Garmin Edge 800

The new Edge bike computer will be the first touchscreen display GPS bike computer. The Garmin Edge 800 provides both course-plotting and performance monitoring and is fantastic for bike touring, bike commuters, competitive cycling and off-road riding on the single track. It features a built-in base map and tracks your own mileage, tempo, position and ascent/descent. Utilize it with a chest strap, compatible cadence device or any kind of ANT watts meter to actually fine tune your training.

Control With Your Fingertips

The touch screen display is definitely rugged enough to endure nasty weather, but acutely sensitive sufficiently to respond to the tap of one's hand, even with glove's on. Modify workout pages or pan and zoom the map with merely a gentle tap. The actual vibrant, bright light-legible full color screen is straightforward to see in all of the lighting situations. Basically don't let the appearance fool you Garmin Edge 800 is waterproof to IPX7 specifications and can also hold up against hard hits and scuff marks it may endure in single track bicycling environments.

An Edge 800 features a wind resistant, carbon fiber appearance with either white or blue accents. It attaches to your handlebars or stem of your bike when using the low-profile bracket. A 90 degree turn bracket feature keeps the bike computer firmly and allows you to easily change it among bikes using easily just by removing the rubber bands.

Comprehend Your Location

Whether your bicycle is a method of transportation or escape, having routes at your fingertips can make each and every ride easier and much more enjoyable. Edge 800 comes with a self-contained base map which exhibits main roads and metropolitan areas, additionally it's works with our micro SD cards filled with either road or topographic maps. Select a desired destination and the Edge 800 bike computer supplies turn-by-turn directions on the display screen. This particular GPS cycling computer can guide you around routes taken by various other bicyclists.

Explore our Garmin Connect site and also pick from an incredible number of rides published by different end users. Virtually any activities you upload inside your Edge 800 bike computer are stored as routes. You are able to follow the course with direction-finding prompts or perhaps, for a little competitiveness, drop the hammer and try to overcome previously established goals. You can even use Garmin's free BaseCamp computer software with this bike computer or additional applications to create a route, look at elevation variations and other details, and then upload to your Edge 800.

This bike computer records your every advance with a high-sensitivity GPS navigation receiver that stays locked on, even beneath forest canopies. This receiver offers Hot Fix satellite prediction to determine your position faster, and it also has automated time zone adaptation.

Data, In Any Manner You Need It

The Edge 800 bike computer tracks lots of information from your ride and lets you personalize as many as 3 custom screens so that you can see as much or as little data as you would like. The barometric altimeter offers very precise climb and descent information and records environment changes.

The heart rate monitor allows you to display heart rate as a gross numerical total or a percentage so you can see precisely what your work effort means.

If you're a performance biker, you can couple the Garmin 800 GPS bike computer using a third-party ANT watts device to display your energy output in watts as you ride. This specific data shows you how diligently you happen to be performing, regardless of circumstances influencing your ride, to help you train better. Various variations of this cycling computer furthermore come with a cadence indicator and heart rate monitor.

Real-Time Pacing Resources

Need some motivation to propel your speed? See how you measure to the Virtual Partner a visual representation of one's goal pace vs. your speed in real-time. Additional workout functions contain detailed training session organization, Auto Pause, Auto Lap and courses, which will help you examine successive training sessions covering the exact same course.

Acquire A Much Deeper Knowledge Of Your Training

You completed the miles, now it's time to review, store and publish your ride. Simply transfer your own workout to Garmin Connect, our site for free data evaluation and sharing. It is possible to transfer from your very own PC or Macintosh using the provided USB data transfer cable. At Garmin Connect, you can see the route you traveled using a full color map, look at a summary of your training, create objectives, share it with others and much more. The Garmin Edge 800 has changed the whole game - light up the road.

1. Unit dimensions, WxHxD: 2in x 3.7in x 1in (5.1 x 9.3 x 2.5 cm)
2. Display size, WxH: 1.4in x 2.2in (3.8 x 5.6 cm); 2.6in diag (6.6 cm)
3. Display resolution, WxH: 160 x 240 pixels
4. Weight: 3.5 oz (98.0 g)
5. Battery: rechargeable lithium-ion
6. Battery life: 15 hours, typical
7. Waterproof: Yes (IPX7)
8. GPS-enabled: Yes
9. High-sensitivity receiver: Yes
10. PC interface: USB
11. RoHS version available: Yes
12. Preloaded maps: No
13. Ability to add maps: Yes
14. Street Map Compatible: Yes
15. Topographic Map Compatible: Yes
16. Accepts data cards: microSD data card
17. Waypoints/favorites/locations: 200
18. Garmin Connect compatible (online community where you analyze, categorize and share data): Yes


19. Basemap: Yes
20. 3D map view: Yes
21. Automatic routing (turn by turn routing on roads): Yes
22. Antenna Type: Internal


23. Barometric altimeter: Yes
24. Unit-to-unit transfer (shares data wirelessly with similar units): Yes


25. Vibration alert: No


26. Lap history: 1000 laps
27. Heart rate monitor compatible: Yes (optional accessory)
28. Bike speed/cadence sensor compatible: Yes (optional accessory)
29. Foot pod compatible: No
30. Automatic sync (automatically transfers data to your computer): No
31. Garmin Training Center® software compatible: Yes
32. Virtual Partner® (train against a digital person): Yes
33. Courses (compete against previous workouts): Yes
34. Auto Pause® (pauses and resumes timer based on speed): Yes
35. Auto Lap® (automatically starts a new lap): Yes
36. Auto Scroll (cycles through data pages during workout): Yes
37. Multi-sport (changes sport mode with a press of a button): No
38. Advanced workouts (create custom, goal-oriented workouts): Yes
39. Simple workouts (input time, distance and calorie goals): Yes
40. Pace alert (triggers alarm if you vary from preset pace): Yes
41. Time/distance alert (triggers alarm when you reach goal) Yes
42. Interval training (set up exercise and rest intervals) Yes
43. Customizable screen(s) Yes
44. Power meter compatible (displays power data from compatible 3rd party ANT+ enabled power meters) Yes
45. Sport Watch No

I've been using the this bike computer personally, it is my preferred bike computer and we even sponsor the Rockford Cycling Team in conjunction with Garmin. Members of the team have been given Edge 500 and Edge 800 units and so far everyone who has been putting some miles in as of March 2011 seems to be pretty favorably impressed.

It took me a an hour and one-half to put a full charge on it coming out of the box. I really love the touchscreen navigation with my Garmin Edge 800 but here is a word to the wise. I was riding with it for the first two days ad thought the screen was a little tough to read. Little did I know that if you hit the power button twice it takes you to a place where you can adjust the screen brightness. Once I cranked this up all the way the screen was a razor sharp and readable as they get.

For early season cycling I set up a heart rate zone alert of 140 to 150 beats per minute. That is probably a little bit tight as I was getting chirped at quite regularly. I think a 20 beat differential is better because the Garmin Edge 800 has a very audible chirp to it.

I also set up a cadence alert of 80 revolutions per minute so I was alerted when I went beneath this number. I find that it is good to keep high cadence and maybe 70 to 75 percent of maximum heart rate for my early season mileage, so I set up the Garmin Edge 800 accordingly.

I believe there is a several week learning curve to being able to properly use your Edge 800 to the utmost of its capabilities but that is strictly because it is so feature rich. It takes a bit of time but the amount of data this cycling computer can give you is phenomenal, so it is time well spent. Without the best data it is tough to improve, but the issue with the Garmin 800 is what data to select from.

I placed seven individual pieces of data on my main screen of my Garmin Edge 800 which were speed, distance, cadence, total time of workout, heart rate, percentage grade, and one that now escapes me. You can set up several of these screens with the Edge.

I decided to get a Topo Map SDcard, instead of the CityNav, for my Garmin Edge 800 because I know all the roads in my area and much prefer to map my mountain bike rides, although you are always able to download maps later whether you have the cards or not thanks to geo-caching.

When its all said and done, the Garmin Edge 800 is quite possibly the best bike computer I have ever used and I'll try and report back as I learn and discover more uses along with the rest of the Rockford bike team members.

copyright 2012, Rusty Squire, author, support@heartratewatchcompany.com