If one can bring their debit card or phone and buy a £5 handlebar bell - what are the problems Garmin is solving for £650 here?
Must be navigation. But I just sold my 1040 Solar, as I just can’t see its navigation - between sun glare, sunglasses, burgundy line and tiny blue tick mark - fairly useless. And when I turned the brightness on max, the thing died before the end of a 5 hour ride.
Ok maybe all the fitness platform stuff with adaptive training etc, but how many people use an Edge as a primary device, surely they use a watch so already paid once to unlock this functionality.
Looking at speed and power metrics? For £650? I don’t know.
This is going TomTom way. At least I hope it is.
All power and HR and other metrics are now available on a phone. Fitness and training - clearly there are great platforms like TR for that.
Navigation in front of my eyes is all I really need from Garmin. And one day soon there will be a pair of smart glasses with navi, speakers, connected to phone apps, which is connected to bike peripherals and has an AI chip to discuss and plot a route hands free. And it ain’t gonna be Garmin.
Therefore 1050 is another step towards a dead end while squeezing the margins from as many of us as possible.
Personally I have never had any problems seeing the screen when it was angled the „right“ way horizontal or maybe 2-3 degrees tilted upwards and when I wasn’t using polarized glasses. I really like the tft display and the solar charging of the 1040s. The only gripe I have with garmin is the buggy software. It’s cool that they are pumping out device after device but at some point I hope they get the bugs sorted
I’m just not sure the screen will in fact work better. I can’t find its brightness in nits in specs and I presume just like on 1040, it will be auto-dimming to deliver those 20 hours.
But at any rate the same screen with Karoo is £450, so Garmin is charging 50% more - that’s nuts.
iPhone SE with a better screen 1300x750 vs 800x480 is £430.
I may cave in and buy 1050 as a long term Garmin user, but will try to remain strong and consider Karoo.
In regards to racing rules, sure you couldn’t race with disc brakes a few years ago. Rules change to accommodate the tech.
Athletes may not use communication devices of any type, including but not
limited to two-way radios, cell phones, smart watches, smart helmets (i.e.,
helmets enabled with Bluetooth® technology), in any distractive manner during
the Race. A “distractive manner” includes but is not limited to making and
receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, playing music, using
social media, taking photographs, and mounting the device to a bike for
purposes of using the device like a bike computer. Using a communication
device in a distractive manner during the Race will result in disqualification;
Considering I have red green color blindness, I really strugle to see the line in many conditions, with the arrows it works ok, but I really wisch they would provide a high contrast option for it… Will maybe try out if that change in the MAPTHEME file works on a 530…
The screen is pretty impressive compared to the 1040 Solar, but it still feels like this a little bit:
I haven’t had a chance to look at the videos yet, but does the thing still have all the responsiveness of a 2008 Android phone? I like my 1040, but everything seems to move at 10 fps on that thing.
Playing with it, I don’t think it’s necessarily responsiveness that’s the issue, it’s not laggy per se. I think I’m just so used to the 120 Hz screen on my iPhone being so smooth that anything else feels like a slideshow in comparison. But I do love how bright it is, it’s so much easier to see in sunlight. I also really like the speaker; besides the bike bell, the noises coming out of this thing are so much more pleasant than the shrill beeps in the 1040. I also thought it’d be a pain to set it up, but it just transferred all my data screens and sensors from my previous unit, it all took 30 seconds. I was pretty impressed, but I think I had low expectations from Garmin’s UX.
Anyway, can’t wait to take it out on a long ride tomorrow.
Is the bell actually usable? I’m feeling extremely cynical about it being at the correct volume and angle that it will alert people on a path unless I’m crawling along and a meter behind them, in which case I would have already called out a several seconds prior.
