Owners--would you buy an 830 again?

I would, save for one little thing...losing GPS reception at random. This has been an issue for me since the start (and now on a replacement device);

I am a Mountain biker and I'm thinking of upgrading from a 810 to the 830 but I'm not sure if it's worth it . Have any of these issues been resolved with updates as a year has now passed. I have been disapointed with garmin devives in the past but have not had too many bug issues. I originally had a 800 and I also used this with Tanita scales. I upgraded to the 810 for it's bluetooth connectivity assuming that I would not need to connect my device to a PC again. The rides update to Garmin connect fine but weight data from the scales has to be sycned via a physical connection for some reason. I understand that the 830 will now do this but requires you to purchase Garmin's own index 2 scales for some reason.

On an unrelated note I have upgraded my Forerunner 35 to a Forerunner 245, partly because the 35 would randomly stop syncing heart rate data to Garnim connect, which would require a factory reset to resolve and I also though that the 245 would advise me on training load etc but this only seems to work with activites recorded on the deviceinself and not on the workouts on garmin connect.

Although the 830 is significantly better than the 810 personally I went for a Karoo 2 which is a brilliant tool 

It will automatically sync with everything except Garmin Connect so if you use that a lot you have to manually upload a file  

No way would I buy the 830 again Or any other Garmin product.

Every time the FW gets updated, the product gets worse. You keep contacting customer support, and nothing ever gets done to fix the issues.

I will say that most of the bugs seem to have been worked out.  Although each time Garmin introduces a new firmware update, it seems like it comes with a few new issues that get resolved in the next update.  Total device lock-ups used to happen fairly often but I haven't had one of those in a while, which is a good thing.  I still occasionally get LiveTrack connection errors, but it is a lot less frequent than it used to be.  The one thing that Garmin hasn't addressed, despite repeated and continual requests, is the ability to disable the Virtual Partner.  That's not a bug per se, rather it is a permanent "feature" that cannot be turned off and is always there when you are following a route.  I hate it.

Also, as a mountain biker, I find the trail navigation on the 830 to be useless.  I've tried creating routes in Trailforks and following them on the 830.  It is frustrating experience that ends up ruining my flow, so I don't use the 830 for navigating a route while mountain biking.  On the road, navigation works acceptably well, but then you have the aforementioned Virtual Partner, and if you go off course, it continually reroutes you back to where you left the course ("make a u-turn!"), rather than smartly giving you a more direct route to get back on course in the direction you are traveling. 

I can't say if the 830 is worth an upgrade (it's my first Garmin cycling computer, coming from Polar) but at this point I'm satisfied with it.  A year ago, I wasn't.

When I was in the market for a new cycling computer, I bought the first Karoo, but was disappointed that it was missing some critical features that I needed, plus it seemed excessively heavy, so I sold it and bought the 830 when it first came out.  It looks like the Karoo 2 is a much slimmed-down down device, so I almost wish I would have waited!

It is weird though that you are following (and replying on) a Garmin forum when you use a Karoo...?

Thank you for your response, I'm glad your happy with the 830 now. It doesn't seem like it's worth me updating mine at this point with what you have mentioned.

I think I have too many questions that need answering before taking the plunge. It seems Garmin don't really explain the features too well and what is required to use said features. I would assume that jump data, grit and flow scores shouldn't need a route preselected in the unit.

I assume you would need a route selected to use the climbpro feature as this would need to elevations in advance.

Navigation for mountain bikers I feel needs to be more flexible as we may want to session a section or skip sections out so. So I can see how the virtual partner would be an issue.

I really would not recommend buying this GARMIN. The Sony chipset is either very imprecise, or GARMIN does not know how to program to make it work well. As they have said before on mtb routes, in the turns of sharp curves of narrow roads, the GPS loses the track because it is not able to position you exactly. Also to show the degree of the gradient, it has a very large lag of about 15 seconds. The temperature always marks 2 to 5 degrees higher than the real one. If you put a screen protector on it, the touch screen won't work on rainy days, etc.

I have the same feedback regarding GPS issues. Garmin needs to step up his game.

Accuracy is far worse than a Garmin fenix 3 watch from 5 years ago.