Dr Gadget - Gadget Shop - Garmin Edge 305 (Heart Rate Monitor) Navigation & trip computer for Cycles, with heart rate monitor for advanced training

	List Price: Our Price: £148.99 Your Save: £ ( % ) Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Manufacturer: Garmin
Average Customer Rating:
Batteries Included: 0 Binding: Electronics Brand: Garmin EAN: 0753759051808 Feature: Easy-to-install no calibration required. Just snap it in the included bike mount and go Is Autographed: 0 Is Fragile: 0 Is Memorabilia: 0 Label: Garmin Manufacturer: Garmin Model: Edge 305 (Heart Rate Monitor) Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Garmin Release Date: 2006-05-05 Studio: Garmin
Features Easy-to-install no calibration required. Just snap it in the included bike mount and go High-sensitivity GPS receiver knows your position even in tree cover and canyons, Customizable cycle computer shows up to eight different data fields for continuous feedback Virtual Partner lets you "race" a virtual competitor, making training fun Courses lets you "race" against a recorded course to try to match
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Unreliable and Very Poor battery life Comment: Although I have not had anything replaced yet (I have HRM and cadence sensor) I have the same problems as described by Martin Berry, the charge time in particular is really annoying and the battery life for my unit is six hours (maximum) after a full charge - not really long enough for cyclists. As already stated by Martin, the unit discharges quite rapidly even when not in use. The GPS signal acquisition time is poor, in the order of minutes, which can feel like an age if others are waiting for you! as naturally it takes even longer if you move around. The PC software is extremely poor and is of a standard, one would have thought was from a bygone age: 80's public domain software for home computers (if anyone remembers that). Overall I would not recommend this product, I bought it based on the number of good reviews, but it is a lottery as far as the quality standard is concerned. Not worth the risk or hassle. Customer Rating: Summary: Garmin - Edge 305 - great piece Comment: I have been using this for 12 months now - have had no problems with it until now! Thought it was broken but it was the lock that had for some reason gone on. Found the way to unlock it on the Garmin website - but it was a useful piece of advice in a previous review, as it is not mentioned at all in the manual. I liked this kit so much it persuaded me to buy Garmin for my sat nav! Customer Rating: Summary: Edge 305 HRM - quality piece of kit Comment: I have used this for a month now and have to say I really am impressed with it. The Garmin software is poor, and I have City Navigator and Topo UK maps! I would recommend the Motionbased site though (soon to be Garmin Connect)for post ride analysis. I have found some nice route planners (bikeroutetoaster for example) which are free and work well. For off road route planning and also for post ride analysis, Memory-Map 5 is very good indeed (I have the Landranger maps). Nice build quality, and really great secure bike mount (2 included). The battery in my HR strap was dead on arrival, and I've also had a couple of iffy data transfers but never lost a ride yet, so perseverance is key. For these reasons I'm knocking a star off. Navigation is basic but good once you get your head round navigating using waypoints and not necessarily a map. Configurable screens mean you really have a wealth of real time data to look at when on the bike. I haven't delved into workouts yet but think they will be a great tool for road based training and indoor training - I have now bought and fitted the cadence sensor on to my road bike and this coupled with my rollers gives me a great winter training tool. Virtual partner is fantastic, and I really have felt motivated to chase down and beat my little digitised friend on routes I have cycled before! Expensive? probably, but falling prices due to the introduction of the 605/705 series mean it can be picked up for around the £150 mark. And bearing in mind the feature list, I think it is still value for money. If you are in the market for a training tool to analyse your cycling performance over time, coupled with a top of the range cycle computer that takes minutes to set up, and you are interested in route planning / analysis, then I would wholeheartedly recommend this. Customer Rating: Summary: Cracking device Comment: I've had an Edge 305 now for 6 months and I've got to say that it is fantastic. I agree with the previous reviewer that Garmin are a dreadfully backward company with a non-customer focused attitude, but the Edge is at least an indication that for a particular sector of the cyclist market they are trying to put some effort in. (Note - however - the Garmin eTrex series are complete junk in my opinion - suffering from a lack of investment in software, and a considerable resting on previous laurels: unless you need to do multi-day navigation, look for another navigation product). The thing to remember about the Edge is that it is for a very specific market. If you want it to navigate by, well it can kind of do that, but it's not great at it. What it is great at is acting as a training aid. If you're seriously into your bike training or just generally interested in your bike stats, then this is the device for you. It was that good that I got rid of my wired bike computer: this does everything it does and more. A great feature, for the solo cyclist, is being able to cycle against your previous rides, helping you push yourself along. It's so much better than pushing yourself simply against a set time. The realism of seeing you catch up with your virtual partner, only to dawn on you that the main reason for this is that he is in fact 200 metres ahead of you and therefore starting to grind up the hill ahead is great motivation. I can't recommend the device highly enough: to the keen training/stats interested cyclist. Note: Given my experience of the colour screen on the etrex and the dreadful navigation software (and maps that cost over £100 in addition), I'd be very skeptical about the new colour/navigation enabled Edges and stick with the 305. The heart rate monitor of the 305 instead of the 205 is also well worth the investment: OK it's getting a bit 'controlled', but it seriously helps you push yourself more when you're slacking AND calm down when you're overdoing it: thereby leading to a better training run. The 305 also has a altitude profile display which I don't think the 205 has: OK, so that's a gimmick (GPS altitude for technical reasons is rubbish), but it is a bit of fun! Personally I'd also partner the device with the excellent Tracklogs software if you fancy doing a bit of navigation/analysis work (although the mediocre training centre that comes with the Edge should be enough to get you started on storing and looking after your previous ride information). Customer Rating: Summary: Unreliable piece of kit Comment: I've had the Garmin Edge 305 for two years and have had a mixed experience with it. Firstly, it's unreliable. I'm on my second GPS device, my second cadence sensor and my second heart rate strap. All admittedly replaced by Garmin free of charge but involving hassle and seemingly without much interest on their part in finding out what had gone wrong. The battery is a particular nuisance: it has a short life of only several hours (certainly rather less than 10), it takes a heck of a long time to recharge, and it seems to discharge rapidly even when not in use. I've lost count of the number of times I've come to put the Garmin on my bike only to find that it's completely dead, which is infuriating. What's more (and they don't tell you this in the very thin user manual), when the battery is low the device locks up completely and no amount of recharging will reactivate it. I had to search the user forums to discover that there is a method to reset the device when this happens to get it to spring back into life - it would have been nice for Garmin to have told their customers about this! Secondly, the Garmin Edge 305 is not that accurate. In this respect it's not surprising given the known inaccuracy of civil GPS, but it is striking on a bike how regularly the signal is lost because of the effects of interference from hills, woods and buildings, with the result that real time readouts of speed etc from the device vary unexpectedly from second to second, and post-ride plots can show lengthy straight lines along curving roads (I found a bad example of this recently in a ride along the North Downs of Surrey, where the Garmin had failed to pick up signals for stretches of half-mile or more). Distances recorded for the same route vary from ride to ride. There is also a worrying discrepancy between the speed and distance data recorded by the Garmin and the same data re-calculated and "corrected" by the company's subsidiary, Motion Based (it provides useful added-value services including map-plotting), which neither company seems able to explain properly, leaving the user doubting both sets of data. Finally, the altitude data provided by the Garmin, which I believe is triangulated from GPS data, is very unreliable; this is evident simply from looking at the discrepancy between cumulative ascent and cumulative descent on an out and back ride, or by looking at the discrepancies for the same route from ride to ride, which can be of the order of 10% or more. Thirdly, Garmin's software development is poor and fails to respond to the needs of users. For example, the company has only in the last 3 months released a new version of its device operating system that provides a data back-up facility, which was an amazing omission. Unfortunately, as other users have also found to their cost, the new operating system wiped all GPS data that was more than a month or so old, including records of cycle sportives and cycling holidays. To say I was upset would be an understatement. Which leads me on to my final point. Fundamentally, I'm not convinced Garmin as a company is really focused on the needs or experience of the customer/user. Reading the various user forums confirms my own impression of a company that is largely technology driven, focused on the development of GPS devices per se, but not really focused on the customer. I am not convinced this situation will improve. So, when I come to replace the Garmin Edge 305, I certainly will be looking at non-Garmin options (such as the new Satmap Active 10, produced by the UK high tech company Satmap Systems Ltd, which genuinely seems focused on marrying great technology to great design that meets the needs of users). More Reviews
Editorial Reviews: For advanced cyclists, the Edge 305 comes packaged with a heart rate monitor sensor to provide valuable feedback. Take your ride to the next level with the Edge 305 - Garmin's GPS-enabled, personal trainer and cycle computer. From competitive road racing to mountain biking, the cyclist-friendly, lightweight Edge will help you achieve your personal best. With the easy-to-use Edge 305 on your bike, you'll always know where you're going and how far you've gone. The Edge 305HR incorporates a barometric altimeter for extremely accurate elevation and vertical profile data. The Edge 305 with heart rate monitor lets you see whether you are training too hard or not enough. The heart rate monitor uses a robust wireless technology that eliminates cross-talk and interference and sends heart rate data to the Edge via a soft, comfortable chest strap. This data is stored with each track point for post-workout analysis. Edge 305 features include: Easy-to-install?no calibration required. Just snap it in the included bike mount and go High-sensitivity GPS receiver?knows your position even in tree cover and canyons, making it extremely reliable for navigation Customizable cycle computer?shows up to eight different data fields for continuous feedback Virtual Partner??lets you "race" a virtual competitor, making training fun Courses?lets you "race" against a recorded course to try to match previously set speeds at every point along the way Auto Pause??pauses the training timer when you slow down below a specified speed and resumes when you speed up again so you can focus on your ride Auto Lap ??automatically triggers a lap every time you pass a specified location or travel a preset distance Training Center software?gives you the ability to create workouts, manage and download courses, and create a detailed post-ride analysis that charts your performance. With its waterproof, sleek design, the Edge is the perfect companion on any bike, and attaches to either the stem