Garmin Edge 530 question

I’ll try an make this brief. My Wahoo Bolt that was purchased on Cyber Monday(approx 5 weeeks ago) has failed miserably. I have decided to return it after receiveing this message from customer support: “Since we have an open ticket with our development team, all customer service tickets related to the issue (including this one) will be marked as “On-Hold” and merged with the developer ticket to be monitored internally.”
Without going into the critical issues with it I have decided to purchase Garmin Edge 530 to replace it.
For those of you that have this model can you tell me if it (Edge 530) shows TSS and NP when paired with a power meter. I have been on the Garmin website an it isn’t very clear. I’m looking for a crystal clear “yes it does” or “no it doesn’t”. Will be pairing with Favero Assioma duo pedals if that makes a difference.

yes

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[corrected ]

Yes to both.

Here is a list of all the fields. You can fully customize multiple screens.

https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/edge530/EN-US/GUID-53FC7978-187F-4E53-AA33-04853F86B05F.html

TSS --The Training Stress Score™ for the current activity.

Normalized Power = The Normalized Power™ for the current activity.

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Perfect…That’s a load of customization and data!!! Hope it holds up better than the Bolt.

Absolutely. Love my 530 and my Varia radar. Well I am a Garmin person but I have had great luck and also enjoying my Fenix 6X immensely.

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@Paul_Palmer if you want TR Analytics to match up with Garmin, then I suggest you adjust Power Zone % because by default they are not the same as TR. Here are mine on Garmin Connect:

Don’t forget to change the FTP number on Garmin Connect (web or mobile) after you do a TR FTP (ramp) test. Pretty sure you can do that on the 530 as well, but I always do it on the web or mobile.

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Notwithstanding the issue itself, this reply isn’t fundamentally bad - it simply means they have a truckload of tickets identical to yours and that the issue has been pushed to dev/sustaining. This means a) it’s a real problem requiring a fix, b) someone is assigned to fix it, and c) there should therefore be a fix eventually. That’s better than them trying to convince you there’s no issue or that you’re the source of it.

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I run the 530 with Assioma Duo’s and it works great. I use the NP field just fine, and while I don’t use it myself, real time TSS is available in the list of fields.

This is spot on. Also make sure you change it in TP as well if you use that.

I have both a Bolt and 530. I bought the 530 supposedly to replace the Bolt because I was lured by a ‘shiny new thing’ from Garmin.

guess what? My experience with the 530 is crap. The buttons are ‘sticky’ and I’ve had nothing but problems with it. The Bolt however was always rock solid, and remains rock solid. It’s not fancy, its not pretty. It just works. And now, it is back to being my #1 cycling computer and the 530 sits on a shelf.

If I could return my 530, I would.

p.s. I use a Varia 510 (or whatever the new one is called) with the Bolt and it works quite nicely.

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“Notwithstanding the issue itself, this reply isn’t fundamentally bad”…somewhat agree but here is the rub. I bought the computer to as a head unit to use with my favero pedals. The pedals are useless by themselves and must be paired with some type of head unit. That being the case I also rely heavily on TSS. The unit I bought was shipped directly from Wahoo and worked properly for exactly 2 rides. After that it showed and continues to show no value for TSS or NP. All firmware has been updated to the latest version and a hard factory reset has been done. I am at a loss to know if it will be another month, 3 months, or 6 months and I have spent almost 400.00 on computer and accesories that are basically useless for my primary needs. So they shipped easily 100’s and more likely 1000’s of these these units out with a major software issue and are dragging their ass fixing it. In the tech world the entire team working on this would be gone if it took this long to debug something this basic. Yes I am bent and even though I know Garmins have issues as do other computers I’m pretty sure they don’t use third party developers (assuming being hired by lowest bid) that have major issues. Yes I am bent…rant over.

“My experience with the 530 is crap.” They have a one year warranty and I don’t think it’s been out that long has it? Why not send the 530 back to Garmin for a refund.

I received a Garmin 530 for my Birthday and returned it after 2 weeks. It spontaneously rebooted and no version of firmware fixed it. The buttons were awful.

Got a ROAM instead and all has been great In the 6 months since.

If you still want a Garmin…go with the 830. Less chance of a button issue.

Don’t get me wrong, I am genuinly curious: why would you want TSS during the workout/ride. I can understand the need or want for LAP-NP or NP as a metric for the whole ride. But usually I just check that after the fact for certain segments. What would you do with those numbers during your workout?

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FWIW I sometimes check TSS on long 2-5 hour aerobic endurance rides, to judge which way to ride home (longer or shorter). Also really like that 530 asks me to log hydration and nutrition at the end of 90+ minute rides.

Never had problems with my 520, tried the Bolt and returned it as phone integration wasn’t a good enough reason to replace the 520. Bought the 530 and its been great, very happy with it.

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As @bbarrera says it is very useful when doing an impromptu ride or one without a planned route. I often want to do a certain ammount of TSS and keeping an eye on the screen helps with that.
One side-effect of seeing TSS in real-time is how I am often surprised how quickly it increases when doing hard work. When doing steady state on the road it hardly increases but then you check it after just few minutes climbing and it has shot up (relatively).

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I don’t necessarily need TSS as much during a ride although it would be nice for reasons others have mentioned but I most assuredly need it afterwards and it doesn’t show up at all. The field stays blank/shows no value ever during or after.

“I received a Garmin 530 for my Birthday and returned it after 2 weeks. It spontaneously rebooted and no version of firmware fixed it. The buttons were awful.” … I appreciate the heads up. I have heard of a few others having button issues also. Very frustated with Wahoo at this point and as mentioned on one of my replies I found out they use third party developers for their software.
In addition while communicating with customer service I suggested they send me another unit and I would return the original one so I wouldn’t be without a unit for a period of time. (CC on file) They just sent an RMA to return the original one with no mention of or hint of “What can we do to make this right”. Let’s just say my overall experience is less than stellar and I am somewhat stuck with them as I also run several of their sensors and have kickr core

Aw nuts… I just have a 530 waiting for me now at home…

My old 510 which I was eminently happy with finally reached the point where I don’t think I could have bodged it to keep going. The mount tabs had snapped off and I fixed them with a glue on unit. The battery died and I put in a new one. Then just a couple of months ago the power button started to get balky and finally gave up in November. I might have been able to finesse the power switch itself back to life but the weather proof cover was ripped from me squeezing the button too hard. I had thought to just glue some old inner tube over it to seal it but my experience is that glues seldom hold in such an application. So I blew the dust off my Hammerhead Karoo and took to using that for a few final rides of 2019 then the first few of 2020. Was starting to love the screen and graphics again (But not the size and web interface). Then lo and behold halfway through my first long one the battery dies. I could see it counting down from 50%… Rage ordered the 530 that evening… The very next email was an update from hammerhead announcing the livetracking implementation (one of the major deal breakers for me on it). Coincidence? probably… Too late anyway, and in typical Hammerhead fashion the implementation of the livetracking is a total Bogon.

So I do hope my 530 is not one of Garmin’s Friday afternoon units…

Weird. I never had such issues with my bolt. Do you get the power numbers on your screen? Seems like your unit is unable to connect to the powermeter or it won’t log the metrics from it. No power data shows up even if you upload the .fit file to TR/strava/whatever? Seems like a faulty unit. Did you ask if they would replace it?