Just some insights into the consumer experience with this flagship device and associated equipment. I commute to work daily and this is a fairly typical routine. Currently on FW 3.97 although if I'm honest nothing much has changed since the initial release.
Paired with the Varia UT800 "smart" head light and TL 301 "smart" tail light (about $1000 AUD worth of gear).
- Turn Garmin on. Refuses to pair with phone.
- 5 minutes of unpairing and pairing.
- Set off on ride.
- 1.3km in, 1030 shuts down due to a starred segment, which has since been unstarred but continues to plague the device.
- Power device back on.
- Light network drops out. Lights now inoperable, must be forced on in manual mode.
- Refuses to pair with phone after reboot.
- End of trip .
- Spend another 5 minutes unpairing and pairing.
- Ride repeatedly fails to upload once paired.
- Repeat all of the above on the ride home.
- Plug device in to USB to manually upload .FIT files, which are incomplete anyway due to device shutdowns.
- Check Garmin forums for any signs of improvement.
For those rare times when everything is working as intended, I absolutely love the device. But the software is so far from being good enough.
Yes, I know I should be sending feedback to the beta email address, attaching logs etc. but as you can see from the above, it feels like every time I get on the bike I'm doing work for Garmin rather than enjoying the ride. I'd roll back to stable firmware, if it was any more stable than the beta.