Planned on doing a 40 mile ride on a route that I had ridden the day before and created a course on the 530.
On picking up my 530, found the battery was almost flat, since I had turned my PC off the day before to synch and recharge the battery, the 530 had remained turned on. Its time for an auto shutdown. I have never had a device in my life that fails to do this. (I have found since, that I can use a charging cable for my lights that does not transfer data to recharge the 530 and it does not turn it on when you plug it into the PC or turns on when you turn the power off, but you cannot synch)
After giving it a quick charge up, I opened the course that I had created and selected "Ride" to load the course. I had only took two steps and noted the Edge was saying that I was travelling at 2 mph, its never done that before and even checking it now, it always has a blank data field. This was in the house with no satellite reception. Before I got out of the room, the Garmin flashed up, "You Win, Course Completed".....How, I had not even pressed the "Start" button or was even on the point where the course starts or even got out of the house or even seen my bike. (The day before, the 530 was telling me that I had a heart rate between 136 to 156 and I never even had my heart rate strap on or close to hand?)
If I was on the start line off an event which I was going to follow a course, I would be annoyed if this had happened just as I was starting and had to reload everything and lose time.
On reloading the course again, I was ready to set off, I pressed "Start", it then flashed up, that I am near the beginning of the course would I like to start, so I selected OK, this then had the effect of pressing the "Start" button again, it flashed up, do I want to save the ride as it had the effect of stopping the ride. So basically, the 530, does not know if it is turned on when it asks you if you want to start despite pressing the start button, the only way to avoid turning the 530 off is to press cancel when it asks if you want to start instead of OK.
On reloading the course again and starting the ride, despite crossing the start point of it, it took almost 300 yards before it flashed up it found the course, yet earlier, claimed it found the course almost as soon as I had loaded it and told me I had finished, .......but......it was giving me navigation guidance for the course from the moment I had started riding, so had it found it or not.
During the ride, I was 0.26 miles behind according to the VP, but timewise just 1 second at one point, that basically means that I would have to travel at around 936 mph to catch up in that time I was behind, another 530 fail, as I have been finding, the 530 VP is flawed and often gives the wrong figures.
During the ride, I noticed the 530 wanting me to deviate from the course that I had created on a ride that I had rode the day before and go a different way, Why? Is the 530's route planning flawed as well and cannot even copy a ride that has been ridden?
To date, I have only had the 530 a short time, I have never had a ride without some form of issue. Basically, I find about the only things that work on the 530 is the same things that I can get from a normal cycling computer and cheaper, time, speed, distance, heart rate and cadence, everything else seems to be flawed.
In 2008, I bought a Edge 800, it was flawed from the start but I still use it today, after only about 3 updates it was abandoned by Garmin, not fit for purpose. I vowed never to buy another Garmin Edge again, I thought that after 13 years, Garmin would have improved and relented to buy a 530, but I see no change, and like the 800, it will be abandoned soon, unfit for purpose.
I also use a Dakota 20 for my long endurance rides like "Paris Brest Paris" 780 miles approx, but no way would I trust the 530 to work reliably for that distance, its only good for short club rides. Oddly enough, the Dakota 20 had about 30 updates and works faultlessly, but was the amount of updates created because the Dakota was used by a greater number of users, ie cyclists, walkers, ramblers, motorcyclists, Sailing, gliding etc and there would have been more of an uproar if it was abandoned not fit for purpose, unlike the Edge range, that just gets abandoned as its only cyclists that use them and not much of a voice demanding to have them fixed.
