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830 Navigation sucks

hrudy
over 2 years ago

I just got back from a trip in Europe where I had to 100% rely on my garmin 830 for navigation. All the routes were downloaded from "Ride with GPS" and I had Garmin's European base maps already installed. (Which is another PITA procedure due to the 830's lack of storage.)  As far as I am concerned it is a piece of crap. In Strasbourg trying to follow the route was impossible due to the default settings which I learned the hard way to turn off.  Due to our fears of getting lost we just returned to the start route and wrote off the bike ride for the day.  Between seeing multiple "Off Course" and "Make a U-turn" on the unit while navigating traffic in an unfamiliar city we cut our losses for that day.  Later I turned off route recalculation which made it suck less.  However, if you ever get off course the unit will punish you by stating you are off course for 1-2 km while on the right path (the red line.)  So trick is knowing what to ignore.  Thanks for nothing Garmin.  On one occasion the unit failed to acquire the satellites  up and never started  the course . I had to force reset the device to fix this condition.  Also there was the time that it wouldn't generate the red course route.  Stopping the course and restarting it *did* fix the problem ,but this was difficult to do in the middle of a group ride.  At this point I really think that for following routes a smartphone is a better solution, the only issue is battery performance.  However an external battery in a top tube bag should do the trick. 

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    How does this rage help anyone? Let me tell you, it doesn't.

    In my opinion the 830 navigation is best in class, I use it for over 10000km/year without any issues.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 2196417

    There is a saying by Groucho Marx "Who are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?"  So you have never experienced the issues I had above?  Interesting.  All I can say is that ppl who use their smartphones and Ride with GPS had an easier time navigating the route than I did with the 830. When I was in RAGBRAI my 520plus did the same thing saying "Off course" and 'Course found" many times during the ride.  Of course all I had to do was to follow the thousands of bikes and not worry about the course. And by saying this rage doesn't help anyone?  I don't know about that.  Perhaps  ppl who absolutely need to follow a course will save their money.   And who knows maybe someone at Garmin will read this post and fix some of their problems.  FWIW , this thing worked about the same as my 820.  That had the worst touch screen on any device since touch screens were invented.  I couldn't stand it and sold it on ebay.  The 830 has  a better touch screen but the navigation was substandard.  So my fix on this trip was to purchase a smartphone mount for my wife and rely on that more than the 830. 

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 2196417

    I've made the same experience as hrudy. For that reason I sold my 830 and changed to WAHOO. But after testing Hammerhead's Karoo 2 and after using Wahoo's Elemnt BOLT V2 since 5 months I must say: Garmin is still best in class even though there are a lot of unsolved issues. The Karoo 2 and the BOLT V2 are not better. In my ranking Garmin is first before Wahoo and then Hammerhead. So I wait for a 830+ or 840 and I will go back to Garmin.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    I just sold my 820 because I was fed up with the quirks it throws at you when you can least use it, with the slow route recalculation and the slow responsivity. As Garmin no longer updates the 820 I thought to move to the 830.

    I am heartened to read that while still quirky, it is best in class.

    Hrudy, from what I read you lived in fear of getting lost in Europe. Wasn't that the bigger problem, rather than the 830?

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    You can get free maps for just the region you need (people often don’t need a whole continent).

    https://garmin.bbbike.org/

    Be sure to pick a “Latin” version.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    This navigation issue has already been raised many times in this Edge 830 forum.

    forums.garmin.com/.../feature-request-enhancement-route-recalculation-feature

    forums.garmin.com/.../garmin-nav-fail

    https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/cycling/f/edge-830/299592/i-thought-the-830-was-a-bit-smarter-than-this

    Until now, I couldn't find any reply of the Garmin moderator of this forum on this issue.

    I still wonder why...

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Michael Jac

    Indeed it is unfortunate.  Reading the threads  for the use case of just wanting to follow an uploaded course, it seems that the best way is to turn off the re-routing  and optionally turn off: turn by turn navigation and off-course prompts.  I also had an issue with having the unit on auto-brightness and not being able to see the map, I then forced the brightness to 80-100%

     The main reason I purchased an 830 was for the case that I could navigate to a particular point on the maps.  For this trip , I forgot how this worked and never used it.  I see that some ppl recommend  "upgrading to a 1030 plus or one of the 1040s".  I don't know about that. Upgrading from a $350 unit to a $500-700 unit just to fix Garmin's problem seems like rewarding bad behavior. And I would need a LOT of convincing that the navigation issue was fixed.  I had considered moving to a Hammerhead Karoo 2 but the battery life seems too short at 6 hours when navigation is heavily used.  My current solution is to get a handlebar mount for my iphone and use a top tube bag/battery combination to extend its life.  After all if a handlebar mount is good enough for Chris Froome , it is good enough for me!

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to hrudy

    As mentioned earlier in this thread I sold my 820. Disgusted with its performance.

    I now have a pre-owned 830 and I must say it is a lot quicker in all respects, but mainly in route display, which means you don’t have to stop to wait where the damn thing tells you where to go. Of course having a route available in seconds rather than in minutes is helpful.

    I suspect to discover its own quirks, but because it is faster I can hopefully act on them faster.

    so here is a cautiously happy user.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    I, unfortunately have the same experience. I do bikepacking and gravel and with the edge 830 it means just constantly stopping to look for the route.

    I just came back from a ride that was ruined by garmin. On top off simply wrong directions (garmin says to turn left, you turn left and *SKREEK* "REROUTING") I noticed that the arrow showing your direction only worked when moving. When I stopped, the arrow turned into random dir and got stuck there not caring where  I pointed the device. Makes it pretty difficult to navigate on trails in the forest. I tried to calibrate the unit but it only kept me doing the 8 symbol in air for infinite time.

    At one stop I accidentally finished my exercise on garmin (this happens A LOT). I reloaded the route and saw that garmin had rerouted me completely off the preplanned route. At some point it rerouted me to a MTB route I would've had hard time even with a full suspension. I think this is dangerous. The only positive thing is that when troubleshooting I found out I could turn rerouting off. This should seriously be disabled off the box.

    Other nuisances include: on my first trip with the edge I missed my watering point and camping point since the edge 830 will not alert about points of interests when in battery saving mode. It didnt even cross my mind beforehand that this could be the case. 

    Still waiting for reply from garmin, but I think I'll be better off with a mobile phone or even a paper map.