{"id":59,"date":"2008-09-02T06:25:49","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T06:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/?p=59"},"modified":"2008-09-02T11:00:32","modified_gmt":"2008-09-02T11:00:32","slug":"garmin-edge-605705","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/?p=59","title":{"rendered":"Garmin Edge 605\/705"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/martyndavis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/605.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-60\" title=\"605\" src=\"http:\/\/martyndavis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/605.jpg\" alt=\"Garmin 605\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Firstly, I have to say that I <strong>really<\/strong> wanted to like this unit.\u00a0 I&#8217;d put it off for a while because &#8212; at \u00a3250 (GBP) for the base model (plus street-level maps) &#8212; it was two thirds of the cost of my new fixed-wheel bicycle.\u00a0 I&#8217;d had some great usage out of the old Garmin, my 205, but this offered extra benefits.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The extra benefits I liked:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Colour display<\/li>\n<li>Expandable with micro-SD card &#8211; store lots of routes on it<\/li>\n<li>(With optional routing): Full European road maps<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When I first unpacked it, I was slightly disappointed to find that it&#8217;s grown since the 205\/305 days.\u00a0 I remember likening the 205 to a <strong>small<\/strong> mobile phone.\u00a0 The 605 is more blackberry size.\u00a0 Just large enough to look wrong on the bike.\u00a0 A minor point.<\/p>\n<p>The display is great, so long as you have the backlight on.\u00a0 It&#8217;s hard to read without.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the kicker for me&#8230; true to form, the Garmin software is quite oddly crap.\u00a0 In this case, it&#8217;s the navigation.\u00a0 The unit <strong>will<\/strong> do navigation, but you wouldn&#8217;t want to plan a ride with it.\u00a0 It&#8217;s slow and fiddly, and you have no control over which route you&#8217;ll take.\u00a0 I was sure I&#8217;d be able to make it do what I wanted to though!\u00a0 Whip up a custom GPX route file with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marengo-ltd.com\/map2\">Marengo Route Planner<\/a>, upload it to the device, and follow that.<\/p>\n<p>Er&#8230; no.\u00a0 If you upload a route <strong>you<\/strong> want to follow, it doesn&#8217;t direct you to <strong>your<\/strong> waypoints, it sends you down roads it thinks you should take to get to your waypoints.\u00a0 Sometimes quite bizarre ones.\u00a0 It tried to get me to do a U-turn on Chelsea Embankment, and take a couple of laps of Parliament Square.<\/p>\n<p>It has the option in the settings of saying &#8220;don&#8217;t follow road&#8221;, and &#8220;navigate off-road&#8221;, and turning off the street maps, but <strong>still<\/strong> it insists on taking me down the roads it knows are in the area.<\/p>\n<p>It has other stuff, like training facilities, but, for me, the ability to plan a route, and following what you&#8217;ve planned is what I want.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> if you&#8217;re like me, and you want to ditch the paper map, plan a nice route, and let a GPS unit guide you round it, then stick with the Garmin Edge 205.\u00a0 The navigation facilities of the 605 might be useful, on occasion, if you&#8217;re lost, but they&#8217;re pants for planning a route.\u00a0 Avoid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Firstly, I have to say that I really wanted to like this unit.\u00a0 I&#8217;d put it off for a while because &#8212; at \u00a3250 (GBP) for the base model (plus street-level maps) &#8212; it was two thirds of the cost of my new fixed-wheel bicycle.\u00a0 I&#8217;d had some great usage out of the old Garmin, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/?p=59\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Garmin Edge 605\/705&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martyndavis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}