Review of Garmin Edge 305

If you are looking to get more out of your biking make sure to try Garmin Edge 305 bicycle computer. Despite the hefty price tag it delivers a lot of value and make rides more enjoyable.

Edge 305 provides the following high level features:

• typical bike data (speed, distance, cadence and ect)
• heart rate monitor (heart rate zones)
• map (rudimentary)
• altitude graph
• virtual partner

Stuff I like about device:

Very easy to install. Not need to know tire radius, the device would use GPS data to calculate all required information (and in most cases would use GPS to calculate your route anyway)

Automatic heart rate zone calculation based on your Max heart rate.

Ability to upload all info about route (map and data) into the computer or web site to see how you did and where exactly you biked. You can sign up (free account) into http://trail.motionbased.com/trail and upload data and see other peoples routes. (I only wish this site used Flash/Flex technology instead of html/ajax to make it more interactive and usable).

Here are the list of screen shots:

Data that shows speed, distance, cadence and so on (there are very big list to choose from and your can always configure screen the way you like)

Map (Mostly useless, but on rare occasions when you get lost can be very helpful and you would be thankful even for this lousy map)

Altitude (close to useless IMO)

Edge also provide some training (virtual partner) feature, but so far I didn’t use it, so cannot comment if it’s any good.

The only somewhat bad comment I have - battery life. For most cases as long as you remember to charge it’s not a problem. But it’s somewhat different from my previous bike computer that didn’t require any charging at all.

Overall, if you like to bicycle (road or mountain) and somewhat geeky, Garmin Edge 305 would give you more data than you ever need.