Bicycle Computer

As a former nationally ranked cyclist I'll admit it, I was a data junkie. Having a device that displays all of your data helps you profile your training, plan your peaks for prime target events, and gives you objective feedback about whether you are making the incremental improvements necessary to meet the goal. I wish a bike computer like the Edge 500 or the Polar CS500 had been invented back in the day, but alas, I was born too early.

For a bicycle computer, out of all introduced this year, that do power, speed, distance, cadence, and heart rate the Garmin Edge 500 and the Polar CS500 really caught our eye in testing and we'll discuss what we learned further below. Sometimes I think I could get attention deficit disorder with this much data, but given the fact that you can analyze it all later allows you to focus on the metrics that are important to you personally on one main screen, which is a good thing.

The Garmin Edge 500 is the latest bicycle computer in the Edge series from Garmin. It was developed in cooperation with the Garmin Pro Team and it has the ANT compliance necessary to deliver watts data from devices like SRM, Quark or Cyclops. Garmin's GPS for speed and distance is second to none and the cadence provided, along with heart rate zones and alerts is fantastic. What lacks? The altimeter and the graphical heart rate functions attributable to Polar, that's about it. This bike computer means business and, with a few minor shortcomings, it meets the criteria of most serious cyclists.

The Polar CS500 has the nicest, most readable display in the entire universe of such devices. Combined with Polar's tremendous heart rate features it is a great training device. Where it lacks is in its ability to connect to ANT compliant power meter devices, so you are forced by default to use Polar's power meter. Now we've seen bad reviews of Polar's power output meter but in our tests it was about 3% off the values generated by a Cyclops - not too bad in our opinion and as long as those variations are consistent, then this is what matters.

Other very notable mentions are the Garmin Edge 800 Topo for mountain bikers and the Polar CS600X. The Garmin Edge 800 Topo is like having a car GPS system on your bike except it includes all the topographic maps and known trails. The Polar CS600X for road cyclists allows you to upload custom interval workouts tight into your bicycle computer, which is way cool.

No question that bike computers that provide power add another dimension to strictly heart rate based anaerobic threshold training by allowing you to discover the constant of watts to improve your performance.

The top Garmin and Polar bike computer products all give you various methods for attaining loads of data - Polar with its own watts system and Garmin with its ANT interface capability. How do you decide between the two? Our thoughts are that Polar has the best heart rate features of any company in the world producing cycling computer products and that Garmin has the best GPS features which call for no external sensors.

If you need help with the selection of your next bike computer just give us a call at the Heart Rate Watch Company.