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GARMIN NAVIGATION SUCKS

7670777
over 1 year ago

Navigation Sucks BIG TIME!
I was riding a course yesterday. There was some road works ongoing on the planned route with really quick detour (I do know about it for a week, so no problem). 
After one kilometer I was back on the planned route and the GARMIN "NAVIGATION" was annoyingly showing MAKE A U TURN-- maybe for two minutes of riding on the planned route in right direction. Oh my gosh, really?  
And then even it pointed me in the wrong direction and started to showing Finish line flag with meters count down. LOL. I was for the first time in that location, so I just had to stop, open Garmin Connect app, look at the planned course( where you don´t see your location! 2nd LOL) so I had to open another map app to check where am I exactly and compare that with the course. Impossible just came true. I bought Edge 530 to get rid of the phone while riding. I bought Fenix 6  for that reason at first, but it was small and looking at it while riding was not convenient.
Rerouting is setup to minimize distance. It is not minimizing distance at all because of rerouting in nonsense ways.


What about your experience, is it the same, or (and) you´re ok with how it is working? 
Is it possible that some additional maps in device is causing this stupid errors in navigation? 
I´m about to find out. 
My guess is, there is no solution. The best solution would be put phone small as possible on the bars instead. There the navigation is much responsive and "smart":)
Did you try Komoot, somebody? Is it somehow better when you use it in garmin? 

Thx ya all

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 7670777

    What is overlooked in most discussions is that the 530 has two navigation modes, following a course and navigating to a location.

    Loading a course means you’ve decided where to ride and the steps to follow are quite straightforward:

    1-Turn off route recalculation. (Not doing so is bound to raise your stress levels!);

    2-Follow the course;

    3-If off-course, use your smarts to work out how to get back onto it;

    4-See step 2.

    If the aim is getting to a location, navigating to a location could be a better choice, which allows the 530 to select a route based on the routing options set. Route recalculation will work in this mode (at least on shortish rides) if you want to follow a route that differs from the initial one. Marking locations is a bit clumsy using the buttons but it does work.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to PeterK_55

    Yes, this is option and racalculation is much better. BUT, and here we come to what GARMIN is best at, it is so difficult to operate, that I will not use it.

    The device itself is fine. It has accurate GPS, super run time per one charge and great features - but all of those is so hard to use, almost like no human at all was doing some tests before releasing them to users.  

    There is so much of it, it is really amazing (in bad way). 

    Speaking of setting up a destination. It is not possible to do simply in Connect app. 
    You have to create a course with start in your destination point and then you can let yourself to navigate to start of the course, hence your desitnation point.
    And, you have to find it by yourself in the map, there is no search box for address or POI. Why? 

    Wahoo is a pleasure to use. OMG, so much. Yes device has maybe 10percent capabilities of what Edge can do, but those 10 is easy to operate and everything you can do from smartphone app. Why Garmin cant do that? 

    Etc etc 

    Heh, yesterday I was trying to setup different maps and routing for each activity. 
    And when I ran into selecting maps details I just give up. 
    You have to dig 10levels deep in the menu to switch one of 4 map detail info setting (which everyone has another 4 levels), you make a change to one and have to go aalllllll the way back to map so see the effect.. Dont like it, lets go again. .Ridiculous. This should be done in the map to see the effect immediately, or in the phone app in one hand, while looking effects in realtime on the device in other hand. Like Wahoo do. And I´m pretty sure others too. I will find out. 

    it is shame that Garmin kills potential of Edge devices with such a bad software.That is the main problem.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 7670777
    7670777 said:
    there is no search box for address or POI. Why? 

    Because Garmin decided to not have those functions in the 530.  The 830 and higher units have them.  Why did Garmin do that?  Marketing reasons probably.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Wongataa

    Can you provide print screen of that from Connect app, please? 
    Fenix 6 is also low rank, thats why search field is not there? 
    I doubt that Garmin is capable to program this complex condition so one device has different map engine than the other:)

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 7670777
    7670777 said:
    And, you have to find it by yourself in the map, there is no search box for address or POI. Why? 

    It would kind-of suck to pick letters using buttons.

    Wongataa said:
    Because Garmin decided to not have those functions in the 530.  The 830 and higher units have them.  Why did Garmin do that?  Marketing reasons probably.

    Those other units have touch screens. Historically, the 5xx line have been "limited in navitation" features. It's a cheaper option for people who don't care that much about navigation.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to dpawlyk

    Agree,  I guess it depends on what people think of as navigation and expect a cycle computer to do.  For me, on a bike, I want to be able to follow a pre-defined route and for the unit to warn me when I deviate from it so I can get myself back on track (it's not like I'm doing 70MPH when I miss a turn).  The 520, 520+ and 530 I have owned have all done this to my satisfaction over many miles.     In a car, I want a sat nav to direct me the fastest route to my destination taking into account traffic, road works and anything else including me missing a motorway exit.  The 530 is perfectly capable of doing point to point navigation (for example the take me home option will create a good route using its cycling friendly maps and correctly re-route if you ignore it's instructions).  What the 5xx series has never had is a POI database and/or an easy way to select a free form destination from the map as it does not have a touch screen; that's what the 8xx series have had for many years and has always been a differentiator for those models and additional £££.    What is lacking from the 530 is the ability to use the Connect app to send a destination to the 530  'Saved location' list to make the sat-nav type function more accessible rather than the pain of using the buttons on the unit itself but I can't recall ever needing it myself (and is a function Garmin has never said it will have.)     For anyone choosing any sports-tech device I will always send them to dcrainmaker who publishes reviews of such depth that there is little scope for disappointment.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    First time I used my 530 to navigate I mistakenly missed a turning and it rerouted me sensibly albeit it did mean tackling two steep climbs I had intended to avold. A week or two later I must have loaded an earlier version of a route and having gone off course according the Garmin it then continuously  insisted on a U turn despite me picking up the mistakenly loaded route fiurther on. To check where I was I had loaded the map screen and it became stuck on that requiring a restart to correct. What I canot work out is how by default set it to have directions pop up; seems that you have to do that indivudually on eacn route

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Mike_Parkes

     Turn guidance is on or off.  It is not per route.  It is per profile though.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Wongataa

    Been back. through it and I think it might be I had naviagtion prompts set as map meaning individual routes had to set to override that. Oh for a single screen apporach to setting a particualr feature  Wahoo 1 Garmin 0

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Mike_Parkes

    Yes! I had the incessant U-turn demand also. even though I was on-course for the route.