Why is navigation on Edge so complicated and poor? ‍

7712758
1 month ago

Good morning everyone! I recently bought a Garmin Edge 1040 and it's a fantastic bike computer! However, I'm on vacation these days and I'm having a lot of difficulty with navigation. Why did they make it so complicated? Komoot it's 10 time better And even easier to use. Pensive There are many functions that cannot be activated if you are recording an activity (if I want to go to a place for example, I can not write the name of the city, why!?) If I have done 100km and I have to do another 100km, I don't really feel like stopping the activity and doing two, it doesn't seem like a logical thing to do, right? Trip planning from both my phone and Garmin is terrible, even trip planning from my computer and browser is bad and poor, why!? Navigation should be much smarter like Google Maps, not constantly telling me to make a U-turn. I would also need a distance counter and the time I have left to get to the specific place I set, like on Google Maps. Another very bad thing is that when I want to go back to the beginning of the ride where I started from I want to be able to choose between the routes to take, maybe I don't want to climb a mountain again.

  • 0 24 days ago in reply to marcelvos1987

    I actually have popularity disabled because it keeps bringing me on the road (even if gravel or off-road profiles are enabled).

  • 0 24 days ago in reply to JayD

    Disabling Popularity Routing also prevents 'Calculation Error' in some cases.

  • 0 20 days ago in reply to dpawlyk

    Sorry I'm calling this utter nonsense. A smart phone is designed to do hundreds of things, phone, camera, music, banking, health tracking, etc AND maps – ie all things to all wo/men. A dedicated Garmin device has ONE thing to do... and you're paying a hefty premium(more than some smart phones) for that ONE thing... that is to navigate a map. 

    I agree with original poster, routing and interface and shoddy at best and terrible at worst. Im consistently having to stop, open up my phone and double check something... and leave me feeling all I'm doing is paying for a router tracker... I understand why many friends have simply gone and bought a cheaper phone and now use maps on a mounted second phone...

  • 0 19 days ago in reply to deandon

    It seems you are misinformed about the intended use of the Edge. It is primarily a sports computer with focus on sensor connections, live stats and evaluations. The navigation features are mediocre, that's for sure, but far from the only purpose of the device.

  • 0 19 days ago in reply to Jan_Mantau

    I disagree. Most of the recent edge devices, and I'm on my 5th or 6th, are great at navigation. IF you input a course from another source. My choice is ridewithgps but there are several other services as well. I haven't had need of a paper map in a decade but I usually create my own or use a route from others for most activities requiring some sort of route following. I'm somewhat amazed at how well the 1040 does at rerouting when I deliberately go another way for a while.

  • 0 19 days ago in reply to deandon
    deandon said:
    Sorry I'm calling this utter nonsense. A smart phone is designed to do hundreds of things, phone, camera, music, banking, health tracking, etc AND maps – ie all things to all wo/men. A dedicated Garmin device has ONE thing to do... and you're paying a hefty premium(more than some smart phones) for that ONE thing... that is to navigate a map. 

    No. Given that the 1040 costs much more than the Explore 2 (with about the same level of navigation), it's not "ONE thing".

    The on-device routing has never been so great. Navigation based on tracks works pretty well (and mostly has even for old units). I suspect most people are using navigation based on tracks.

    The newest Edges likely don't match the performance of 18 year-old smartphones (they might not be faster than the original iPhone).

    It doesn't matter at all that a smartphone is "designed to do hundreds of things".

    Both are computers with screens. The Edges just happen to run a limited amount of software.

  • 0 19 days ago in reply to Jan_Mantau

    That’s your intended use. Many people use it to navigate courses. But why anyone expects Garmin to master navigation when they are not a GPS company is beyond me Thinking

  • 0 19 days ago in reply to dpawlyk

    It’s funny because my iPhone does all of those hundreds of things really well. My Garmin edge, which costs about the same, and can only do 1% of what my iPhone can do, does none of them well. 

  • 0 19 days ago in reply to bikepc01

    I think if you disabled every single feature and had only a blank screen - it still would crash. 

  • 0 19 days ago in reply to andorsn
    andorsn said:
    It's not poor, it just works differently

    The Garmin equivalent of ”she has a really good personality.”