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Edge 130 Cold Weather Performance

ChrisInYpsi
over 5 years ago
Today’s ride was cold - around 11 F (-12 C). My Edge 130 worked fine for the first 30 minutes and then started automatically shutting down. I could restart it (once I noticed it had shut down), and when it restarted it knew I was still in the middle of a ride, but no data was saved between shutting down and restarting. Once restarted it would collect data for a minute or so before shutting down again. After futzing with it a number of times I gave up and resorted to the Strava app on my phone which worked fine (phone was in my inside coat pocket).

Garmin’s specs list the temp range of the 130 to be -4F to 140F (https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/edge130/EN-US/GUID-19267AC7-DD98-4F6A-9761-AF88319B338F.html), so I would expect it to work normally at the temp of today’s ride. I suppose I could ride with it in my pocket to stay warm, but that shouldn’t be necessary given Garmin’s temp specs.

Has as anyone experienced anything similar on your device? Is there anything I can do to avoid this happening again?

Thanks in advance for any advice.
  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to ChrisInYpsi

    As a test I fully charged my 130 and used it until it was completely out of battery. In the two cases it lasts 3h20 and 3h19 in approx. 6C.

    It is still enough as my winter rides are shorter than that but now I have to charge every ride and if it becomes less then the 130 will be no longer usable for me.

    I can try to switch off some stuff, like BT, sensors, glonass but what am I with a device if I have to switch off the most of its capabilities.

    Ironically as a backup I was using an oregon 700 with two AA batteries and it lost only one battery bar after 4 hours.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Krispie76

    I had it today, fully charged, running hr and cadence sensor in 5-6 C and it ran out after 4.5 hours/75 miles, I will have to start brings the old vivo active out as a back up!

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Did a Sportive event 2 weeks ago; the temperature in the mountains was about -3C and +3-5 on the flat sections. My battery was fully charged and died after 2hrs50min costing me the first place in the event. Got lost, missed a turn, still came 2nd though but the experience was rather unfortunate. Had navigation, live track and phone connection turned on. For rides in warmer weather, the battery usually lasts for 4hrs+. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to yuzvyak

    Maybe we should all buy a Bryton Rider 420.

    Garmin!?!!?

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Same here in CT, USA.  Fully charged Edge 130 lasted 1h 30min or so in 27deg (F) weather yesterday.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    For what it is worth, we long ago learned to deal with this when skiing with smartphones-simply drop an activated handwarmer in the same pocket as the phone.  Maybe we should use elastic bands to attach a hand warmer to the underside of the Garmin?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to BrianXDaly

    These things work with iron oxide and that shields gps signal, so be careful where you position the handwarmer. And use insulation, to make sure all the energy is disipated to the gps, not the surrounding air.

    Also very daft we need to take these measures.

    Bryton for example claims 30hs for their 420. Even if that is a bit optimistic, and winter temperatures consume 50%, it still will be capable of Long daytrips.
    I love my little Garmin, but as soon as it dies on me because of cold weather, I'll sell it to someone in the tropics and get myself a 420.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to WalterB

    I've been experiencing problems last winter and now that the temp dropped again, I have the same battery issue. As soon as we have 8°C and above the Garmin is working very well... but with temp around 0°C the performance is really, really bad.

    For a long ride (4h+) I can only use the Garmin will all features off except "GPS" and the battery is fully loaded before the ride...  

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Grins3katze

    Same problems here too while temperature is below 0 C. Please fix this.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    My conclusion from owning a 130 for a year is that the battery is significantly less good than my old Edge 25, despite the better spec. I suspect that this is partly due to the much larger, higher-resolution screen without a corresponding increase in battery size and partly because like many people I'm using more functionality. I get about 5 hours in the summer with navigation on, a phone connection, speed sensor and a heart rate monitor. It can be just 3 hours in the winter. This isn't great tbh and I think rather than waiting for Garmin to 'fix this', we should just accept that this is a low end device with a design flaw meaning it's only suitable for shortish rides and/or not much connected. If you have more serious requirements, I think the 530 (which reverts to the lower pixel density of older devices) is altogether a more serious device. It's on my list for the after Christmas sales.