Mini review: used over 11-day 2,000km gravel ultra race

Against my better judgement I used a brand-new-out-of-the-box Edge 1040 Solar as my primary nav and data logger for an 11-day 2,000km gravel ultra race (in place of my usual trusty Edge 1030, also taking an Edge 530 for backup). I used firmware v14.14 beta, my logic being there were some known major bugs in the release firmware and at this early stage in the product release cycle the beta firmware was no more or less risky vs. release. 

 

 

Battery life. The standout feature for me. Even forgetting the solar this thing lasts forever. Using it on battery save mode I was able to complete 3-day stages (near non-stop save for resupply and the odd 30 minute power nap) without worrying much about power. The game changer (over the older 1030) was this was with the screen being ON and backlit and mostly showing the map too, whereas previously power save mode would mean the screen was off most of the time so either a frantic button press when you weren't sure on nav as well as not having the data there in front of you all the time (mostly as a welcome distraction if nothing else). The solar did add some meaningful amount of longevity too, especially towards the beginning of the event (heatwave here in the UK!) measuring additional hours to the runtime - so it definitely works and I'm sure has its place, though in normal use the battery is simply so good on its own I don't think the solar will be a killer feature for many.

 

I also 'risked' recording each of my 4 stages (3 days, 3 days, 3 days, 2 days) as single activities, as opposed to previous events where I'd end and save an activity after roughly 24-hrs (to minimise potential data loss on failure) and then stitch them together again back home after the event. This worked fine - even when the device crashed a handful of times and died once (out of battery) as soon as powered back on again my in-progress activity was there with no data loss (despite some heart pounding moments initially!).

 

I liked the new UI and various add-on features (glances, music control, easy display of weather and sunset etc). None of which mind blowing but overall seemed a positive and welcome evolution forward. I also found the general snappiness of navigating around, as well as handling various loooong routes, much much quicker. Finally the "search" function to find and navigate to more bike-orientated POI's (eg. bike repair shops rather than cinemas) is now much better to the extent I found myself actually using it as opposed to getting my phone out and using Google maps per previous.

 

ClimbPro worked just as good as I've become used to from other Garmin units - I really like knowing the profile and how much climbing I've got left, recognising an algorithm analysis is never going to get every hill (or set of hills) 100% spot on. Definitely enough information to be "good enough" to be useful (for me at least).

 

 

I had a handful of crashes early on (but like I say my current activity and data was all in tact following a 30 second restart). The event organiser had supplied gpx files for each stage broken down into two or three separate files, primarily to reduce the size and complexity of each file for compatibility for older gps units (ie. a 500km route broken down into two or three chunks). I'd merged these together per stage as I liked to see the overall picture I was tackling. This worked fine until I drifted off-course (mostly deliberately to find a shop for resupply) - when the unit tried to automatically recalculate the route around 50% of the time it crashed. After this happened four or five times over the space of a day I did two things: changed the reroute settings (can't quite remember from/to what) as well as started using the smaller gpx files. One of these seemed to do the trick as since then no more crashes or routing errors for the remainder of the race.

 

Sensor connections were generally stable once connected: power meter, Sram AXS gears, heart rate, speed sensor, Garmin remote, Sram TyreWiz sensors (connectiq). I think two or three times the power meter wasn't picked up when resuming from sleep - a simple tap on the connect button in the settings and it reconnected straight away. Whereas the Sram AXS gear system wasn't picked up 100% of the time the unit resumed from sleep - but again a simple tap on the connect button and it connected fine - I just had to remember to do this each time the unit was slept/power down (which wasn't that often on this near constant race). Finally a few times I noticed on my data page showing the connectiq for the Sram TyreWiz instead of the data showing there was just the text "connectiq" - here I selected the data field as though to change it, then re-selected the single connectiq data field I had installed (TyreWiz) and then it started working again straight away.

 

A feature that would have been very useful was the added "water stops" (heatwave..) though I realised before I started this feature has yet to be enabled here as the Europe maps are yet to be updated with the required information. Shame.

 

The much bemoaned gradient lag: yup it does lag, in extreme cases I'm struggling up a hill and it's still showing a negative gradient from the immediately prior decent. Is this any worse than previous units? I've not a clue tbh - not something I've ever paid too much attention to - generally if I'm looking at that field it's because I've been slogging up a gradient for some time now (thinking "bloody *** this is tough, wonder what it is?") and therefore it's usually caught up / about right by then. Not something that distracted me from anything, indeed the only reason I paid any attention to it is the fuss made by other users in this forum.

 

One gotcha from the long battery life was that I went from checking and charging my Garmin being a key part of my daily routine to basically just forgetting about it (seriously, I rarely even slept it when stopping briefly or going into shops for resupply). This was great, but on Stage 3 which took me near the full 3 days I became aware it was getting close to being out of battery. It was reporting 2hrs remaining and I figured I had about an hour to go. While I could and should have simply plugged it into external power I was lazy and didn't. Around 5km out from the checkpoint it died without any warning - no low/critical battery warning. What made matters worse is when I hastily plugged it into some external power it wouldn't immediately power back on, instead like other modern electronics it seems it requires a certain level of charge before turning on - I'd estimate around 15 minutes worth. So this was the one and only time I had to fire up my backup Edge 530 to complete the final few km's of the stage. My fault really, but it could really do with a battery warning!!

 

Finally I can't judge the new stamina features - while this would have been perfect for this sort of event unfortunately the unit had no prior time to get to know me therefore no baseline to work with, as expected it was therefore next to useless. Will monitor with interest in the future.