Once you own a Garmin 205, you'll get rid of the rest of your bike odometers. Buy the extra mounts for your other bikes. No need for wires, magnets, batteries, etc... For a short term use, it even works pretty well in a shir or bike bag pocket.
The only weakness is the battery life. It can only go about 8 hours between recharges. It does recharge pretty quickly, however, it does need AC. I tried a external battery recharger but it sucked 2 AA batteries dry without getting a full recharge.
It does recharge from a PC USB port as well as AC, so it is convenient to recharge at home, but not so good for tours and multi-day trips.
I have had mine for over 2 years now and it has functioned almost flawlessly.
The Garmin Training Center software for uploading and reviewing the rides is kinda basic especially for maps. However, it does provide exports to a number of other websites for conversions and mapping. You can export to Google and see your ride in the satelite view. Nice for planning future route extensions.
It can provide some limited course routing as well. The return home feature works nicely for going back along the route you went out on. You can also load a follow a predefined course. The display is pretty basic for these features, but they do work.
At least one dishonest Amazon vendor (Buy Accessories) is selling overhauled/refurbished units as new. Play it safe and only buy from Amazon itself.br /br /Other than that, it looks great; have not used it yet. Buy a USB emergency battery charger for longer trips. APC has several good ones:br /http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=314ISOCountryCode=us
"Domestic Bliss"
2008-07-01
- Reviewed By User: A2QXCHCNWJAFWL
This is the second Edge 205 I have purchased for my wife. The first one quit taking a charge after about 1.5 years and to maintain domestic bliss I bought another for her. She really likes it and uses it on her rides several times a week.
The biggest drawback is the battery. The unit is sealed so it cannot be replaced by the user, and with regular use any battery eventually fails, not matter what the technology. No doubt it is just a variation on a cell phone battery, but apparently the Garmin strategy is to make you buy a new unit rather than be able to replace a $15 battery.
For my wife's happiness with the product functions for the price I give it 5 stars. For the battery ripoff by Garmin policy, I give it 0 stars. So my ROUNDED UP average score is a 3. They don't have any competition I know of so they get away with it. Buyer beware.
I used this GPS/computer for a year and would not rate it very highly for price versus performance. Its good points: trivial to move from one bike to another (I've even thrown it in a back pocket to record a workout), reasonable accuracy for distance, though complaints in other reviews about altitude are completely valid (it still can't decide the altitude of my house within 50 feet). It provides lots of data, though much of it unusable (why don't they have a text file format so that you could load data into a spreadsheet?) unless you join an online web site that can make it more useful. The bad: altitude inaccuracy mentioned earlier (forget getting accurate road grade readings), lousy software with it with no data manipulation capability, and poor battery life: claimed was 11 hours, but I found that I could only get 6 (and I was careful to follow all directions for charging). Finally, the most annoying thing was a tendency to short out and shut down on rough roads. It was unpredictable-sometimes I could go over cobbles with nary a problem, but a small shock would make the display disappear. Maybe the more expensive models are better, but I would not recommend the 205.
"Great Stuff"
2008-06-22
- Reviewed By User: A1BYBO87IOHGNE
This is the best gadget I ever bought for my bike. It allows me to go riding places I never was before and still feel a "local". The original Garmin software realy sucks but the internet is full of tools you can use to load your Garmin Edge with pre-defined routes. Cool stuff
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"Domestic Bliss"
"Sketchy Performance as a Cycling Computer"