Australian maps will cost another $189.00
no mapping for me I gues
That is incorrect. You can load free OpenStreetMaps for any country onto the 820. Indeed, I have a friend who purchased an 820 from Europe which came with maps of Europe and has loaded the free OSM for Australia.
found the link above and worked out how to load it all good now thanks
Any word on a full review? You said come back in August. ;)
I’ve seen this kind of comments from time to time. I think this is a lack of respect for Ray’s work. His website is free, so you can’t ask for the same as something you would pay for, even if Ray’s content is amazing. In my opinion, his first article is fine for most people interested in the device, and going through the comments allows to get more information about the current situation of the device. Full review would be a nice to have, but is not a must have (IMHY).
Don’t demand, but is useful to ask (guessing he can post the best way to do so since comments may not be the best way). He tends to concentrate on what people ask for so if no one asks he may not do it.
Yup, I had hoped to have it knocked out in August. But between the new baby and lots of Eurobike/Interbike/etc post prep, it didn’t quite happen. September flew by with three different weeks of trade shows (and the gazillions of posts out of those).
However, the next few weeks you’ll likely (well, gosh hopefully) see lots of reviews coming out as I put fingers to keyboard on all the devices I’ve been using for months but just need time to be in one place and be able to finish.
Most times reviews are held-up when I need a few last shots and/or accessory things/concepts/whatevers to test but don’t have access to while traveling. It could be other units for comparison pics, or a specific hardware thing I wanted to try with it. Or a specific situations.
With the latest firmware (4.10) addressing a lot of complaints about the 820, perhaps it’s better for Ray to wait :)
That was my thought as well. There’s really no point rushing to do another review of the 820 since the bugs won’t be fixed for some time. Any honest review right now would have to be very negative on the 820.
There’s really no issue with me giving a negative review of a Garmin Edge device. One only need see the last Edge review for an example of that (Edge 1000).
That said, I actually don’t have touchscreen issues, as I’ve shown in a few videos in the rain, etc. Generally speaking I really don’t have many notable Edge 82 issues that I see myself.
I did a couple simple test this morning following the update for the screen sensitivity. So far the only issue I’ve had is display changes with drops of sweat and it going bonkers during a rainy ride. For indoor training I have moved the mount away from the sweat zone.
I posted a couple videos on a blog update.
link to thecyclingaddiction.blogspot.com
One with the sensitivity set to low and the other set on medium. The one on low is not impacted as bad as the medium I feel is not good. I will use the Garmin 800 in the rainy weather. Other than mine being a fair weathered unit I have no other complaints.
Hi Jesse
I’ve had the same issue with raindrops – it sucks! A good option is probably to lock the screen. You can still swipe through data screen with it locked (see the Features above for the latest firmware). To lock the screen on the 820 you hold the power button – very counter-intuitive, since this turns the 810 off. Also note that having the screen locked doesn’t disable the lap and start/stop buttons at bottom, which I think it should also do.
I had a fantastic test this morning with touchscreen sensitivity at low. There was rain, mud and sweat at the Magnuson Park Cross race in Seattle and I have zero issue with the touchscreen being activated accidentally. That said, with the sensitivity set to low, it was harder to use the touchscreen with glove. But hey, I was racing so there was zero reason to use the touchscreen.
Thanks and I plan to do that if caught in a surprise rain storm with the 820. I rarely change screens from my main display so locking won’t be an issue with locking the 820. If I start in the rain I think I will just use the 800.
Note that in addition to the new sensitivity option in the latest firmware, you can now lock the screen but still swipe data pages.
Issues that I’ve seen:
Early on, I ran out of battery on a 100-mile ride with the navigation screen on. That just seems to be a bad thing to do: updating the map image seems to consume more power. So I don’t do that anymore. I really do miss the Garmin 800 behavior of popping into the map screen for an upcoming turn; incredibly useful!
Maybe I’m paranoid about battery life now, but I tend to sleep the device at snack stops. I think there are GPS glitches when I resume the device. Strava seems to be smart enough to mostly correct for that, but one can see it in different tools like VIRB Edit and Revive. (And I have one Strava ride that shows it: link to strava.com at mile 89.6.)
Sometimes the device seems to power down all the way when I think I’ve just slept it. But it recovers state OK; just takes longer to come back to life.
Sometime when I unplug the device from the USB charging cable, then start a ride, it comes up in a not-quite functional mode. I press the “Ride” profile, which shows the first data page as it should, then I press the start button, and it doesn’t really start. A power-cycle (~10-sec press on the power button) fixes that.
I have seen instances where the device will “lose” a sensor such as Cadence. (Perhaps after sleep and wake; I haven’t pinned it down.) I can go into the sensor menu and re-connect.
I did try the new touch-screen sensitivity control, and “Low” seems too low; I had a lot of trouble swiping screens with gloves on. We’ll see if Medium is happy :-).
Other than that it’s working pretty well. My wife really likes the Live Track feature; knowing that I’m still active and when I’m about to return. Relative to the 800, I think it is convenient not to have to manage bike profiles, and I can rely on Strava to maintain per-bike mileage. So far I haven’t seen any value for me in the Connect IQ available apps, but it seems like an interesting capability for the future.
Richard, I’ve seen closer to 10 hours of battery life with nav running on the 820 or my old 1000 too. I used to bring a battery-pack-charger for the 1000 to top it up on long 12-13 hour bike rides. I tried the 820’s battery saver mode on one long ride, and it did a great job at extending the battery life. It still shows turn-by-turn navigation prompts when in battery saver mode – it turns the screen on for a short period when you’re approaching a turn. Haven’t seen any problems with losing connection with accessories, although I rarely sleep the device mid-ride, I let it record zeros while I’m stopped for lunch & whatnot (it’d be better for battery life if I didn’t do that, I know, but I’m just as likely to forget to turn it back on when I get on the bike again). The next time I go on a long ride with the 820, I’ll probably put it in battery saver mode for the parts of the route that I mostly know, and turn off battery saver mode for the bits I need to see the map on.
Can we not read text messages with the 820 once paired? Or is it just notifications?
Yes, you can read the content of the text messages. I know that works with iPhones
Yeah. I can’t seem to see messages. I have a Samsung 6.
Is adding OpenStreetMaps to the 820 the same process as the 520?
Hi, I recently replaced my ageing Polar watch with a Vivoactive HR. As I am now considering getting an Edge 820, I was wondering if it will pair with my Vivoactive, so that I don’t have to go back to wearing a chest strap in order to get heart rate info on the screen? It would feel such a backward step to me!
Thanks.
Garmin 820 with gloves: Today and yesterday I rode with both an 810 and an 820. Weather was dry and cool (50oF). Both GPSs have the latest firmware updates. For cool weather I use long fingered Gore windstopper gloves. They are uninsulated. Using both the 800 and 810, the screen is completely responsive to these gloves. On the present rides, the 820 completely unresponsive to touch of any sort with these gloves. The screen sensitivity setting has no effect. I do not know if the prior firmware revision would work with gloves–I hadn’t tried gloves until yesterday. Can anyone who has had success controlling the screen with gloves, post the type of gloves they are using? Also, if anyone knows how to revert to the prior software version, please let me know and I can try that with gloves. Also, if anyone understands what properties of gloves lend themselves to touch operation, please describe. I guess now I must adjust my wardrobe to the new GPS or continue using the older models.
I use Pearl Izumi full finger gloves (I guess they’re insulated, they’re rated for 40 degrees F and up) and they work, you just have to be a bit more deliberate with your presses than using your bare finger. They have the “power” symbol on the index finger tip so I assume they are designed to be used with cellphones so they may work better than other gloves.
I have solved the touch screen issue. The 820 uses a capacitive touch screen. The touch screen responds to contact with an electrically conductive object, such as a finger. For example, if you touch the screen of the 820 with a car key, you can control the screen. If you touch the screen with a plastic object, nothing will happen. The Gore gloves are not electrically conductive. Therefore they cannot control the screen. Various gloves have conductive threads or other conductive materials inserted into selected finger surfaces. The presence of the conductive materials allow the screen to be controlled. I purchased Bontrager Circuit gloves. The thumb and forefinger have conductive pads on the tips. If you touch the screen with these pads, it can be controlled. The other fingers cannot operate the screen.
Yesterday i rode with medium-thick fullfingers from Pearly, Sensivity was set to high, and it worked. With a little pressure, but i worked :-)
DC, good review! Can the 820 be used and charged at the same time? Say you were out on a long ride and needed to charge it and still ride, can this do it? I have heard mixed reports of this. Thanks
Yes, it can.
Can the 820 have both Europe and USA maps on it at the same time? Also when I remove the gmapbmap that takes the basemap away how do I add just Augusta maps to my device without removing the basemap?
The 820 is terrible with gloves.
What is meant with “ANT+ EBIKE COMPATIBILITY” in the product comparison table?
What is it that the 820 can do in connection with an ebike that the 1000 can’t?
I’ll update that entry, as the Edge 1000 does support it now.
But in short, for certain e-bikes that support it, it can integrate just like an e-bike control panel.
DC rainmaker, I am sure you are busy and my comment slips through the cracks but can you please help me? I have been trying to put Augusta GA maps on my 820 and I have followed your directions on the other post to the T. However all I can seem to do is take the basemap off it will not show the Augusta maps at all. Is there something else I can try? Or another way to do this. I have Europe maps on it now and they work just the Augusta ones will not show up
Thank you. I was just curious because I use an Edge 1000 with the Connect IQ app from Specialized as control panel for my
Turbo Levo electric assist mountain bike. And was wondering what the Edge 820 could do better since the table entry indicated that it provides better support for e-bikes than the 1000.
Ray,
Have you been able to test the 820 indoor trainer functions? I have a Tacx Vortex and I tried them today and for some reason the resistance option works fine but the set target power option don’t work very well. It takes two or three attempts before the trainer actually set the resistance to the desire wattage.
Garmin annoyingly broke it in the last firmware update. See details here: link to dcrainmaker.com
Ray or anyone else: If I live in the US but order an 820 from a European supplier because of the 25% savings (even with shipping costs), what would the best way to get the US map on the device? The seller indicates that “Of course it comes ready with the base cycle map of Europe and the RoundTrip routing functionality.” Will the OpenStreetMaps data be the best way to get turn-by-turn directions and all the other functions working in the US? I’d hate to order from Germany to save money and turn out not to be able to use this properly.
Do the OSM maps offer the same features/function as the native Garmin maps?
Any one else had an issue with the 820 where the battery runs out mid ride, and now will not power up at all? Been pluggex in to charge for > 2 hours no luck, have looked at other forums and tried a couple of suggestions but nothing works.
Thanks
Hi, does anyone have the same problem to enable the smart notifications? I have all kinds of notifications activated in the android connect app. But no message (whatsapp) showed up…
On the Edge 820 I can’t find a configuration entry for the notifications. I only can see sms & text alerts.
Any idea what I can have missed?
Ray,
I was planning on buying the 820 soon but I have been reading a lot of bad reviews and problems with the touch screen. The garmin forums are filled with touchscreen, battery, and general performance issues. And it seems like every new firmware release is getting worse for people. Have you experienced anything similar?
Chris B–
I’m not Ray & can’t speak for him obviously, but I bought the 820 last week and have used it for two outdoor rides and two indoor trainer sessions so far. It’s a great unit and I’m thrilled with it. Coming from an iPhone 7, the touch screen is certainly not as good. However, it has an outstanding feature set. I had to get a new HRM since I was using a Polar one that didn’t do ANT+. I settled on the Wahoo TICKR, which works flawlessly with the Garmin and has trouble connecting to Wahoo’s own app. Take that for whatever it’s worth, but I can tell you that as a new Garmin owner I’m quite happy. I plan to use it with a Stages power meter once it arrives and expect it’ll be great.
The touch screen sensitivity seems to vary person to person, kinda odd.
However, Garmin did introduce a firmware update about 2-3 weeks ago that gives you options to change the sensitivity, so that might address those that are having problems.
Beyond that, I haven’t really had any issues with mine (up until they broke FE-C control).
The firmware update did improve touchscreen sensitivity, but now its basically unusable in a different way. Even with the sensitivity set to the highest setting, it barely works with bare fingers, and its worthless with gloves. The good news is that sweat drops don’t activate it anymore, the bad news is it doesn’t seem like anything else does either. I am definitely missing my 810 and regretting my decision to purchase an 820.
I spoke too soon. The screen is still activated by drops of sweat. So now I have a touch screen that takes multiple swipes, or endlessly stabbing at it to get the arrows to appear, to change screens, but random sweat drops make it go crazy. Couldn’t be less impressed now that Ive been using it for awhile.
I also like my 820 a lot – when it works correctly – which is rarely. I’ve had it since June and have logged 1271 miles with it so far. There are a number of frustrating problems with it though.
1) As mentioned a lot of places, the touch screen is worthless (for me) in any type of high humidity or rain situation – including sweaty fingers. The recent screen sensitivity firmware updates did little to solve the problem. Nearly EVERY ride has had some issues with the screen.
2) Turn-by-turn navigation has some issues. Example: make a wrong turn in the middle of a ride and some times it is fine when you get back on course. But most of the time it gets confused and thinks you are at the start of the ride. It isn’t smart enough to see you are in the middle and adjust to your next turn. This is especially bad on an out-and-back route. It says stuck waiting for you to make the FIRST turn – that you did 50 miles ago.
3) Mystery screen appears between navigation and elevation screens with no apparent way to get rid of it. This appeared with FW update 3.something if I recall correctly.
4) (Not a bug – more of a change request: ) When the screen is locked, and it’s asking you a No (X) or Yes (check) question, it would be nice to use the [Lap] or [Pause/Resume] buttons on the bottom instead of having to stop, completely dry/clean the screen (not possible in the rain), then unlock the screen and answer the No/Yes question.
5) When a text or email notification comes in from my cell phone, and the screen is locked, there is no way to remove the notification from the screen. One workaround I tried is to Pause/Resume. This gets rid of the notification – and completely confuses TBT navigation. (see #2.)
6) When the screen is locked because it’s raining, rain drops cause a message to constantly pop up saying “The Screen is Locked …” which blocks all other useful messages like TBT navigation or cell phone text messages.
The list goes on but that’s what I can think of at the moment. I keep hoping they’ll get the firmware right eventually but I’m gradually losing hope on that front.
I have not had significant battery issues but I’ve not done rides over about 8 hours with it yet. Although I’m planning to do a 10+ hour ride in 2 days. I”ll switch to GPS only instead of GPS+GLONASS to save some battery.
Thanks Dan & Eric.
Between the garmin forums and even reviews from other site I think there are enough red flags to scare me off the 820.
Thankfully Ray just posted that there will be a reasonable sale off the 1000 soon. I will probably just deal with a proven 2 year old device instead of a risky new version.
I don’t think that anyone who works at Garmin actually uses their products, there’s no way.
The new update that re-introduced TBT re-routing on a pre-planned course is something else. The algorithm they use inevitably (for me, anyway) ALWAYS just comes down to “Make a U-turn” and go back to where I turned off. It’s so bad I ended up just turning it off.
Loading a course used to take 30 seconds or so, now I can literally bike 1-2 miles before it finishes “calculating” the course.
On a long ride the other day the TBT stopped working when I went off course by 100ft or so to get some water at a gas station. When I started riding again and got on course, it wouldn’t tell me the next turn I had to take, I had to keep it on the map screen to follow the course. Re-loading the course usually fixes this, but when it loads it asks if I want to be routed to the start, I said no and it still would just tell me to go to the start. I tried 3 times and it kept doing that, so I just gave up and kept the map screen on. During this same ride the battery then died. Now this isn’t strange given how long the unit was on, but A)The battery icon was at least 1/2 full so I didn’t think anything of it. B)How about a warning at 30% and offering to go into power saver mode? C) Power saver mode wouldn’t have helped me because TBT had stopped working and I needed to keep the map up to get home.
I mean, it’s not like there are better options out there, but the best I can say about this one is it’s the shiniest turd in the punchbowl.
Correction on the date: I ordered it August 2. I have no idea what I was thinking when I said I’ve had it since June.
I switched from an 810 to the 820. Have to say that being long sighted, I prefer the screen size of the 810. Live Track on the 820 however, does work without the glitches of the 510, 520, 810 and 1000. The screen can be overly and at times under sensitive making navigation through them hit and miss and despite evidence that the screen can be operated with gloves on, I’ve had no such success. Downloading some of the Connect IQ apps has helped with vision issues and the only issue I’ve encountered on rides, is the auto pause, where the device seems to set itself on a data screen and won’t budge without pressing stop and start again.
can you tell me soom times when come cafe run and leave garmin on come there a red arrow on the right hand side how do you get it to go away and continue your ride thanks jocky
Any improvement on screen resolution over the Edge 1000? rb
With the Garmin 1000 being discounted all over the place this week, does that mean the Edge 1020 is just around the corner?
Just replaced my 810 with the 820 and everything is better on the 820 with a major exception. The navigation does not work properly for GPX course loaded from Strava / RidewithGPS / etc. After some time the TbT directions just stop even thought the map of the course remains correct.
I would stay away from upgrading until this is fixed if you use navigation (which I am betting you will, otherwise you would be shopping the 520).
This happens with courses created with GarminConnect as well.
Has anyone had any problems with the touch screen not working when the unit gets hot? When the temp hits around 30° or if my bike is in the sun the touchscreen stops working. If I cool it down with water it works again.
Yes. Same issue. Seems it’s non compatible with Australian summer.
It’d almost be interesting if folks Down Under were to try rolling back to a firmware update prior to October (pre sensitivity settings).
I say that because all summer long it was hot in the Northern Hemisphere, and nobody once said anything about that (heat) being an issue then. Makes me wonder if something changes when the new sensitivity settings were added.
Just got an Edge 820 and a 2016 Kickr (both with latest firmware). The Edge paired with the trainer fine, and I performed the spindown using the Edge (as well as the Wahoo app). When I try to do a power target workout, the Kickr resistance goes to infinite. If I try set the target power manually, it does nothing. If I try to set resistance manually, it works properly.
The Wahoo Fitness App controls power correctly, but does not run workouts so that is kind of useless.
I’m very frustrated. Anybody have advice?
Hi,
this is broken at the moment – see Ray’s previous comment link to dcrainmaker.com
Still waiting for another firmware update to correct this – maybe get one for Christmas?
;)
So screen sensitivity seems to be an issue that’s all over the map. Up until they upgraded the firmware to “fix” the unit from being too sensitive, mine worked great. After the upgrade however, even when I set sensitivity to high, I have to swipe the screen multiple times to get it to respond, and changing the screen with gloves isn’t even worth trying unless you have a pair with the special “conductive synthetic leather”. Now that the weather has turned cold, I’ve got another issue. The temperature on my last two rides was between 32-36 F, and about 15 minutes into ride 1, the screen starts hopping around from one “data screen” to the next with no touches at all. It even started getting into the settings at one point, and changed one of my data fields (I thought I might have to perform an Exorcism on it). Then it got into the Navigation, and when I stopped to get the unit back to my “ride screen” the screen was so sensitive (cold unit, warm hands? who knows…), I couldn’t get it to respond correctly. I put the unit in my glove for a bit to warm it up, and eventually I was able to get back to my ride screen. I then set the sensitivity to low hoping that would help, but a few minutes back on the bike and it was hopping all over the place again acting like it was possessed. Ride 2, Let’s try it again, maybe that was just a fluke…Nope! Only a few minutes into the ride and it started jumping around again. I stopped and “locked” the screen and was able to finish the ride without the unit going all poltergeist on me. I’m beginning to miss my old Edge 705 (buttons and no touch screen). That puppy worked flawlessly even when the temps were in the 20s.
I think Garmin need to take another stab at fixing the sensitivity issue…
Anyone else have any issues like this?
Yep. Mine is completely non responsive in direct warm sun. I’ve already done a complete reset and started again, it made no difference software is the latest version. Tonight about 15 min into my ride it started changing screens by itself, found its way into settings and turned of GPS… then started renaming something choosing a bunch of random letters. while it was happy to make these changes on its own it would not respond at all to my touches of the screen. I got it in august and its gotten worse to the point I think I have no choice but to return it. I’ve tried a bunch of settings and restarts, reloads etc because I want it to work but its a turd.
touch screens are NOT a good idea. lesson learned.
well the touch screen on my 810 works perfectly….
Yeah, my 810 is spot on, the 820 was a f’n mess.
I almost sold my 810 for getting an 820 but I decided to keep the 810 until Garmin launches the “825” or “830”; I do not think they are going to be able to fix the 820 just with new firmware.
BTW, I have a yellow (easy to find) Garmin silicon cover/case for an 820 that I’d like to swap for an 800/810 case, if anyone has “upgraded” to an 820. FWIW, I “downgraded” to the 810 and very pleased with that choice. I have very little of the issues plaguing the 820, and most of the tech data that I need.
Still using my Edge 500 but I would really like something good for maps. I commute every single day. Using my phone just doesn’t cut it. How does this device fare for maps/commuting? Is this for me? Budget isn’t a problem.
You could save courses/routes on it (Edge 500), and then follow them bread-crumb style.
With the Edge 820, you’d be able to enter an exact address and then it’d route you there automatically.
The one challenge with commuting vs touring/general riding though, is that I find as a bike commuter you tend to ‘optimize’ your riding route over time with all sorts of little shortcuts that the average GPS unit won’t think about. Whereas in general riding, you rarely do this.
Let me ask the following question : is it possible on the 820 to run a structured workout in parallel to tbt navigation on a user created route ?
Quick question. I can’t get my suunto Bluetooth smart sensor heartrate strap to pair. It never recognizes it. Is there a compatibility issue that anyone knows if?
I only supports ANT+ HR sensor.
Just got 820 last week. I’ve logged 15 hours so far. The touchscreen is bad, really bad. I mean really, really bad. Do you still remember those 1st gen car navigation touchscreen devices from ages ago. These were actually good compared to the 820.
Tolerable for a 50€ product but not at this price point. Does Garmin actually test the products?
I can also confirm that the routing feature is not really working. Though I haven’t really looked into the settings for this (if there are any). The touchscreen does not really invites you to play around with the device.
I just got the edge 820. Is it possible to add the map of Europe the same way as the Edge 800? I was using your tutorial to go on the website and get what I needed and use a mini card. This way, when I was travelling in France, I had a map to follow my route. How does it work with the 820?
Thank you
Stef
Does anyone else not have activity profiles on there Edge 820? It’s driving me insane, checked out all the forums and the DC Rainmaker videos :(
Hi, i would like to know ifh the Edge 820 is Bluetooth smart compatible? I have a Suunto Smart sensor (HR monitor) that is BT smart compatible and not ant+. Will it work with a Edge 820? Anyone knows?
No, it won’t work. Only ANT+ sensors.
The Bluetooth Smart is purely for connecting to the phone.
Ah, to bad, thought about buying without the bundle and keep my HRM from Suunto to save some cash, as it is very comfortable. The garmin looks a lot bigger.
Well it connects ok to my Tacx Bushido Smart via Bluetooth
Well, thats interesting, if that works, woudl it connect to a smart sensor.. ? hm Would need to know for sure. Or is it that it works against a smart trainer but nothing else?
It connects to your trainer via ANT+. The Tacx units broadcast both ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart concurrently.
Garmin units *cannot* connect to any Bluetooth sport sensors. Period, full stop, end of the road. That’s largely (entirely) because they own ANT+ (Dynastream), which is seen as a competitor.
The good news is that virtually all sensors these days are dual ANT+/BLE, so it doesn’t much matter.
I believe it connects to both ant+ and Bluetooth sensors. The power meter world is predominantly ant+ but speed, cadence and HR sensors can be both. Garmin can confirm for you.
Are you holding off on the in depth review because the Garmin 820 is riddled with software issues?
It is? I haven’t noticed any…
Do you work for Garmin or something?
Everybody knows the screen doesn’t work anywhere near as good as it is supposed to.
Do you have an Edge 820? If so – can you post video of your specific touchscreen issue? No, not someone else’s, but yours.
In general, I see a few buckets of Edge 820 touchscreen ‘stuff’:
A) Those with legit issues on current firmware. No doubt, some have issues. It’s not clear to me if it’s a manufacturing tolerance thing, an environmental thing, or something else.
B) Those that may have had issues months ago on older firmware, but no longer do and simply have never posted again.
C) Those that have iPhone like expectations of a touchscreen on a device that simply won’t work that way. It’s waterproof and designed for different conditions, just like past Edge devices don’t ‘feel’ like a touch screen.
I’ve posted actual videos (including here) of it working fine for me in some pretty crappy conditions. This week in Australia I’ve used it on days up to 40*C (100*F), again, without issue. Heck, I even went on a ride with Shane Miller and on the latest firmware his seemed to be functioning fine. I’ll defer to him for any other experiences there.
The only hardware issue I’ve had has been breaking the USB port recently, but I’m about 99% sure that’s my fault. Software-wise, my only major problem has been Garmin breaking FE-C support (which they fixed about 45 days ago), and I was pretty vocal about them sucking there.
My point is – if you’ve got some widespread issue, then feel free to post about it. Or, if you’re still seeing something odd. But if you don’t have a device yourself, then I’m not entirely sure I get why you’re saying it doesn’t work.
Even Garmin recognizes the touchscreen issue.
link to forums.garmin.com
If only “some” users are experiencing the problem (as Garmin says) that tells me they
have been manufacturing the unit using different screens (the screen itself and the top capacitive digitizer layer used for the touchscreen feature come as one piece).
This problem can be seen many times i.e. on the PC monitor industry when the same monitor model can be equipped with different brands of screen panels (see i.e. link to hardforum.com).
If this is the case with the 820 Garmin will try to fix the “hardware” issue with a new firmware (5.20) but this firmware will only mitigate the touchscreen problem on some units while making it worse on some others. Garmin FW surely does not have a way to know which screen is populating a particular unit that’s why the “one solution fits all” magic FW cannot be produced.
Garmin does not clearly say what’s going; then if your 820 works well do not upgrade FW, if it does not work well you got screwed; wait for the new replacement of the 820 or buy a cheap 810.
I guess my point is: How many people are left still having problems on the most recent firmware?
Even looking through the Garmin forums, touchscreen issues have largely tapered off (with people noting that in the latest firmware update thread).
I suspect some users (like me) just lose interest in commenting, accept what they have and become used to its quirks, and just get on with it.
I find the touchscreen much trickier to use that my 800, particularly on the move. You have to be very careful how you touch it, particularly when making selections. I suspect the involuntary movement of your finger when you are on the bike makes the unit interpret it as a swipe type motion instead of a selection.
There is also some lag sometimes when selecting an item (I suspect software), so you go in for another press, and get an unexpected result. This takes a bit of getting used to.
I haven’t been in temperatures over 30c so can’t comment on that.
Mine does suffer from random selection when big drops of sweat fall on it, but it manages OK in the drizzly British rain we get here. I haven’t been out in a proper summer downpour.
I have the 5.20 firmware. I didn’t notice a change (to touch screen usability) with the FW update.
I’m not expecting it to be like an iPhone, but there is no question the 820 touch screen is a much worse user experience than the 800.
The 800 did a much better job of map display, and handled panning and zooming in and out much faster. The 820 is quote slow to refresh particularly when zoomed out (more detail). It’s surprising the more modern unit is much slower. That makes is quite hard to figure things out if you get lost, so best not to get lost!
So overall, it does function, but the touch screen is much “trickier” than the old 800 which used a different technology. If you spend a lot of time on the bike without touching the screen, and avoiding big raindrops, it’s not an issue.
I still have my 800, but on balance I prefer to use the 820 because of the wireless features an integration with my telephone.
Quote: “I suspect some users (like me) just lose interest in commenting, accept what they have and become used to its quirks, and just get on with it.”
Boy am I in full agreement on that one! Uhm, actually on those two.
>How many people are left still having problems on the most recent firmware?
Well you should also ask how many people “started” having touchscreen problems with the most recent firmware.
>The 800 did a much better job of map display, and handled panning
>and zooming in and out much faster.
Comparing with the 810 the hardware is more modern but also includes more screen resolution and a smaller unit size; then the only way to achieve a decent battery life is “under-clocking” the CPU. That’s why the user experience is slowwwwww…
On top of that it seems the software was not developed by the same team; there are missing things that used to work well and the overall software approach looks somehow different. The 820 is definitely not an evolutionary product of the 800 family and “as we know it” it shouldn’t have ever passed the concept/prototype phase.
Hopefully Garmin is going to solve this soon.
touchscreen has got better. One of the releases around Nov2016 left it unusable.
At least now I can use it. which is nice
currently, when using indoors, when sweat lands on the screen, the screen changes. normally either to the annoying config screen or the map screen. It is set to medium sensitivity.
I hope Garmin **never ever** release a device that only has touchscreen operation.
I have sometimes been riding along fiddling with it to get it to work and just though to myself “someone is going to have an accident doing this”. so I stopped.
The 820 is AWESOME *WHEN* it works. it has THE most awesome functionality and more besides. I just can’t trust it as things stand (Jan 2017). I ALWAYS have a backup unit.
Here’s an update on the screen sensitivity issues I was having (Dec 3 post). After doing a hard reset, and “possibly” a FW update (I don’t recall when 5.20 was released), my touch screen is vastly improved. Cold temps had become quite problematic (cycling in WI gets a bit on the chilly side), but in recent weeks the screen has been really stable (even with temps down in the teens). No more rides with the screen lock engaged to prevent a seemingly demon-possessed computer (screens changing on their own) from ruining my ride. The hard reset (and new FW 5.20) seem to have “exorcised” all the 820’s demons. The touch screen does seem to be a bit more responsive with temps in the 30s but that may be due to thinner gloves as well. Spring is coming and the screen is much improved — don’t give up hope!
Ray,
That is not the case – even Garmin in the forum recognise they have a problem with the touch screen with a “sticky” post they put up in Dec 2016
Nick
Naturally, it’s important to remember that not everyone is having issues with the touch screen on their 820. I am one of those who haven’t had any of the issues that have been complained about (fingers crossed and knock on wood). Further, I rode out in the rain this weekend and the touch screen didn’t do anything strange or quirky.
I’m not discounting the fact that people are having trouble, I’m just trying to remind people that there are some percentage of 820 users who have had no issues to date and therefore not much reason to comment on product support forums. I would hope that the majority of the rest of the users have had no troubles (like me) and that those that do have trouble can find resolution in short order.
Hi,
Following your comment I contacted Garmin about my problems. As always they were very helpful. They sent me some software to load. This seems to have solved the problem.
I had software 5.2 before and was waiting for an update to resolve the issue. The additional software doesn’t change the release – its still 5.2. but just updates some touch screen firmware. I wasn’t aware that this fix was available. If I’d known they could do this I’d have contacted them in December.
My issues seems to be resolved – at least with the limited testing so far.
I do think they should put a note on their forum about this. As you say – fixed in short order. It was my false assumption that I had to wait for a software update to resolve this.
Thanks
Nick
On my 820, the touchscreen works much better than it initially did but it’s still not perfect. I haven’t ridden in the rain lately but the next time I do, I’ll try and get some video of the failure.
What is still 90% broken is Turn By Turn (TBT) navigation. It’s easy to re-create. Start with and “out and back” type of route or, better yet, a “lollipop” shape route with the first & last parts the same roads with a loop in the middle. During the first quarter or so of the ride, intentionally go off course a little bit until it complains then return to the course. This usually works OK. However, do the same after the half way point and TBT gets stuck thinking that you’re still on the first half of the route. My work around is to break up the route into 2 halves and navigate each one separately.
Sorry to read this. I just bought the 820 and am obviously hoping to see not too many things are ‘broken’. Or suffer design flaws.
I have the 820 since dec16, after the initial problems with the touchscreen I made the updates and it worked fine. But I just did the cape epic and again the drops of sweat made the screen change. So I changed to minimum sensitivity and locked the screen, but the screen kept on changing from one page to the other, and there was not enough sensitivity to change with the fingers… useless. Thankfully I had a spare 510 that I used to finish the race.
I returned the 820. The touchscreen only worked 1 out of 10 times. After changing from statute to metric, the laps were still 8.05km (5m) That bit I could change to 5km, but the laps were stated in time, not average speed.
I only got 6 hour battery life out of it. Yes, with the screen on, backlight off. No TBT, simply recording my ride.
The whole experience was just crap, so I reluctantly returned it. I really was hoping to have found the best bike computer there is, but for me it turned out it wasn’t. YMMV.
Garmin edge 820 arriving tomorrow!
Hoping the underpowered map graphics can be worked out in an update
wouldn’t count on that: I’ve had the Edge touring, now the 820, they are about the same regarding performance: they update just as slow and no firmware update did anything to improve map performance since I have this device (august).
I just bought a pair of PowerTap P1 pedals and can’t seem to find a setting for crank length (I used to own an Edge 800 and it did have such a setting). Is there a crank length setting on the 820? Thanks for your phenomenal reviews…I never buy anything related to triathlon without consulting your website first.
It’s within the sensor settings on the Edge 820. You’ll need to be actively connected to the P1 to see the crank length option.
Enjoy!
When I connect my P1 pedals to my 820 and select sensor details, all I see is wheel size. I still can’t find crank length – I checked my user’s manual and it does not appear there anywhere.
That sounds an awful lot like something else is paired that’s not your P1’s. Do you have a speed/cadence sensor? Or a trainer nearby?
How To Install Connect IQ Widgets On The Garmin Edge 820 I did everything right but no luck or it had anybody the same problem
Good question. I’d got a couple of data fields downloaded for my new(ish) 1000 & got those working easily enough. I can download Widgets OK but I can’t see any way of making them do anything (unless I’m missing something obvious)!
Hi DC Rainmaker,
i am from Singapore and lately i just bought a edge 820. the problem that i am facing now is that i am unable to see the maps on the device. also i couldnt do the proper routing. Did i miss out on anything ?
Hope you can help me on this.
Thank you
Best regards, Larren Chen
Hmm, I’m not sure exactly which device SKU/region Singapore falls under – but the first thing I’d be checking is whether the unit you bought is actually supposed to cover Singapore (in terms of maps).
If not – not biggie. Just download the right maps here and add to your unit manually (free): link to dcrainmaker.com
I have other Edge devices (520 and 800) and they constantly freeze on rides over ~90 minutes. Have others had this issue, and gas the 820 frozen door anyone?
In the vast majority of cases with Garmin Edge devices, when you get freezes, it’s due to some sort of corruption on the Edge disk/drive. The best solution is almost always a hard reset. Ensure it removes the older workouts/courses/activity files.
I’ll try removing all the files and hard resetting both units and use them on my trainer rides (in addition to my 910xt which is flawless at data capturing though less feature rich) and report back. Thanks for all the effort.
Was there ever an update as to why no “In-Depth Review” was released for this device? Ray been too busy to get this out with all the other goodies out there? Are we going to stick with this as the final article for this device?
Thanks for any updates!
Thanks for asking this; I chickened out on asking, as I thought he doesn’t really have the obligation to write an in-depth review. But no, I couldn’t find it either, so I am hoping he did wrote it up but simply forgot to post(!)
It’s something I’d definitely like to get done. But as Chris somewhat noted, there ends up being so many other new things to touch on and toy with.
Still, I know there’s interest in the unit – and by and large it has become my ‘main’ GPS unit. Though, mostly because I continue to put miles on it, not so much because it has anything that I use day to day over the pile of Edge 520’s I have.
As far as I can see the 520 hasn’t had an in depth review either.
A tips and tricks post covering both units would be awesome Ray, since your reviews and posts are vastly more informative than Garmin’s documentation (or any other source I’ve found).
Currently I’m using my 520 instead of my ageing-with-cracked-screen 310XT, but I can’t help feeling I’m not really making the most of it since the only things that I get over-and-above the 310XT are; a couple more data fields, a map under the route line when following a route, automatic upload of rides and my Virb starts recording when I start a ride. All good stuff, but I suspect that there are useful connect IQ and other features that I just haven’t come across yet (despite browsing the list of connect IQ apps etc.)
Can the battery saver be turned on at any time or does it only come on when battery is low? Thanks for the great info.
If I’m reading this correctly the bike profiles feature has gone? Does that mean that bike sensors are now just pooled and it’ll connect to whatever sensors it finds (eg if i have 2 bikes with cadence sensors I just pair to both of them at different times and it’ll find the one that is alive at the time?)?
Also, you say there’s enough space on the internal storage for extra maps – Has anyone tried to put UK ordnance survey maps onto an 820?
Essentially yes.
You have to create “Gear” profiles for each Bike (or pair of trainers or whatever) and then when you upload activities to Connect you have to switch the Gear used from the default where applicable.
Bit of a pain in the arse if you have two (or more) sets of wheels for the same bike of course, but simpler with the new speed and cadence sensors in my experience.
I’ve not tried o/s maps on mine, but there is a decent amount of storage on there so shouldn’t be an issue.
The 820 does NOT work with gloves. Not sure why this review says it does. It doesn’t. Trust me.
And we’re trusting you more than Ray based on?
You’ve made the exact same point three time in quick succession, but my experience – with both trail gloves and winter road gloves – is not the same as yours – works fine for me,
Trust me?
I generally agree with you Mik F. In my experience it depends a bit on the type of gloves you use, however, this is the same as with most smartphone displays. My 820 works with gloves same good or bad as with the naked finger. Sometimes delays, sometimes need to touch twice, however, it does work, even not optimal. I would not agree to generally repeat that kind of “nothing” is working perfectly on this device. I think it’s a great concept. I love the size, battery time and functionality in general, however, it has far too many hick-ups and is a bit remotely from a perfect device. Talking about my “perfect” iphone it has a similar pattern of things I’d like to see much better working, but still most iphone lover-people believe it is perfect…
Perhaps you guys are all using different types of gloves(?)
1) Excellent points all around.
2) I agree on the iPhone: in my view it’s an excellent phone, but does have some bugs/design flaws. Especially in the Photos bit, but that extends to the web and desktop version of the app.
3) I’d love to read up on what hick-ups you’re experiencing with the 820: I’m in the market for a new bike computer and can’t decide on the 820 or the 1000. And perhaps I should look at a non-Garmin device, but that’s a whole different discussion.
That must be it – I agree it works with smartphone compatible gloves but a) most of my off road gloves are not smartphone compatible and b) what happens when my fingers get muddy…
To my mind Garmin have just produced a road rider’s device. For off road use there are too many limitations.
@PhilBoogie. I started to forget about the hick-ups and do not record them anymore. However, here are a few:
1) elevation errors – I just know how “high” the Züri lake is, and cycling next to it having differences between 10-20m is not great. Once I was cycling 200m below, but this seemed a one off, fixed by resetting the device and loosing ALL DATA and records on it, they are still on Garmin Connect or Strava
2) segment end point error (stopped the clock on display somewhere else where the segment wasn’t over – forgot if it was before or after – strange thing)
3) touch screen sensitivity – sometimes delayed reaction on a touch, and sometimes no reaction with or w/o some gloves and yes, we all have our own, different gloves as well as different fingers :-)))
4) Battery run time varies – but this is the same on all more sophisticated devices (1000 & 820)
5) This is actually a new “problem” – It told me after the reset already 6 times: Cannot calculate ftp, try again. This while being on a trainer, running flawless the ftp program and I think the 820 just doesn’t wanna do it anymore after the reset. Maybe next reset helps with set-up time of 3h after and loosing most data again as it is what it is…
6) Probably some more, also the “antenna problem” compared to the 1000 where the Di2 wireless sensor, once installed in the seatpost is not recognized anymore, BUT again – convenience problem, and you just mount the sensor somewhere else and then it just works…
7) Slow routing calculation – sometimes I already went for 5km before the route was calculated on a “pre-loaded” routing file, not from scratch! That’s freaking long…
8) Any other problem I haven’t yet found out about.
9) Any other problem which is not related to cycling – depends what you use it for
To answer your question. I love the small size, I love the map and routing build in and once it works I just go so relaxed on my rides. I also love the general functionality, even my Vector 2 pedals are meanwhile great. If you have bad eyes and you are not to sensitive re size, buy the edge 1000, still works a bit more stable, but battery is shorter. Once you do not plan to cycle ultra (>250km on one day) and the bigger the better the display, buy a 1000, otherwise stop thinking about complaining and go for the 820, or wait until infinity and get the most tested, best developed and 120% working next model… :-)
Out of curiosity:
RE: FTP Calc fail – Is that with a power meter (or trainer with power data) connected? I’m guessing so with Vector 2 on your bike, but just wanted to double-check. Do note that I believe the algorithm only triggers when certain events occur in a workout.
RE: Di2 in seat post – Yeah, you’re just up again simple signal stuff there being confined.
BIG thanks for elaborating this much!
1. Yeah, the elevation thing in these devices shouldn’t be taken as fact. Sure, some have proper hw, others use GPS, but the ones with proper hardware also can fail big time. Oh well, as long as the device gives me a reasonable accurate ascent/descent info. Though once uploaded to Garmin it differs as much as 25% with what Strava is saying. And they simply get the data from Garmin. I know they calculate things with their own algorithms, but for barometric readings this shouldn’t differ. Weird.
2. I haven’t used segments on rides, due to lack of hardware. Though, interested if it’s ‘fun’ or not.
3. As far as touch screens go, I think Apple creates the best – bar none. I don’t mind to occasionally having to tap again on my Garmin, but if it’s a hit or miss, as is with my Oregon 550t (admittedly, a resistive touchscreen), it’ll become an aggravating experience.
4. Battery should work for my 6 hour bike rides. My 8+ hour rides are rare nowadays, for which I can take a BatteryBank with me. For those rides I have a rugsack anyway.
5. I don’t have any fancy FTP thing going on…
6. Aldo no Di2 for me…
7. Slow routing calculation – that SUCKS. That is quite sad to read. No, not sad, that’s ridiculous. I presume you did wait for a ‘proper’ GPS signal?
8. –
9. Only for cycling. I currently use my Fenix but the missing suntan on one wrist looks plain weird.
Thanks for the closing paragraph: I think I’m better off with the larger display on the 1000 model, due to eyesight receding ever so slightly. I think my 4.7” display on my phone is too large, but on my bike I’d like the largest available. That is, if the font size can be adjusted. As I understand it, that is possible. Just not to choose a font, which kinda sucks on my Fenix.
Thanks much!
Thanks Ray for picking up – FTP calc (just the program…), regularly it updates after I did great on a ride… And yes, the ftp calc program I do with the vector 2 installed and sticking to the comments re too low or too high & the bar indication of the power range. Next time I make a photo of the error message. I’m more confused about this has worked before I had to do the reset which actually improved the elevation thing. One better, the other worse, as always. However, I do not care too much about this one problem.
The route calc delays are more annoying once you are in a rush to meet up with friends and you wait and wait and don’t know where to go. At least, I think as a small improvement it shows you now a “line of the route” and the GPS arrow ones you start cycling and as it’s current position & moving you could already start. Kind of realized this as an improvement recently…
welcome PhilBoogie. Get the 1000 if screen size is key and you will be likely very happy.
Thanks! Yup, decided to get the 1000 model. Still, feels awkward to buy a two year old device. Not that I feel things are missing now, but I will feel bad if they announce something next month with either features I’d love to have or a discount on the current model.
Oh well, I guess that’s what reflects excellent on me: I always tell people to buy now instead of waiting for the Next New Thing, or wait for a new version if there is no time pressure of any sort.
Its clear that garmin either used different vendors for the touchscreen, or had really bad quality control, because people are having wildly different experiences with the 820. I can say emphatically that mine will not work with gloves. It sort of did (multiple swipes eventually moved the screen) before some of the recent updates, but the tradeoff for that was it didn’t work in the rain or sweat, or fog, or pretty much any real world experience. With that said, it will work with e-tip gloves. My 810 worked like a champ all winter long, no matter what glove I was wearing. I definitely miss the touchscreen on the 810. At least for me, it was superior in every aspect.
Hi Ray,
Have you any plans to update this first look with a review? Have you experienced any of the touch screen problems users are suffering or have you heard anything from Garmin?
Nick
Ray,
Great review and video – got my 820 for Christmas and you’ve shown me more than I’ve been able to find myself.
Like you, I’m a Paris cyclist but I can’t figure out how to make the mapping “drive” on the right!? How did you do it?
Mapping send me the wrong way on one-way streets, the wrong way around roundabouts and the 820 is forever trying to change my route if it thinks I’ve gone the wrong way on a one-way street….
Thanks
Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that.
Do you have UK mode enabled? Did you Brexit? (I’m kidding, I don’t believe there’s any sort of UK mode).
Was your unit preloaded with maps, or did you add them? And where did the unit originate from?
Hi Ray,
Wife bought the Unit from Evans UK. I’m only using the pre-loaded maps. However, the problem also exists when planning a route/course in Connect!!
Spent a good hour last night trying to plan my routes on authorised routes, but it insists on sending me “British” way……. Hopefully the attached doc works so you can see…
Thanks in advance
I see the attachment didn’t work, so trying again.
You will know the area – the attached plan is from West to East, so I should be on the RHS. Connect plans illegal routes and the Edge 820 tries to send me on them….!!
Huh. That’s very odd. I haven no idea. :(
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose….
forums . garmin . com / archive / index.php / t-30936.html
Very old problem. Ironically, I had the reverse issue with routes planned in UK (where I live) taking me anticlockwise round roundabouts. Not a good idea…
I tinkered with manually reporting these anomalies through drag and drop, but in the end figured that if I went the right way around the roundabout it would give an alert, but then calm down again when I was “back on course”.
Not so easy on the one-way street issue of course :/
Merci Mik,
The odd alert from being off course isn’t too bad, but being routed the wrong way is. Not so bad whilst I’m playing with my new toy during the commute and I know the roads, but it is blooming annoying on weekend rides into the unknown, when it tries to send me the wrong through village one-way systems.
I have previously read the garmin forum thread you provided, but assumed as these were complaints / concerns from 2012 that Garmin would ahve sorted them by now…..!!??
I’ll try using the other mapping recommendations in the thread. I’ve recently downloaded Ray’s recommended free maps and have yet to ‘play’ with these to see if it works better….
Thanks again,
A bientôt
How about maps in foreign countries. I am moving to Thailand and ride 5-8k miles a year. I am not planning on touring but do want to see where I am and where I am going. When I talked to Garmin, they suggested getting the unit there (in Thailand) so that the maps would already be loaded on. Since I spend the summers in the US I want to have the ability to have those maps as well. This makes me think the 1000 is the way to go (because of the sd card slot). I am also curious about the language of the maps in foreign countries.
Thanks for the great info on your site. I am a new visitor but love your reviews and general info.
No issues with just using the free maps option: link to dcrainmaker.com
Many (many, many, many) people do, including myself (both at home, and when I travel).
I have one since 6 months and like it. Only problem , the ” Performance condition” works sometimes, and sometimes, don’t . Why ? I have no idea.
x
Almost a year after it was released, I have come to the conclusion this new Edge 820 is only good for road and indoor use. The settings it is capable of make it less than ideal for mtb use. You can either manually turn it on and off or have it auto start and stop at 6mph. In the mountains there are times when you’d be traveling at under 6mph for a short period. It also takes too long to start back up after it stops. After 15 miles, the Edge 820 has me 1.5 miles under those of my riding partners on a consistent basis. I contacted Garmin about the issues I’ve had with this new release and they ensured me it was developed and tested by actual riders and while I have no proof otherwise,this has got to be a lie. To say I’m disappointed with this $399 unit that does no better than a $199 unit would be a drastic understatement. I’m now going to invest more in a mtb specific unit that can be uploaded to Strava. Any suggestions?
Are you using smart recording (the default)?
What about switching off some of the auto-functions for your MTB profile? I thought of “auto-pause” for example. Then it shouldn’t stop and start below a certain speed. It just doesn’t stop the clock when you eat a sandwich while having a break.
Does the 820 have speed zones? What seemed to do the trick with my 800 was to lower the lowest speed in the lowest speed zone to 1 mph (can’t do zero). I didn’t have any trouble with it after that. The 1000 that I got last October has never given me any low speed trouble with auto pause, maybe because the speed zones become part of your user profile and they got transferred to it (I’ll have to check sometime).
Just turn that auto start/stop nonsense off. Strava figures out your real average moving speed when it uploads anyway. Unless you need to see your moving average at all times (hint, you don’t) there’s no need to have that feature on.
Hi Ray! I got the edge 820 last month and it is updated with the latest firmware. It responds very slow to any command because it is always downloading and transferring something in background. It is annoying, every couple of minutes it beeps with a ‘download complete’ message but no info on what was downloaded and why is provided. I suspect it is data from strava segments because I have several marked as favorite (~=100). Obviously, it happens when connected to wifi/bluetooth only.
Is it normal? Other users have had the same issue?
Looks like the Wahoo ELEMNT BOLT is a strong competitor for the Edge 820…
Great, thorough reviews. Please add me to the newsletter.
Got the Edge 820 for my birthday last month, but just sent it back to Amazon for a refund. On 3 out of 4 60 mile rides it lost TBT Navigation functionality when it sensed me being off course. While it was set to “Not Recalculate” the route, the Garmin Edge 820 apparently has some software bug and recalculates regardless of how you have it set up. Of course, any attempt to reload the route wouldn’t restore TBT Navigation. It seems odd that the unit can redisplay the route correctly on the map, reload the cue sheet at the proper point where I was on the route, and display the correct distance to the finish of the route on the cue sheet, but can’t restart TBT Navigation. This is something Garmin needs to fix!
For the one good ride, every time the Garmin sensed me being slightly off route, like when I pulled into a gas station for food, it went thru some crazy recalculation routine to get me back on route. I ignored what it was doing and when I got back on the route, it resumed TBT Navigation normally. Again, I have route recalculation turned off, so this shouldn’t happen. I think this is somehow related to the Off-Course Warning functionality, under course options settings.
What good is a GPS that can’t reliably navigate a course. The software code for TBT functionality was perfected years ago….Does Garmin attempt to re-write to code for each new product iteration?
Have to 100% agree with this.
I buy an Edge to a) record rides so I have a month by month / year by year record of what I have done and where I have been and b) for the TBT prompts to get me around. On the latter this latest device utterly fails, which considering it’s high price tag is astonishing.
Everything is fine until you take a slight detour off route. Yesterday I cut a small corner off a planned route as I didn’t want to go to the cafe I had originally routed to, and the whole TBT became a shambles. First it resorted to my final destination as the next waypoint, it lost all details regarding mileage left etc, then would randomly get stuck on the road name I was on when I took the detour.
Reloading the course didn’t help at all.
After coming from the 800, I am shocked by how bad this thing is at doing one of it’s core functions.
Just out of curiosity – how are you creating the routes and/or transferring them to the unit? And is it with the default maps on the unit?
I only ask because last night for example I totally ignore routing instructions for miles at a time being not on-route and then connected again. Even in cases where the route was lollipop in nature which some have reported triggers a failure when you rejoin.
While it did take a heck of a long time to calculate (something I noted way back here in this post in July), it did find it’s way just fine. In my case I created all routes on Garmin Connect and using the default provided maps.
I download the TCX files from Ride with GPS and place the files in the New Files Folder. Yes, I’m using the base maps on the unit. And yes, the units have the latest software downloaded on them.
The last ride I rode with the Edge 820, I had my Edge 1000 mounted on the bike as well. I was navigating the same route on both units. Both units showed me going off route for some reason even though I was on the correct road. The TBT Navigation on Edge 820 blew up, but not the Edge 1000. Further down the road, the Edge 1000 showed me coming back on route and resumed TBT Navigation normally.
When you try to reload TBT Navigation on the Edge 820, it draws the route correctly on the map, reloads the cue sheet to the correct point on the route where you are, but TBT Navigation wants to start over from the beginning of the route. The only saving point is you are able to navigate based on the breadcrumb method to finish your route.
So it really seems that Garmin doesn’t reuse the same code for TBT Navigation on the Edge 820 that works flawlessly on the Edge 1000.
I have to say that I have countless friends with the exact same issues with the Edge 820 :(
I haven’t noticed that issue with mine, although I was using a course saved in Garmin Connect and sent to the device. I went off course because I knew a shortcut, and it recalculated the route just fine.
I also figured out my issue with the speed display lag – the custom data field I use (DozenCycle) shows a 12 second average by default. RTFM
Interesting. Maybe I’ll load up a course side by side on two units, one created on Garmin Connect….and one created by RideWithGPS.
I know you are replying to jcs_396, DC Rainmaker, but I will add that I also am using the base maps, I use RidewithGPS to plan the route, but unlike jcs_396 I save as GPX (tbh I’ve never got my head around the actual difference between tcx and gpx on an Edge unit).
I can say my experience is exactly the same as jcs_396, something I do not experience on the 800.
I have contacted Garmin and their usual defacto response being to reset device to factory settings and update to latest software.
There has been another software update since I posted so have followed Garmins advice and will do another ride in the next couple of days and go off route to test again, but am not holding much hope.
Its strange how some, including you DC, are not experiencing this.
I have the same problem when going off course. When I return the course notes seem to have been reset to the beginning. I use Strava to create a gpx file which I load to my 820 via the New Files folder.
Question to you Garmin Edge 820 users.
Is it possible to manually set the left/right balance, if you are using a single power meter?
– On my Pioneer SGX-CA500 I can manually set this left/right balance value.
Ray, quick question.
Do you anticipate Training Effect coming to the Edge series?
I find it really odd that watches have TE, and Edge devices do not. This reduces the usefulness of TE to their best customers — those that use Edge to record bike rides and FR/Fenix to record runs.
While Garmin has a method of sharing step counts between units they don’t have a way to share the advanced data from the first beat algorithms so recording some exercise with one device and other exercise with a different device will cause both devices to calculate wrong as neither knows about how much exercise you really do
Eli,
That makes sense; although I note that the Edge series is missing TE completely.
Thanks,
Nedim
Can you tell me the battery Milliamps?
On second ride with my new Garmin 820 Edge, it sat on the handle bars next to my Ibike Newton. On climbs there was a significant lag in registering the initial gradient with the Garmin compared to the Ibike. If the gradient became more constant, the Garmin would catch up. It would miss, however, short pitches up or down in the road. The lag was also present in descending.
I cannot locate any information on how to perform a dynamic calibration for my bepro power pedals using the Edge 820? Can it even be done with this model? Thanks!
What happened to the full review on this? I’ve had one for a while now and my thoughts are mixed. I don’t have the erratic touchscreen issues that many people experience, but a couple of things bug me:
1. Speed update is slow – I have a Garmin Vivoactive HR that I use to broadcast my heart rate to the 820, and when comparing the two I can see that the VAHR updates the speed much faster than the 820, which lags behind a couple of seconds.
2. Data fields don’t scale for easy viewing – I had the Edge 800 before this, and it would dynamically adjust the field size, so the first few were larger and easier to read. The 820 makes everything smaller, so it’s harder to see at a quick glance. Having said that, I have found a workaround in the form of a ConnectIQ field called DozenCycle, which has a very good layout and shows pretty much everything.
Overall it’s OK but it doesn’t match its high pricetag IMO. Good thing I got it a lot cheaper than RRP!
The 820 is something we have to forget…
I also have a VAHR and an 810, the 810 is million times more reliable thab the 820 in all fronts.
I see always the same speed on my VAHR and the 810.
Is the 820 compatible With Shimano Di2? I know the 1000 are
Yes, it is.
Be sure to consult Shimano’s D-Fly compatibility charts in detail tho. To get my 820 working with D-Fly, I had to: (1) buy the wireless transmitter and an additional Di2 cable and their special tool, (2) replace my battery mount, (3) buy a new front junction box and two more new cables, (4) do firmware updates on every piece of hardware in the Shimano system, (5) make three trips to the LBS over the course of a month and make three calls to Shimano tech support, (6) all at an extra cost of over $450 just to tell me what gear I’m in. Had I known that up front, I never would have bothered.
When you sideload the OSM maps onto the 820, are the maps still routable, or do you need the official garmin maps for them to be routable?
Hi
Thanks very much for some great reviews :-)
Is there coming any replacement for Edge 1000 in 2017?
Hi all,
How many activated live segments fit into the memory of Edge 820, compared to edge 520?
Funny Garmin can’t seem to make a decent GPS device which actually does what it’s built for which is navigate. My Garmin 810 constantly crashes if I use a pre-determined course. Want to setup and ride against segments…. whoops that doesn’t work either. The device constantly fails on me any time I run near a roundabout because you know GPS devices have no idea what those are. I’m very scared to upgrade because I moved from a 800 to 810 thinking it would do this crazy thing called navigate my rides. However, it is one of the worst decisions I ever made as I have lost so many rides and data it makes me sick. Now I see the 820 and it intrigues me but I have been burnt so many times by Garmin it’s disgusting. Here’s an idea instead of making a new device which has these “Group convergence” options we make a device which can actually do what it’s built to do well instead of crashing 90 miles into a 206 mile ride. The second I can get a phone to read my GPS, Power meter, Heart Rate, and cadence and be able to last for a 200 mile ride from Seattle to Portland I am going to drop Garmin like a bad habit.
These bike devices from Garmin are pretty crappy indeed. I tried the Edge 1000. Turned on TBT, 1 second recording, and left the display on. Total usage time: 3 hour 52 minutes.
So I tried the 820. Gave me battery life of just under 5 hours.
The touch screen on these devices are plain crap. A total miss or hit, seemingly random, but failing 8 out of 10 times.
Then there’s the software. Indeed, these units crash every now and then. And who the frick sets a default to have the unit shut down after 15 minutes of use? When TBT is on. It would seem Garmin doesn’t have a QA department. Or at least don’t dogfood. At least for their bike computers, as I do think the Fenix3 is a good device. Did take them many fw updates, but after about 10 months (v6 or v7 I believe) the device became really good.
I gave up on Garmin for my bike and ordered a Bolt.
It seems that the Garmin 820 fails to navigate the return leg of an out and back route. On the return leg it continues to suggest a u-turn to get you back on course. This is based on using tcx files and I was wondering if you knew of a fix
Hmm, I haven’t tried it with a TCX route, though I have very recently tried doing an out and back course with the Garmin Connect (online) creator and the Edge 820 and it worked just fine (including sections where I specifically went off-course).
I just wish they made it easy (or even possible) to upload .TCX/GPX/etc files to Garmin Connect to create courses from them.
The Garmin tends to get confused which direction you are going on an out-and-back route. This happens on my Edge 1000 as well. This usually happens when you go off of course for whatever reason, and then when it finds the course again, it may be that you are going in the opposite direction of what the Garmin thinks. The best thing to do is to split the route into two separate routes.
This is from another post I saw someplace else on how to load files to the Edge from your phone……
I have been using Routecourse app for the last several months and it works great for Garmins like the 1000 that have wifi. You need to download the app to your phone or ipad from link to dynamic.watch
You also need to download routecourse into your Garmin, follow the steps. Then it is a simple matter to grab the URL of your ride, from either Garmin Connect or from Ridewithgps and paste it into the “import” box at link to dynamic.watch and it will add it to your list of rides.
Then the next time you turn on your 1000 and wifi connects to your phone, go to the IQ section on your Garmin, select Routecourse, and it will populate a list of your rides and the new ride you just imported will be there for wireless download. Works well, once you remember the steps from the tutorial in the right order.
When a course overlaps at some point seems like Garmin units in general don’t always pick up the right one. Really wish they had a simple option where you could long press on the triangle and pick which section of the course you are on.
Jeff, with the newer connectIQ I would hope they come up with a way to get the file from your phone without needing a wifi connection. (i.e. if I’m at a ride start and forgot to load my garmin I could get my phone to get the course from Ridewithgps and upload to my device over bluetooth
Hi, I was wandering if you are aware of the process for downloading the free Garmin maps for the 820? You article refers to the 520. I have a preloaded Australia map but have now moved to Portland Oregon and the names of the files appear different so im reluctant to delete anything on the Garmin in the event I lose it/.
I rename gmapsupp to gmapbmap, and after backing up the current gmapbmap file on the unit, replace the file with the new mapping file. I have removed all Garmin maps and only have 1 gmapbmap file which I keep up to date, and the unit runs quickly and navigation is good.
Hi it’s probably been asked before but is it possible to set the 820 edge up for 2 different bikes, so I can see how many miles I’ve done on each bike.
Thanks in advance.
Yes – go into the settings, Activity Profiles.
I have 1 profile for my Turbo Trainer, 1-MTB, 1-Hybrid and1-Road bike
I bought an 820 from my lbs….the 820 is garbage. This is my 2nd one. Many many issues. Total piece of crap. Both of them.
Won’t pair with phone, turns itself off, I have never paid so much to get so little…
Lbs, tired of trying to make it work.
Had issues with:
Pairing
Picking up sensors
Vertical gain
Temperature
Turning itself off
bad support from Garmin
Tim
I have searched the entire web and haven’t found any answer. How can we record multi-day rides with Edge 820? I am not worried about the battery, as I can charge it through a power bank.
Put the 820 into Sleep mode using the power button or lock the screen.
However, I’ve had loads of issues with Sleep mode – including the 820 locking up, losing cadence.
My 820 is going back to Garmin, In my opinion it is utter garbage.
If you want to record multi-days in one activity-file, then you press the stop-button at the end of the day and switch the unit off, power-off.
Switch it on the next day and press the start-button when you begin your next ride.
That should work.
Get the 820 or wait for the 1010 ? Any news on when and what new features ?
Anyone knows how to disable Virtual Partner when following a GPX track?
Yeah, get a girlfriend¡
Sorry, no idea…
Can you please advise me on battery life on these devices ?
I tried nearly all of them and when power meter, cadence and heart rate are connected, the battery life goes down to 8 to 10 hours. Not enough ! I tried Edge 1000 / 820 / 520 and actually my old edge 800 functions the longest !
Do you think that the Edge 510s 20h predicted battery life could result in longer GPS outings, like 15 to 17hours with 3 connected sensors ?
(I know stages has the longest battery life, but I want to stay with Garmin, and no, I don’t want to ride with an extra battery in my pocket.)
This device is pretty useless in rain. Yesterday, 3 hours MTB race in the mountains. Latest firmware, low touchscreen sensitivity, display locked. It was raining almost the entire race. No heavy rain, quite gentle actually.
Constantly this message “display locked” popped up. Stupidly I had put my 3-sec power in the lowest display field so it was blocked through this message.
I haven’t experienced this in my training rides yet. However, my Train profile has several data screens. When the display is locked it would shift from data screen to data screen like crazy. And of course, if the screen is not locked the rain creates a total mess in all the menus.
This happens in low sensitivity setting as well.
Apart from this I have trouble with switching off the device. Sometimes hitting “switch off” causes a restart of the device.
If I charge the device it boots up. If I unplug it afterwards and hit “switch off” it almost always restarts. After restart hitting “switch off” is successful.
The switch off is a minor annoyance, the rain issue is a big, big annoyance. In particular when considering the price point.
I’d ring up Garmin and have your swapped out. The problem is the manufacturing process is very very very fickle for the screen. Plus your other issues sound odd.
I have two 820’s, and have ridden a crap-ton in the rain this year with them (Paris isn’t exactly dry), and haven’t really had any issues with what you describe.
Fully agree. I’ve had the same poor responsive touch screen. 8 out of 10 times the screen just wouldn’t register what I tapped, be it in the rain or not. The screen itself is also hard to read on a sunny day. I’ve had this poor experience with the 500 & 800 series. Then I tried the Edge 1000, still the same: the touch screen and the readability of the screen is simply crap.
I gave up on Garmin for my cycling device and got a Wahoo Element Bolt instead. I think that is a great device. And using dedicated buttons instead of the screen makes it work. Always. In rain or not, with gloves or not. The screen is readable in any kind of weather.
I do use a Garmin watch for running/triathlons. The Fenix 3, which I think is a good watch. Or at least after a year of so after getting a boatload of updates and bug fixes. But the Edge series for the bike is complete crap.
For about $45 you can buy the Edge Remote to change data screens in wet conditions. I tend to perspire a lot in the summer heat and when my fingers get wet, changing the data screen is near impossible. The remote solves all that and lets me change data screens at will.
Battery life is a joke. 15 hours only if you never need to look at the screen. Those who want to look at heart rate or cadence throughout a ride without having to press a button get 4.5 hours max. Who buys a sophisticated GPS and cycle computer to ride with the screen off? I’m returning this.
I guess that’s why these Tour Riders are going so fast¡
I keep hearing this random 4.5hr number that a few people have referenced in a forum or something…
If you’re getting only 4.5 hours it likely means you’ve set the backlight brightness to non-auto and to full brightness. That’s the only way that anyone has been able to get that low of battery. Almost everyone here reports 10+ hours (depending on settings).
Are there any bike GPS variants coming out, or already out, that challenge the Edge 520/820’s?
My 800 screen has become unresponsive, and nothing is helping to fix and need to replace soon, but could hold out if something good is coming…Thanks!
The Wahoo ELEMNT/ELEMNT Bolt.
It’s sorta a blend between an Edge 520 and an Edge 820 from a mapping standpoint. There’s plenty of other pros and cons, which I detail a bunch in my BOLT review.
Do be sure to fully understand the nuances of mapping between a BOLT and an Edge 820/1000/800/810/705. For some people those nuances won’t matter at all, whereas for others, they’ll matter a lot.
Ray- I’m hoping you or some the could give me a little direction. I’ve had the 520 since its release with no major issues. I would like to go with the 820 because of the few software differences but mostly for the touch screen. I just think its an easier interface.
I have read your reviews and almost all the feedback over the past year. Has there been a resolution to any of the touchscreen issues i’ve read? I don’t usually ride in the rain so I don’t see that issue being a problem if it still exists.
Has there been any major improvements to the screen?
Should I wait for the next devise upgrade?
Any help from anyone is appreciated
Thanks!
Personally, I’d stay with the Edge 520 and the buttons over the 820 touch screen.
I generally don’t have too many issues with the 820’s touch screen, but every time I use it I’m reminded how much I enjoy the 520’s screen. It’s just not finicky.
Things have gotten better for most folks on the 820’s screen. Garmin added a sensitivity setting, along with a few other tweaks. That seems to have resolved most peoples issues. There do seem to be a handful with odd issues still (someone recently noted rain was problematic for them, whereas it’s not at all an issue for me – nor has it ever been).
I suspect this is a manufacturing issue. I’ve heard through the grapevine a bit that the manufacturing process on this specific screen is actually really tricky, and is leading to some of the variability on why it’s fine for some and less awesome for others. I’d argue if someone’s screen doesn’t work in the rain, they should ring up Garmin and have them swap out the unit. End of story.
Having had an 820 with no screen issues, I’d say buttons are always the preferred option. Even though my 820 worked fine in the rain, it still had a slow response to touches. I found the best way was to hold my finger on it for a fraction of a second before swiping, as that gave the most reliable inputs. Part of the issue is that the unit seems underpowered, especially on the map screens, so even when you do swipe correctly, it doesn’t respond instantly like you’d expect on a smartphone.
I’ve since swapped to the Elemnt Bolt and have been very impressed with it so far. Buttons are easy to use and navigating through the screens is super quick in comparison. I’ve also preordered the Hammerhead Karoo, as I still like the colour screen option and that looks to have an excellent touchscreen.
Thanks to you both. I have the Varia Bike Radar rear light and love it so i’d prefer to stick with Garmin, but thanks of the feedback on the Bolt. Sounds like the cpu needs a boost. Hopefully they will come out with an upgraded version soon.
Thanks again!
Ray,
Thanks for the feedback. I originally went with the 820 so that I could use it for various on-foot and on-bike adventures in Europe since my phone data plan was prohibitively expensive.
I’ll read up on the nuances, and go from there. If it were you, which would you get?
Actually, nevermind. Sorry for the follow-up question which was unnecessary. I’ll read the review. Thanks again!
Hi,
I searched on your blog but could not find a final review, have you done it? will you post it?
I am thinkin in buying a GPS for the bike, after reading this article, your 2016 christmas post I think the 820 is winning for the moment, not sure if with just the 520 will be ok….
thanks a lot!!!!!
I haven’t actually done a full review on it. For no particular purpose other than being flooded with other products, and by and large this post sums up my feelings pretty well.
I like both the 520 and 820 a lot, and use them a lot (usually both together on the same bike on all rides). In general I prefer the non-touch screen aspect of the 520 over the 820, but I do prefer the mapping options on the 820.
Thanks a lot for the quick reply… I will wait to see the new 1020 (if that’s the name Garmin uses…) and if not I think the 820 when it lowers its price a bit will be an excellent choice.
Just will like to know your opinion in some reviews I have read in Amazon and other spanish web sites about the problems of the 820 some times blocking it self, or stopping to work.
I heard it had something to do with the software, and that it will be fixed, as it is a year old already maybe they have been fixed, maybe this will help new potential readers and buyers to know if this is solved…
Not sure how much more comprehensive the “full” review could be over this one!
:)
When I first got my 820 (Mar 2017) it spontaneously shut down a handful of times. However, that stopped a week or two later, and I haven’t had a single power-down since. I suspect it was fixed in one of the software updates.
But if there’s anything I’ve learned from owning this unit, it’s YMMV…
My 520 went through the washing machine. In its’ defence it lasted a few months after that before the charging/port issues started to appear. It’s now bricked and I will probably buy another one as they are great value right now. The screen issues of the 820 have put me off.
The 1030 and the 1000 are too big for a TT bike IMHO and way too much money. The ONLY thing Garmin needs to do is add more memory to the 520 so that I can download larger openstreets maps on to it. They would then have several years more sales out of that device…but I am sure they won’t cannibalise 820 sales by doing that!
Hey Ray,
Any idea if a new improved 520 will be coming out anytime soon? It’s been a year, did you hear anything about this?
I’m torn between getting a 520 or the 820. If there’s a new 520 out soon, I’d go for that but I haven’t heard anything on it
Thanks
I don’t expect a replacement for either this year.
After some extensive reading I decided to buy the Garmin Edge 820 in May and I have no regrets. Screens works good in the rain and for maps and GPS I think Garmin is very good. You can’t compare the screen to the screen of an iPhone or other smartphone but to me it works well enough. I’m satisfied with the Edge 820.
If you need a bike computer I think you should buy one; I can’t think Garmin will introduce a new bike computer in autumn/winter. If you can buy the 540 or the 1000 with a big discount you can buy them. Otherwise I would choose for the 820 since it is newer and Garmin doesn’t support very long “old” gear.
You can always wait for a new faster computer but in the end you end up with no computer because every year there is a better one. So you need to decide if you need a bike computer this year or not ;-)
I also have a Garmin Fenix 3 HR which works flawless with the Edge 820; the Fenix is my heart rate monitor. You can use the Fenix while transmitting your heart rate. I always record my ride with the Fenix and the Edge; in Garmin Connect and Strava I delete one activity since you otherwise have duplicates.
Hope this helps!
It does help a lot! thank you!!!
I am really interested and I think this will be my option..
THANKS!
Hi DC,
I’m coping with a dilemma, in search for new navigation. I like the size, appearance and (colored) navigation options of the Garmin Edge 820; filling in an address and go. However, I’m hesitating to buy the device because there are a lot of complaints about it: frustrating touchscreen, rather long loading of routes (even up to 5 minutes), etc.
What to choose?
On the market is also the Garmin edge 520, but it only has the option of loading in routes, not navigating on the spot. There is also the Wahoo Element Bolt, which looks great and had much of the options the Edge 820 has. I saw an update now allows you to fill in an address and it routes. Does it also (quickly) reroute after taking a wrong turn?
Which device would you advice?
Get the 820. I wound up getting it and it’s much better than the 520 as far as mapping. I haven’t had any issues so far but it’s only been a week. I purchased mine through Clever Training and they have a 60 day return policy. If you don’t like it you can always return it. I think the last firmware fixed a lot of the problems earlier issues. Just my take.
Thanks for the reply @Jm2020! That sounds promising, great to hear that you are not experiencing any problems and frustration; especially in regard to the touchscreen and loading-time of routes. What is your experience with the battery-life so far? I don’t want to be without juice during a ride… The stories I heard so far, where not that promising.
My regular “day out rides” are around 8 hours. Using routing this chews about 50% of battery from full charge.
If I’m not using routing it uses maybe 25%
I don’t do multi day rides without having opportunity to recharge in-between, but I’d hazard that battery drain is a lot faster if you started from 50%
I’ve done a couple of thousand miles since I got my 820 and since the sensitivity fix I’ve had no issues, and we do get a lot of wet weather here in Yorkshire :)
Hi Mik F, thanks for replying! Same weather conditions here in the Netherlands, so I feared the touchscreen-sensitivity. Good to hear you’ve had no issues so far since the fix. In regard to the battery-life, the 50% en 25% sound very reasonable as well. I ride around 4 hours, so I don’t have to fear that the Edge 820 would be fully drained during that. Sharing your experiences helps me a lot, thank you!
Hi Jonathan,
I have had mine since September and have not had most of the issues people have – elevation seemed to get fixed early on. Touch screen is definitely not perfect, and often requires more pressure than expected, but I’d never say it was non-functional. I do find the map screen very slow and frustrating to zoom around on, and I’m likely to stop and pull out my phone if any complexity in this is required.
I’m in Vancouver, Canada and use it every day rain or shine…that’s a whole lot of rain!
I’ve never had worries about battery life, I cannot imagine myself riding longer than the battery lasts – I think I’ve used it for ~7 hours once and it was far from dead. I usually ride with GPS+GLONASS and a bluetooth connection to phone, but without a active navigation, just the map available for me to look at when needed – often just having the reference of what the next cross-street is suits me.
I have the Edge 820.
If you sweat on the screen expect the display to go nuts, often switching data display fields in a rapid fire succession (the salt I guess makes it conductive). When the screen is wet, good luck swiping to the next page or anything really. Sometimes swiping pages is responsive, other times you have to be super deliberate while concentrating on it swiping to the next page like you’re trying to do some Jedi mind trick.
The altitude is hilariously inaccurate at any thing over 1000′ over sea level. I was recently in the French Alps and the elevation gain was consistently 1000+ feet below what Strava and the other person who I was riding with who was using an Apple Watch registered. I had to do an elevation correction on every ride in Strava while I was out there.
Pressing a “button” on the display will often make it change color, so it obviously knows a button got pressed, but nothing happens until you press it several times.
Navigation mostly works, but if you go off course for an extended distance (because you might know a better way or whatever, I’ve turned off re-routing because the 820’s idea of re-routing is ALWAYS make a u-turn regardless of geography) it will often get stuck and tell me to proceed to some road 20 miles back. Going off course again it will tell you you’re off course, the map will show you when you’re on the course, it knows where you are, but will not under any circumstances bring up the next turn, just insist that you go back however far to whatever random road it decided to get stuck on. This is my second replacement unit, so unless I have really bad luck, this is par for the course.
I am firmly convinced that nobody that works at Garmin actually uses their products.
As far as the refresh rate when the map is building, it’s a little slow but fine after that. I found the battery to be better but i’m pretty sure thats because I have the 820 on auto brightness mode. I rode for 1.4 hours yesterday (24 miles) with a heart-rate monitor, speed and cadence sensor and I only used 14%
Which is funny….
Because last night I rode in the French Alps as well, and the Edge 820 and Wahoo BOLT had total elevation ascent within 25m of each other.
Like others, I’ve never had issues with sweat changing the display on any of my Edge 820’s, nor rain. I’ve ridden in temps over 104*F with it (40*C), all without issues. If you haven’t, I’d suggest checking out the sensitivity settings on your unit to see if that might assist.
Now I do agree the touchscreen can be finicky, but I wouldn’t say it’s terrible. I’d also agree some folks had issues back last year, but almost everyone I know that was having issues had those resolved with the series of firmware updates between October and January.
I’d also agree that for some reason the sustainability of a routing session seems to vary based on how you created that route. It seems that routes created on Garmin Connect tend to be flawless, whereas other sites/files tend to cause the unit more trouble. I have no idea why.
As for comparing Garmin to Wahoo, I’m trying to wrap-up a post for probably Thurs or Friday on the topic, though it’s slanted more at Bolt vs Edge 520. But I do cover some of the Edge 820 bits in there. Similar to my previous GoPro vs Garmin action cam post from this past winter.
Oh yah.. and Varia Bike radar
Thanks for the input guys!
The experiences so far vary from good to frustrating, I read above. However, making it even harder for me to choose which device is the better option for now. The touchscreen and slow/troubling routing seem to be the most common irritation factors. Almost makes me wish Garmin made the 820 with buttons instead of touchscreen.
However, it seems to me that the Wahoo Element BOLT comes close to meet the 820. The device now has live-tracking (check Ray’s article of yesterday: link to dcrainmaker.com), you can fill in an address and go while riding, Strava implementation looks to be superb, etc. One of the few disadvantages are the black and white screen, and the difficulty of seeing the turns to make. Right?
Are there people with firsthand BOLT-experiences? I would love to hear from you, so it can be set off against the Garmin.
PS: Ray, I’ll look forward to your article on the Bolt vs. the Edge 520/820.
trying to get the time seated working on the 820 It worked well on the 810 but the 820 it has the screen but does not start when moving.
What am i doing wrong or what setting needs changing.
Regards