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First impressions of the new Garmin Varia

I went out on my first outing today with a Varia connected to a Garmin Edge 1000.

I have to say that it is quite impressive. It seems to work pretty well.

At the beginning I thought that it was giving me false alarms and that it was being triggered by other riders in my group who were behind me.

I eventually realised that in fact it was being triggered by motorcars but those cars were a long way off. I can't remember what kind of distance Garmin claim for it it it seemed to me that it was being triggered by cars over 100 m away. You have to get used to it and frankly I think that it might be a bit too far. I don't know if the radar beam could be adjustable at all. It would be interesting to know whether there could be a firmware adjustment to allow you to run it on high-power or low-power etc.

Running it on slightly lower power might reduce the alert range. On the other hand, it is simply a question of getting used to it. I was out for a run of about five hours and by the end of that I had started to understand the range and the way that the Varia behaved and it wasn't too much of a problem at all. A couple of more runs and I suppose that I will appreciate the distance. That kind of range is certainly very handy when cars are moving very quickly because they end up on top of you quite fast.

Maybe the range is about right. For slow-moving traffic though, the ranges may be too long – but I don't really understand how Garmin might cater for those variations in speed.

Sometimes I would get alerts and then the alert would disappear. A glance in my rearview mirror would then make me understand that the car coming up on me had then slow down to my speed and was waiting patiently to overtake. Frankly, it would have been handy to know that those cars were still behind me and not had merely turned off the road. I don't know if this is the kind of thing which can be dealt with in firmware.

One thing I did find was that I had huge battery drain on my Garmin 1000. I started off with 100% battery newly charge that morning. By almost the end of the run – about five hours, I was getting low battery warnings and it seems that the battery level had gotten close to 10%. I have never had this before and I can only imagine that the extra battery consumption was because of the Varia.

I run my 1000 with Wi-Fi off, Bluetooth off, speed, and power meter connected. GPS, of course.

If attaching a Varia results in such a dramatic increase in power usage, this could be a real problem for a lot of people.

Of course, if you are using the Varia for commuting then it isn't such a problem at all. However, if you are commuting in the rush hour then you are expecting traffic behind you all the time. I think that the Varia may be more useful when you are doing longer rides with faster traffic and less of it. That's when you need to be warned of vehicles coming up behind you.

One thing I like is that there is an audible beep when there is a radar alert. As usual, I'm very sorry that Garmin aren't able to change the note or the tone in order to distinguish it from other audible traffic coming out of the Garmin edge 1000. It certainly is possible because if you use strava segments then you get a little tra-la-la if you set a new segment record.

A variation on this giving you simply two tones, for instance, would be very handy. The single warning tone is very brief and you could easily miss it.

0 pjg61 over 9 years ago

Well, I've been riding with the new Varia Rear Radar now for a few days connected to my Edge 1000 and I must say, I am thoroughly impressed. Unlike most other devices from Garmin, this one actually worked as advertised out of the box ! I put mine in PowerSave mode and the battery life seems very good. After a 4.5 hour ride, I still had plenty of power left in the unit. In terms of power drain on my Edge 1000, to my knowledge, it doesn't seem to have affected it. My Edge 1000 has pretty much every sensor possible connected to it: Speed/Cadence, HeartRate, Vector Power, Di2 D-Dly and now the Varia Radar. On today's ride, after 130 Km (4.5 hours from start), with all sensors, no navigation, LiveTrack enabled, the Edge still had 45% battery power. Not bad. Definitely no extra drain that I can see.

What's impressive is its ability to track multiple cars. On numerous occasions, it tracked 4 cars behind me perfectly. I've been riding alone this week and with this unit, I feel much more secure. I still look back to change lanes (don't trust my life with it) but it does provide a higher level of comfort.

Garmin has released a new firmware for it which will hopefully make it even better:

◦Made improvements to ANT+ connection stability when connecting to Edge 1000.
◦Made improvements to reduce the number of false detections.
◦Added UI improvement to indicate button press using LEDs.
◦Fixed collection of bugs.

0 pjg61 over 9 years ago

Ah, one annoying thing which is actually on the Edge 1000 is the Battery Level. Some programmer decided that the battery level should be some faint icon with bars as opposed to the usual "50%" number which is used for other devices. I will submit a support request to get this changed to a number. With polarized lenses, the battery icon is hard to read on the 1000.

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

Ashburn

I've had the Varia for almost two weeks now. I participated in the Best Buddies Challenge Hearst Castle this past weekend. It' a century from Carmel to Hearst Castle. I was impressed with how the Varia worked. Despite having riders around me, it was able to pick up all of the cars coming from behind. It was also able to pick up the CHP motorcycles that were running support for the ride. I found it very useful when on Highway 1 and trying to pass other riders on climbs. Being a narrow two lane road, it was nice to know when would be good time to pass without pulling out in front of a car. I have started to get a feel for the actual distances relative to the screen and I'm glad it has a range as far as it does. Prior to this ride, I had been riding mostly on suburban and city streets. When a car is doing 60+ on Highway 1, that dot moves very quickly to the top of the screen. Battery life was great I think too. I turned it on before the ride started and kept in on the whole time, even during rest stops. When the support staff took my bike at the end of the ride, it was still going strong. Almost 7 hours of run time there. As you would expect, the alerts did drain a little more battery out of the Edge, but I still had about 17% battery left at the end. I had my Vector pedals, Virb Elite camera, Heart rate monitor and Bluetooth on as well.

I have noticed on my regular rides that the Varia consistently gives false positives when I approach and go underneath two concrete and metal overpasses that are on my ride. I downloaded the new update before today's ride and I only got a false positive on one. Someone elsewhere mentioned that they noticed a couple of false negatives too. I can't say for sure, but it seemed like one time that happened and another it didn't notice a second car following closely behind the one it had picked up. I saw none of those issues before. I will keep observing and posting an update here. I think I would prefer a few false positives to not picking up a car.

It's been discussed before about having the Varia picking up and tracking vehicles that have slowed down and kept pace with us. It sounds good in theory, but after doing the century this past weekend, I don't see how it would work well in practice. All of the riders around me would have been picked up and it would have been hard to see real threats on the screen through all the white noise. But who knows, my opinion can change. :D

0 sfainbraun over 9 years ago

I'm impressed. Very impressed.

My Varia makes a phenomenal paper weight. When I turn my office ceiling fan on, it does a wonderful job at keeping everything from flying away. I have used heavier objects so nut sure if it's the Varia's shoot flat design, it's solid build, or something else......it just works.

C'mon Garmin. I have a 520 - your latest gadget - and something released at almost the same time does not work. Kinda not acceptable. How do you roll out the product without supporting advertised products.