Europe Maps

For road cycling the Garmin Europe Cycle map is fine. You will have plenty of POI, it is routable. It is normally shipped with the 1030 bought in Europe. But if you need to buy it you should favour the downloadable version to get at least one free update.

Thanks! That’s the balance, do I go SD Card so I can move between devices but no updates or lock the map to the device and get the updates. My follow up question is what is the upgrade policy on the downloaded OSM maps. Unlimited like the base map or only one year after the purchase.

Have you tried the maps available at: http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ ?

Gigas

Yes, I usually make a back up SD Card from OSM for redundancy on tour however prefer the Garmin maps for routing and POI searching.

Update of bought map is done from Garmin Express > Tools > kart Picto for bought > Then download.

I have the cycle map that came pre-loaded on my 1030. It seems to lack full postcode mapping and I'm not too keen on the visibility of contours, which is a feature that is important to me as I live and ride in a hilly area. I've bought an alternative map from Garmin and have loaded that, but it didn't seem to bring any benefits. Will try a third party (chargeable) map that I used to use on my 810 and see how I get on with that, but that one also doesn't include postcodes. A bit miffed about the mapping options (told elsewhere that City Navigator is not compatible).

I pay Velomap 15 Euros/year and use their maps, which are based on OSM. For that payment I get full worldwide map coverage, and the maps are updated far more frequently than the Garmin maps. If you want contour lines they can be optionally included on the maps.

I see no reason to purchase maps from Garmin.

The Maps provided by https://www.velomap.org/ are a good choice.
I prefer the maps from http://www.openfietsmap.nl/ for the nicer graphical information.

Both are much better than the Garmin Cycle Maps because they show all the nice cycle paths that we have in Europe.
This is very helpful when you plan your courses with Basecamp.

No, the built-in maps called "Routable Cycle Map Europe" are not good. I live in Sweden and travel often to the Alps to cycle.

The cycle map is quite often a joke! It shows you where forests are, but not how to get through them! Funny that the "City Navigator" maps show the small dirt roads that are great for mountain-biking, that are most often missing from the "Cycle Map"! Even trails are shown. I have contacted Garmin about this but they don't seem to care. I have no idea why they don't take my money and make the NT maps compatible for download into modern Edge devices (1030 820). You can upload them to the Edge 1000 and 705 though.

Any argument that they are not compatible is garbage as I took the risk and bought the City Navigator NT Europe on micro-SD instead of download. Surprise: it works great in the 1030! No card slot on the 820, so your're out of luck there.

So feel free to buy the maps on micro-SD, they will work in an Edge 1030 (disclaimer: at least it has for me).

I was wondering if they were correct with the incompatibility warning as I mentioned my older sd card with City Navigator Europe works. I am surprised you feel the Garmin OSM Europe maps supplied with the unit are inferior to the City Navigator series of maps.

There are many Garmin haters on this site and generally, I find my unit works great without the issues most people are complaining about. That said their map policy is both confusing and frustrating. I am aware of the free OSM sites out there and always carry a copy on an sd card when on tour just in case, however, I prefer the Garmin supplied maps for their clarity and reliability.