Garmin Edge 830

This is the current GPS unit i am using, the Garmin 830, I know right it’s ancient at this point, but you know what it just works. After the time I spent with the Wahoo roam, I never thought I’d be actually happy to be back using a Garmin. You know there clunky UI. But honestly, it does what everything I need, and what I mean by that is it records my rides while I’m able to follow an easy-to-follow map. I can also scroll around on the map to see what is coming up. I know a lot of people seem to hate on Garmin and I think a lot of that stems from the 20 series Garmins they essentially put the old computer from the older Garmins and put all the new features that come out that year. So lots of people seemed to have crashes because obviously it couldn’t handle it. I don’t doubt it’s still similar on this 830 if you try to use everything at once, (which you should be able to do if it’s a feature) but these GPS units use ancient tech, think early smartphone that’s where it’s from.

The way I use this is really simple I have it plugged into the dynamo pretty much all the time, so there is no chance of it running out of juice, and I leave all the auto pause features turned off, I let Strava sort out the elapsed vs moving time. Any other connection is turned off, occasionally I will transfer my maps using the Komoot Garmin app which requires Bluetooth, but mostly I go down the old school route of just plugging the Garmin into the computer and putting the GPX files on manually. (drag and strop into the New Files folder you if you don’t know where they need to go)

I have had this one now for a couple of years I think I bought it second hand and I have had no crashes and no issues with it at all, the only real downside is that this one still uses them micro USB cables which break quite often, Garmin could have added the USB c with the 30 series but alas they didn’t. They have of course added them to the new devices, but I’m not quite ready to drop to cool £400 for the equivalent model, I will wait a bit longer yet until this one finally goes kaput.