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Is anyone really happy with their Edge 530? Buttons? Sensors? Features?

I know most happy customers just enjoy their device and don't bother coming to the forums so perhaps I won't get an answer from anyone who is happy.

But I just tried to replace the battery in my 520 and the screen started to delaminate so now a small part of it is hard to see (still usable) and I gave up putting the new battery in.

I'm more tempted now to grab a 530 but all the problems here are making me worry, I can't get a Wahoo instead as I want Varia support and I don't trust that will happen soon even though they have said it will. I wanted to hold off buying a 530 until the bugs are sorted if that ever happens, I hope I still can wait and put up with my 520, first ride with delaminated screen today will see how it goes. 


So has anyone got a 530 that has GOOD buttons? wondering how widespread the buttons issue really is.

Is anyone happy with the sensors? or is everyone having trouble with them dropping out?

What is the beep volume like compared to the 520? I hoped it would be louder but there is already one complaint that it is too quiet.

Are you happy with the new features and how they work?

The Jump feature sounds as crappy as I expected what were they on when they dreamt that up? 




  • Got mine 530 around 10 days now and did test rides everyday.  Was a user of 520, 820, and loads of watches 235, 735, vivosport, now with a 935.

    I can promise you i really love the 530, and trying to use 530 for all of mine cycling events, training outdoor, on kickr, commute to work, everything.

    And also i still can say, maybe it's even not worth to get one.  I already learned to figure out how to struggle with the 820 touch screen, even to use 935 for data recording all the time (i don't like to wear watch while cycling, but i can put it in my backpack or pockets while commuting) just to make all the training status data reasonable, while 820 don't support training status and training effect at all.

    Only i can say I will never back to 520, even after i got mine 820.  520 is just too slow, i never use navagation on any of these things, but i'd like to watch the map occasionally and use routes a lot. 520 is too slow on this.  I know mine friends still very satisfied with 520 but they don't ever use map and route on 520.

    Although i can make the training status and training effect fully operational by mine 935.  And i even had a garmin remote to stroll up and down for mine 820, even without it, 820 is not that difficult to operate. 

    530 looks much better, and much bigger, that the reason i decided to switch to it.  these small functional improvements, i can say i really love them, although that really doesn't do that much helpful ( i tried https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/ for one year, really love it, but still can say without it i do pretty fine).

    I'd say if upgrade from a 520, it's a must for me.  Or if upgrade from 820 I cannot say it's worth or not worth the price cause everything a 820 cannot do, don't even really matters.

    But!!! It's a bigger screen! that makes sense!!!  I'd say i never find mine previous Garmin more than a tool, but it's the first time i'd just like to keep the 530 always on my desk. This never happen back to the days i got mine first 520 and 820.

    I am a tech gerk and never say too much data, but after i comes to ride more than 800km/month, i can say i don't even really care about how much TSS i got every week.  I simply can be just satisfied how much KM i covered every week.  

  • Received my aussie 530 with 2.40 firmware. Back button is good but the top right is nearly good.... U have to press it in the centre to engage. The profiles of all these buttons are too low I think and is the key cause of these button issues. 

  • I’ve just got an 830 generally I’m happy with it bit connecting it to my iPhone took many attempts. Technical support said I needed to update the firmware using a PC, I only have an iPad so not good . Come on Garmin not everyone has a pc now. As for the buzzer, what a joke only a dog or a teenager will be able to hear that high pitched squeak! Note to Garmin, the Wahoo is so much better. The jump sensor records jumps even if you haven’t left the ground so pretty useless feature really. The rest of the features seem ok so hopefully Garmin can fix some of issues. 

  • I bought one after posting this thread and getting much positive feedback about the 530. Unfortunately, I found that Strava live segments drop out all the time and when I investigated it seems that is because they used an inferior Sony GPS chip in the 530, I should have bought a Wahoo.  

  • It is simply horrible. The good bits are all potential, apart from the map screen which is wonderful. Alas it often doesn’t work with any form of navigation. The bad bits are pretty much every other function. The main culprits are automatic updates via WiFi which you cannot turn off.   The solution is to do a wire connection update via Express but this then resets many of the functions you have spent ages programming on the unit. Entire data screens may disappear, sometimes just parts of screens are reordered. One of the most annoying is the reappearance of automatic lap recording. I HATE this function. They have tried to make so many automations with this product that it has become useless for working cyclists who want a unit to record the data they specify in the way they want to see it. Ghastly.

  • Mostly happy. I find it a bit annoying that for a price point of Edge devices these days, the end user needs to put up with a lot of buggy software and act as public beta testers for software and in some extreme cases hardware too. 

    I bought the Edge 530 over the cheaper 520+ or ideally for me the 130, mostly for the advertised battery life and I must admit that I get close to what's advertised. 

    My unit's (purchased Oct 2019) buttons work fine, no issues, but they do feel cheap.

    Some of the software decisions are a bit frustrating for me, but this is probably very subjective, and it seems like these are implementations that are the same across most of Garmin's devices. I've luckily never had an issue during a ride with the 530, but sometimes the device is buggy and requires a restart, if it doesn't restart itself once or twice a week. 

    I find the beep to be have an obnoxious tone, which is good because it's hard to miss without it being loud. 

    The jump feature is cute, in a sense that it's fun the first two times and then gets a bit meh. The grit and flow feature are also of trivial importance since I can't see how it's representative of how chunky the terrain is or how skilfully smooth one rides... changes to tyre choice, pressure, fork damping  and spring rate, device placement on out-front mount or on the top tube, etc, all give very different results for the same terrain. On my rides it flags hard breaking as being poor flow, even where its the only way to be fast across a trail. So I've dismissed this feature fairly quickly.

    Strava live segments could be implemented in a less annoying way, at least have user definable options to make it more discreet. 

    I slightly regret not getting the 830, since I find the device set up from scratch to be very fiddly with just the buttons. But this would be completely ok if Garmin just managed, somehow, to allow data screen management from the Garmin Connect app or some other app. 

  • I bought one back in September and it had mushy buttons and poor GPS tracking compared to my FR935. I returned it, bought a Wahoo Bolt. The Bolt was great but I didnt like that Garmin & Wahoo had a hard time sharing data with each other so I tried another 530 (purchased 11/17). 

    I have to say this newer 530 is an improvement. Buttons feel good. The newer SW has helped quite a bit on the GPS and stability parts. So far, no issues. Kudos Garmin!

    I still miss the ease of use of the Wahoo but they are missing a lot of the functionality that having everything Garmin brings. I'm keeping the 530 unless it completely fails or cross device compatibility improves with Wahoo. 

  • Mine’s been brilliant. 
    No comparison to the 520. It is superior in every way. 
    Battery life is incredible. I actually can’t believe how long it lasts. Even in below 0C temps. And I always use 2 satellites, backlight on for 30 secs every time it pauses and full mapping. 
    Mtb Mapping has been excellent. I’ve used it several times. Very accurate and detailed. 
    Connectivity has been excellent. No sensor drop outs. Connects very well to Garmin Connect. 
    I think Garmin has nailed it with the screen size. For mtb biking I think it’s ideal. Extra size over the 520 let’s you read maps and data screens well, but it’s still small enough for an over the stem Barfly mount  (remember I’m talking about for mountain biking. I know for road bikes you can go larger). 

    Updates work very well over Garmin Connect and Connect IQ app. I almost never use Garmin Express any longer. 

    Way easier to set up than the 520. Especially data screens. Their order can be easily adjusted (that used to be one of my biggest gripes of previous Garmins. Once the order was set it was a pain to redo them). And much easier to move around fields within each data field. 
    My only gripe would be one of the buttons. My bottom left does not “click” as well as the others. Not bad enough for me to want to return the unit, but it’s just not as smooth as the others. 

  • Have owned the 530 since June 2019 and used it for over 2500km of road, mountain bike and indoor trainer rides.    The device hardware has worked well for me; I did not experience any of the issues reported with buttons or anything else.  On the software (or firmware) side, the initial experience was buggy and the GPS was inaccurate.  Updates from Garmin were easily installed and have resolved most issues I was experiencing so if you are looking to buy now you will get a much more complete, functional and polished experience.  I am currently running SW 5.00 and GPS version 2.60.  Overall, it functions as a bike computer very well and Garmin has been responsive to fixing issues.  I agree that the initial release of the software should have functioned better than it did, but I also like that I was able to get my hands on the 530 earlier than I would have been able to if Garmin had delayed the release until things were resolved.  Guess it's a case of balance between these factors.

    Would I recommend the 530?  Heck yea.

    This is my fourth Garmin device - even my original Forerunner 305 is still fully functional with decent battery life, so I am expecting many years of riding with my 530.