Unfortunately, the final product birthed from those two ideas doesn’t quite seem to be what we were hoping for. Or perhaps, our collective expectations and assumptions were too high. To spoil much of this review, at best, it’s a frustrating and confusing experience for a $400 product – filed with endless caveats. While the radar continues to be excellent, and the core camera recording bits also seem dependable – it’s everything after that point that becomes a mess. From a myriad of confusing and overlapping options, to gotchyas on which bike computers are compatible, to an app that’s impossibly slow to use
Hm…I’ll wait, I think. 
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I don’t remember if I posted this video before or not, but this was a fantastic product / concept. Was probably just too far ahead of it’s time. This was from 2011.
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I would love them to re-release the virb but that is just me so I can record on my bike and show my cadences, speed, etc. This while seems good for some people even after reading the review I will wait for V2. I am still using V1 of Varia and best thing I have ever purchased for my bike.
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Can’t you still use the Virb software and put that stuff on GoPro footage?
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I’m excited to see this release. In other topics I am critical of Garmin. But I’ll be the first to say the radars before this one are an incredibly great product. Initially in watching dcrainmaker video I felt he was being a little too critical as I felt many of his complaints were fairly simple software fixes. But then I remembered how frustrating my garmin products have been and I can understand his points. Also I fully understand because of past experiences with garmin that what is simple software fixes, are not simple because garmins software team is a dumpster fire. What concerns me the most, and it’s the same line garmin gives over and over, is that the issues he is having don’t exist because garmin doesn’t experience them. When are these companies gonna learn that from a customer service standpoint, we don’t want to hear that shit? So basically we are going to be playing the same games with garmin. We are just beta testers and they’ll never get anything right. Just about pushing another product. I’m more and more happy with my K2.
Plus, we should expect that @dcrainmaker has had extensive discussions with the folks at Garmin about these issues, and they haven’t fixed them.
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And that’s the thing. How stupid do they have to be to treat @dcrainmaker like a regular customer. You would think they would do everything they could to fix his concerns because of his top quality reviews and following. And I agree that he’s most likely been working with them for months on this. The least they could say is that they acknowledge these concerns and will be fixed in a future software release. But, it’s typical garmin 
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Yes, I do it for all my videos
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@MI-XC had no idea that was possible and any places I can look besides youtube for tutorials?
I just added Shane’s review to the OP at the top.
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This is my whole thing with Garmin products, I think they make some cool hardware but I find their software atrocious. I have an inReach and I shudder at the thought that someday my life may depend on that awful Earthmate app, which seems to have been made by people who have never used or seen an iPhone app before. Thankfully I can use my Varia with my Wahoo bike computer without having to use any Garmin apps.
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So get a previous gen varia, and get an Akaso v50x cam for $100 and call it a day?
Man, quite the shit show there. Garmin amping up their poor initial product release to a new level apparently.
I think I speak for plenty of us, that we appreciate the significant time & effort you and Ray put into reviews like this. Great when the products actually meet expectations, but I would imagine it’s massively frustrating to hit something as poorly implemented as this.
It is so beneficial to those of us who might consider items like this, so we can make good choices based upon real info and not some fluffed up product marketing & release sheets (like seen elsewhere). Thanks x 1000!
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Did you at least win a stage of the Giro just before the unboxing?
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YouTube is the go to
I was excited by something I could buy to replace the Cycliq that broke a while back. Guess I will keep waiting?
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i bought the varia when it came out and am super happy about it, but sad about what i’m seeing about how this new varia is turning out. as with many of the others, i’m probably going to wait for when they fix it or a v2.
however, one thing i do like is the USB-C! gives me hope that they’ll use that for future edge devices (and other things?) in the future.
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I would assume the app issues are fixable. It does seem that Garmin had no intention of this being an ‘Action Camera’ more so it seems it’s intended usage is evidence creation. In 15 years of cycling I have had exactly ONE incident that video would have been beneficial for evidence purposes.(last Friday at that!) I think the camera quality is ‘passable’ for that, and for that the hoops to retrieve the footage are manageable(still needs to be fixed, it shouldn’t be that difficult! If I need to show said evidence to authorities, I want to be able to pull it off the camera on the side of the road!) Given that there seems to be enough demand for something like this, and that it has taken this long to actually see something on the market, leads me to believe a product like this isn’t as simple and ‘build a Varia with a GoPro in it’.
I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere, can the video be pulled via USB-C cable or is that charging only?
The really cool thing this presents as a possibility is with newer generation head units, If we can get a high-res screen, an option to display on the HU the camera view upon a radar detection could be extremely useful.
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Looks like it shows up as a removeable drive (like a thumb drive) when you connect it to your computer and you can retrieve the files that way:
https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-FF49DAFA-3213-4C92-924F-2532424071B1/EN-US/GUID-F7562B57-D601-42BF-B255-9F8AB4ECC023.html
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