Here are some notes of the differences and annoyances I've found going from a 520 to a 520 plus. They might be helpful if people are thinking of upgrading. I've been happy with the 520 apart from the recent firmware/battery life fiasco, but I liked the idea of extra storage so I didn't have to keep loading/unloading different area maps
Disclaimer: I've only had one ride but some stuff is definitely not fully baked yet. I didn't use navigation at all, just used it as I would a normal 520 minus maps.
Firmware 2.50
In no particular order:
Setting up is a total pain - I didn't want to copy the 520 files so I set it up manually - Took about 3 or 4 hours to copy all my screens and sensors. The only nice thing are the new layouts for some of the screens (some bigger data fields)
The reminder to press "start" when you're moving doesn't really work - you only get the notification if you are actually in the ride screen - not at the "home" screen.
Temperature is way off, maybe 5 degrees C too high
Speed is a bit odd too - I have a speed sensor (wahoo) but speed seemed to bounce about all over the place 36km/42km/36km all whilst cruising at the same speed in full open cover. Was basically useless. Don't know if it just ignored the speed sensor ? Didn't happen with the 520
I stopped subscribing to Strava a year or so ago but you get 60 days free with the 520 plus - so I signed up again. It wanted a credit card but simple to immediately cancel and delete the credit card. A bit of a waste of time because the one segment I did sync to the 520 plus didn't trigger. This worked fine in the 520 (even yesterday - as if you unsubscibe it doesn't remove the segments) . If you're into segment bagging the segment screen looks a lot better though - you can have loads more fields...assuming it works.
Etap pairing is problematic - it has a very aggressive timeout - and it's jut notifies you every minute or so that it's reconnected - get's very annoying, very fast. This didnt happen on the 520. Ended up unpairing it a few minutes into the ride.
You can now have 10 IQ datafields but still the same number of total slots for apps/widgets/data as the 520 so a bit of fail there IMO
Battery life seems about the same as the 520 (didn't use navigation !)
The out front garmin mount they supply is the long 1030 style one with a light mount on the bottom - not quite as neat as the original 520.
backlight - still the annoying double press - first one to get the backlight % (who's idea was this)
GCM on the iphone has a different (better) interface for the 520 plus - you can initiate a sync like you can with the 5x - there are also audio cues for navigations and laps etc.
Some things, like powering down, require a confirmation - so extra button presses. The Confirm/cancel options have a little arrow on them...which is better as I was never sure which I was doing. You can't cancel a power meter calibration by pressing "return" you have to select cancel and ok. Lots of the extra button presses are annoying.
Notifications are still text and phone only - not whatsapp or anything else you might use.
I still use a Tanita weight scale - but that seems broken - it gave my body fat percentage as 7% - the 520 gave it as 16% (which is consistent). Probably something to do with "athlete mode" but
you can't set that on the 520 Plus. Irrelevant anyway as it didn't actually sync back up to garmin connect, no matter how many times I initiated a sync in GCM
Still has the 20 sensor limit
It looks quite good in the all black :)
TL:DR
Make sure you buy from somewhere with a good returns policy, I'm not sure the annoyances and bugs are worth the mapping, especially as the standard 520 can basically do mapping anyway. Happy to answer questions if anybody has any and I'll update this when I played with it a bit more.
