Unless you need a device that works in the rain… I bought an 830 after believing Garmin’s hype that the touch screen was vastly improved and could be used with gloves and/or in the rain. First ride in the rain proved that to be false. Garmin swapped me out to a 530 and gave me a check for the price difference. I did go with the 840 this time around since they added all the required buttons to run the computer without the touch screen. I like the touch screen for some things, but it’s always locked out when racing and most of the time when training.
1 Like
I really like my Edge 830 - APART from in the rain. I tend to lock the screen when it starts raining.
The 1030 is also bad in the rain for me and I locked it also but I think I read a review that my screen protector is making it worse!
Been very happy with my 840, but cracked the screen a few months ago and now that crack has grown to multiple cracks. Amazingly it still works, but want to replace it. 850 price sucks, but I like new things and would rather get a new model than another 840.
I rarely do rides over 3 hours and am pretty used to charging everything regularly so I’m not too worried about the battery life. I’ve got a charging station set up in my workshop for my AXS batteries and the Garmin charger is right next to them.
4 Likes
Now that we’re several months into 850-land, how are owners finding it? Any change to battery life perceptions?
I’ve been kind of expecting that Garmin might updated software to allow users to have more control over the brightness. As I understand it (correct me if I’m wrong!) the auto setting is good because of course it adapts to conditions, but is typically brighter (and therefore more power-hungry) than is necessary. Whereas setting manually to e.g. 30% brightness helps battery life quite a bit, but is not very visible in some conditions. So I would expect to have the option to set it to auto but still with a slider to shift the range. So you can effectively say “make it not super bright but still modulate around that setting depending on ambient conditions”. Much like having speed sensitive volume on car audio - it gets louder as the car speeds up (since background noise increases) but you still have a volume knob to set the kind of base level.
I assume it doesn’t have that capability?
1 Like
I’ve had the 850 for several months now and have been really happy with it. Really like the bright screen and new software.
I do notice that I need to charge it more often then my previous 840, but at least to me it’s not a big deal. My Garmin charging cable is set up in the same spot I charge my AXS batteries which I do regularly so I just charge them all at the same time. As far as during the ride, I’m a 2-3 hour long ride kind of guy so no issue at all there.
I used the auto feature at first and it works just fine, but honestly I just really like the bright screen so I just crank up the brightness regardless of the conditions. Again, no issue for me as my long rides are not that long. The customization you described sound like a cool idea, but as you said it doesn’t have that capability right now.
2 Likes
When I crashed on my 510 (many years ago) Garmin had an exchange program where I got a refurb for like $75.
It’s up to like $130 now, but still pretty solid. Had to do twice with my 530. Just got a 540, but I was searching hard for cheap broken 540/530 on marketplace so I could buy it and then send to Garmin for a refurb.
1 Like