Review from
Cycling Plus
Garmin's new bike computer is a smart piece of kit. It works via GPS rather than from a magnet-tripped sensor and offers a massive amount of information.
As well as standard speed and distance you get gradient, altitude, total ascent/decent, temperature...pay £250 and you get heart rate and speed/cadence sensors too, adding a gazillion more readout possibilities. You can have your heartrate in beats per minute, for example, as a graph or percentage of your max, and if you have an ANT+ enabled power-meter you can have your output displayed too.
All this could be confusing but you can customise the amount of data shown on the three different screen and display only the fields you want. It's all uploadable when you get home and you can store it on your mac/PC and/or Garmin's website with its free software. Use this and it records a map of your route, your splits, and you get graphs comparing speed, elevation and, if you've taken it, your heart rate data. Clever, useful stuff yet simple to use.
At 48x69x22mm the head unit is only slightly larger than a standard bike computer, and has a Li-ion rechargeable battery with a run time of up to 15 hourse (less if you keep the backlight on). The only real downside is that you occasionally lose the signal - if you're going through a wooded are or highly built up area, for example - but that really is rare.
In conclusion...
Feature-packed and fully customiseable - we love it.
Rating: 9/10