Amazon.com Product Description
The Power Of Location-Based Data
Anyone who has used Garmin’s original Edge 205 or 305 already understands the power that attaching location data to traditional measurements like distance, speed, time, calories burned, and heart rate can provide. Knowing exactly where you worked toughest, rode fastest (or most slowly) lets you tailor your workouts to improve to improve your riding skills for specific distances, conditions, and types of terrain. It gives a complete picture of how you interact with every part of your ride.
Altitude is recorded using a barometric altimeter for the Edge 705. This accurate altitude data makes it much simpler for cyclists to match their altitude profile with their speed, cadence, and heart rate during post-ride analysis. The Edge 605 gives a somewhat less precise altitude measurement via the GPS positioning system itself.
A First-Rate Bike Computer
The Edge 605 automatically measures your speed, distance, time, calories burned and altitude. The 705 also track your heart rate, cadence, power (from optional ANT + Sport-enabled third-party power meters), climb and descent. Other nifty features include the following.
- Virtual Partner lets you race a virtual competitor over a specified distance and speed.
- Courses let you race against a previously recorded workout, so you can compare your current and past performances over the same ride.
- Auto Pause pauses the timer when you slow down or stop and resumes when you speed up again, so you can focus on your ride.
- Auto Lap automatically starts a new lap each time you pass a specified location or travel a preset distance
- Click stick helps users navigate through the various options.
Full-Featured Navigation
The Edge 305 Screen (actual size) The larger color screen (actual size) on the Edge 605 and 705 shows you your surroundings more clearly and supports real turn-by-turn navigation. |
No more scratch paper paper-clipped to your handlebars. In addition to their cycling computer functions, The Edge 705 and 605 provide the same robust navigation as Garmin’s vehicle navigators, with turn-by-turn spoken directions (turn left in 500 yards) and a 2.2-inch (diagonal) color show that shows maps in fantastic detail.
Both devices come pre-loaded with a built-in basemap, and a MicroSD card slot you can use to load new maps or store workout, course and ride data. Garmin has lots of street and topographic maps available for buy and you can download courses and rides from Garmin or other riders at the Garmin Connect website.
Both feature a high-sensitivity receiver that holds a signal under trees and near tall buildings and have a click stick for simple screen navigation.
Connectivity and “ANT + Sport”
One of Garmin’s most ambitious decisions has been to approach fitness devices as a total platform with their “ANT + Sport” connectivity system. All of Garmin’s new fitness devices, including the Edge 605 and 705, the Forerunner 50 heart rate monitor watches, will interface wirelessly with any devices that are compatible wiht the “ANT + Sport” protocol, including devices from other manufacturers. Currently, Garmin the devices will pair with power meter from SRM or Quarq to measure power – torque and cadence for each leg at the pedals – which is often cited as a right indicator of an efficient ride. It’s unclear what other manufacturers will buy into the ANT + Sport platform, but this kind of open connectivity with products from other companies offers a fantastic deal of potential flexibility.
The wireless function also makes it simple to connect one Edge unit to another to share rides, courses and workout data.
- Review your workout data, including pace/speed, distance, time, calories burned; and if available, heart rate, cadence and detailed elevation.
- View a detailed graph of your workout data, plotted over time or distance.
- View a map of your workout that shows the exact path you traveled.
- Categorize your workout history according to type of activity.
- Review previous workouts, which are saved by day and week.
- Make customized workouts with specific goals and rest intervals. Then send them to your fitness device.*
- Schedule workouts for a specific day with calendar.
- Get custom workout templates designed by the experts at TrainingPeaks.com
Heart Rate and Cadence Monitors
The Edge 705 heart rate monitor uses a robust wireless technology that eliminates cross-talk and interference and delivers real-time heart rate data exclusively to the user’s device. This data is stored with each track point for post-workout analysis. The Edge 705 with speed/cadence sensor incorporates a self-calibrating, wireless speed/cadence sensor that mounts to the rear chain stay of the bicycle.
Be Part of A Community
In 2007, Garmin bought Motion-based, the largest shared repository of customer-generated gps-based routes, courses and maps. This was a significant go for Garmin to support the gps user community and bring a wealth of route options to gps users. With a simple connection to your computer, you can join a worldwide network of cyclists and outdoor enthusiasts through Garmin Connect our new, one-stop site for data analysis an sharing.
You can also upload to optional Garmin Training Center software for further analysis. Garmin Training Center stores large quanities of workout and ride data. Some of the things you can do are
What’s In The Box
Edge 605 GPS-enabled cycling computer, bike mounts, AC charger, USB cable, owner’s manual on CD-ROM, quick reference guide
Buy Garmin 010-00555-00 Edge 605 Bicycle Monitor with GPS at Amazon
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve had my 705 for about 3 weeks and have used it on over 400 miles of bike training. It’s a fantastic bike computer – very simple to setup, lots of data available, but only the data you choose to have on each screen. The GPS and in-unit maps are fantastic. Installation is also simple since the sensor is wireless.
The Garmin Training Center software (Windows version in my case) is okay, but appears to have only basic integration with the 705 so far. GTC is a separate, but free, download from the Garmin site. Hopefully future versions will provide more/better 705 integration.
Something to watch out for as it isn’t mentioned in the 705 docs or on the Garmin site, if you buy the 705 with the map card, those detailed maps will only be available in the 705, not in GTC. If you want detailed maps in GTC, you have to buy a PC/Mac version of the very same maps you have on the 705. That’s another $100-130 on top of the $600-700 you just spent on the 705. Why? Question Garmin.
I have used my Garmin Edge 705 for a small over a week now. I upgraded from the Edge 305. When I first received my 705, the instructions stated to charge it before using it. The 705 came with a half charge so I didn’t reckon it would take that long to fully charge it. 2 days later it was charged. Garmin Support told me “The expected time of charge is around 3 hours. The problem you see is a software bug. Let the unit run completely down and once you charge it next time it will show the right information.” Since doing this, the charge times are back in line.
Using the 705 is very similar to the 305. It uses the same handlebar mounts, heart rate monitor and cadence sensor. The 705 is slightly larger in size and uses a `joy stick’ located between the Lap and Start/Stop buttons for navigating the menus. So, those with the 305 should have no problems adjusting to the 705.
Mine came with the pre-loaded Navigator maps. Using Garmin’s MapSource, you can download waypoints and routes to the 705. The 705 has an auto-routing feature to guide you from waypoint to waypoint. It has three modes to adjust your route from point to point (Car/Motorcycle, Bicycle, and Pedestrian). Using the Bicycle mode, my routes went waaay out of the way and added many unnecessary miles. Even though I told it to avoid unpaved roads, it tried to route me down several. If you miss a turn, it will re-route you back on course. It would be best to use a third party mapping software and download more precise waypoints/routes to the 705. In Car/Motorcycle mode, it looked to route fine.
The battery life is very long (about 15 hours)! I left it on overnight and woke up to it still running. My 305 had problems with turning itself off when going over bumps. The 705 has never experienced this problem. The 705 is also quicker to lock on to satellites than the 305.
Overall, I am satisfied with the 705. It would have received 5 stars if not for trying to route me way off course in Bicycle mode and the initial battery charge issue.
Rating is more like 3.5 stars:
It is an expensive unit, but there’s not much on the market that has so many features. Most early adopters will have fun playing with this device.
It is remarkably light given the number of features – in fact, it is as light as my small previous computer, given its cadence sensor was wired (wire weight adds up quickly).
First, the positives:
-installation on Mac OS X was flawless – the SW has some major issues (below),
-device setup (both HW and profiles) was trivial
-customizable screens on a LOT of data.
The negatives
-I doubt (no trials yet) the battery will last 15 hours with the backlight on, even for brief moments. I reckon Garmin knows this, which may be why the unit will not remember your backlight % strength setting: it will drop to 0% each and every time you sync the unit
-The screen is all but unreadable without the backlight at 100%, and, even then, is hard to read, in a common case: when the device itself is in shadow (your own, cast over it from riding on the hoods of a road bike), but full sun is out (presumably the rider is wearing sunglasses)
-The mounting bracket is the weakest I’ve seen in a long time. There’s a huge amount of play between the unit and the mount – and it’s all plastic, with a single tiny plastic “foot” that keeps the unit from flying off – so: at least on my road bike, it rattles quite loudly on occasion (on pavement). The mount itself will quickly starting rotating around the handlebar (horizontal mount) unless you carefully place your own compression in the right places by the cheap plastic ties included.
-There’s no temperature reading. This is quite weird, given the unit is feature rich, and the barometer should be temperature compensated.
-As the prior reviewer commented, the prebundled street maps are unviewable in Garmin Training Center. Since this is where you would add course notes (I am not sure of their purpose: they don’t appear on the unit as far as I can tell), where detail matters, it makes course notes – and all the map viewing – really weak, as far as I can tell. On OS X, there is not option to overlay on Google Earth (presumably Windows users can).
-Even though it’s somewhat pointless due to lack of accuracy, there’s no estimated power. One must buy ANT+sport enabled power units separately. The current list are excellent ones, but they are very expensive.
-SW has a few bugs here and there, especially GTC, and Garmin Connect … even a few on the unit. I am sure these will be fixed in several months or so.
[Update: Garmin must receive a major demerit for their ability to manage software. Over the course of a year, they've fixed only a small fraction of the SW bugs on the unit and in GTC, and, in once case, introduced a new major flaw (the entire left hand pane of GTC wouldn't update), and took over 4 months to repair it. Ironically, the only fix in this update was this bug they introduced. This unit still has several very annoying SW flaws, a year+ into its release. The excellent news is, I suppose, none of them fatal - those have been fixed]