Garmin Edge 800 review

The 800 isn’t perfect, though. As we’ve mentioned, documentation could be a lot better. There’s a full PDF manual stored in memory, but it isn’t particularly comprehensive: we found better user-generated guides online. Another niggle is that the English language option is US based, not English, so you have to put up with ‘statute, highways and carpool lanes’ instead of ‘imperial, motorways and bus lanes’.

Our other gripe is that there are too many different Garmin applications and websites you have to install and visit to use all the 800’s features. There’s the Communicator Plugin for connecting the 800 to your computer via USB, WebUpdater for updating the firmware, Training Center for analysing your rides, Connect for doing the same online, BaseCamp for planning routes and more. We’d much prefer it if everything was neatly integrated into one application with web links.

Software

Garmin Connect is probably the first tool you’ll use. It uploads your activities to Garmin’s website and does an excellent job of presenting the information in a friendly way. As well as a map showing the route you took, you get graphs showing speed, elevation, heart rate, cadence and temperature. You can set goals, such as cycling a certain distance within the next month, and schedule activities as well. A neat feature is the ability to play back the route in Google Earth. Routes can also be downloaded, so you can challenge friends to cycle your route, or download their courses.

For creating courses, you can try Garmin’s BaseCamp application. This comes with a basemap – the same that’s preloaded onto the basic Edge 800 – but which isn’t much use for plotting routes. If you connect your Edge 800 via USB, BaseCamp can read the more detailed maps – either Discoverer or City Navigator – so you can plan a route using precise roads and paths.