Garmin Edge 305 Bicycle GPS Navigator with Heart Rate Monitor and Speed/Cadence Sensor
Product Description
Rugged, lightweight Edge attaches easily to the stem or handlebars of your bike with the included bike mount. Just turn it on, acquire GPS satellites and go. Edge 305 automatically measures your speed, distance, time, calories burned, altitude, climb and descent, and records this data for your review. For extra-precise climb and descent data, Edge 305 also incorporates a barometric altimeter to pinpoint changes in elevation
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September 9th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
5.0 out of 5 stars
Garmin 305 GPS Bundle (305, HRM & Cadence)
Fantastic device. My first cyclocomputer with GPS and I couldn’t be happier. I’m a roadie, but this unit is transferable btw bikes, could in a pinch be used in a vehicle (but…
September 9th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
4.0 out of 5 stars
Garmin Edge 305 – very nice package, shame about speed readings
I bought the Edge 305 as I wanted to be able to co-ordinate information about my rides in a more deliberate fashion.
September 9th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
5.0 out of 5 stars
Garmin Edge 305 is the shiz nit!
This thing is great! I’ve used heart rate monitors before but I was limited to using them on one bike if I wanted to get my speed as well.
September 9th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
The 305 is a neat item, and very clean to install. Satellite reception is excellent, even in dense forrests and far superior to my Garmin GPSMAP 60CS. The stem mount is very clean with rubberized mountings, with a supplied wedge for proper viewing angles.
The cadence and speed pickups are neatly packaged in one sensor on the rear tire, and the cadence magnet is unobtrunsive. Installation documentation is very clear and accurate.
The software for downloading rides is very good, although it lacks some functionality that is available in Garmin’s other products (waypoint and route management), and you cannot erase the unit from your PC. No big deal there. Seeing your actual ride or hike track on a map is pretty cool.
It has multiple (3) bike profiles, so more than one bike use is possible. If using this only on one bike, then bike 2 can be used as a secondary information screen for trip data, like average speed, average cadence, average heart rate, etc., things that you won’t want on your primary biking screen.
The one item that is missing, and I was surprised about is that the 305 does not have a persistant odometer. It does have a ride trip meter, and there is no separate data field that keeps track of your total mileage. You can do this in the PC based software though. I prefer a built in odometer function for routine maintenance on my bike, when I hit 500, 1000, 2000, 3000 mile cycles per year. I’m working with Garmin tech-support and they admit they sort of, kind of, missed it. That’s the primary reason why I gave this item four stars.
Battery life is another concern, especially when the unit is searching to pair up with the heart rate and cadence sensors. If you turn off those features, it consumes less power. For most one day rides, the unit is fine. It would be great if Garmin put a solar cell on the front of the unit where all the black is.
If you really like GPS and capturing as much data as possible about your ride, heart rate, cadence, timings, grades, maps … this is the unit for you! Enjoy!
Update:
Battery life is a serious issue with the Edge 305! I am getting no more than five hours out of an overnight charge and that is with just the cadence sensor. I have asked Garmin Tech Support about this three times, and the answers are disappointing. If you ride long, I cannot recommend that you go with the Edge 305 until they correct the battery life issue. I’ll update you with Garmin’s responses!
September 9th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Simply put, I love this product. It’s kind of like the Swiss Army Knife of bike computers, employing every metric the serious cyclist needs to tailor and hone their workouts. The only piece of data missing is wattage (you reading this Garmin!) which would be great, but probably very costly to integrate.
I love the customization and the complete wirelessness of the computer. It basically makes all other bicycle computers obsolete by comparison. Installation is a breeze without any of the pain in the ass calibration required from virtually every other bike computer on the market. It just works right out of the box.
The Edge 305 has a Virtual Training partner that will make you a stronger, faster rider. It also includes interval training and which is a blast to use and for the real tweaks, an advanced training feature where you can set up your own grueling workouts — a real bonus for the masochists among us!
One thing to note is that there are mounts for two bicycles in the box, so there is no need to order an additional bike mount if you intend to make the Edge 305 a duel use computer for your road and mountain bike. This kind of mitigates the relatively high price the computer goes for in that you can have one computer for two different bikes.
I haven’t experienced any of the battery issues mentioned in some of the other reviews, which I suppose is a testament to my wussy 4 -5 hour rides, so that shouldn’t be an issue for most people.
And finally, after years of ignoring a huge market, Garmin wised up and is implementing Macintosh OSX support which while not included in the box, will be available on-line within the next couple of months (Thank you Garmin!!).
September 9th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
I read a bunch of reviews before buying my Edge. I was prepared for it to not be perfect but went ahead. My impressions are:-
Surprised (for good)
- Following a pre-loaded course is a really useful navigation feature. I recently did a 60 mile loop on unknown roads without stopping once to look at a map (I downloaded the route from motionbased.com and converted it to a CRS using some software I found on the motionbased forum).
- Heart-rate monitor suffers from far less interference than my Polar did. Particularly I found the Polar got thrown by bus power cables overhead and other things. Haven’t had an issue with the Edge losing the signal like this.
- I really like the ability to customize the screen to show as little or as much data as you like. Also to have multiple setups you can switch between.
- I was impressed by just how small the unit is.
Bad side
- Software is nowhere near as good as the Polar software for recording training activities. Particularly I could find no way to correct bad data points without going in and editing the XML files from the device. Also the Polar software gives week by week graphs showing aggregate training time in different zones, etc which is not so clear with the Garmin software and non-existent in motionbased (as far as I’ve found).
- The calorie calculator seems pretty dubious based on feedback I’ve read elsewhere. I’ve ignored it.
- Creating new courses / routes is a pain. It’s fine if you want to ride a course you’ve ridden before, using exactly the same directions. For new courses though I had to create a route on GoogleEarth Plus and then convert it to a GPX (using freeware) and then convert it to CRS (using more freeware). The end result was excellent but it took a lot of fiddling. There is also a CRS creator out there but it didn’t seem easy to edit / save courses mid-creation with that.
On a side note, make sure you use the speed/cadence sensor. Before I mounted it I tried using just the Edge unit for speed. It’s fine until you ride through an area with tall buildings and your speed drops to 0 mph.
All in all I’m impressed.
September 9th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
4.0 out of 5 stars
New to Cycling Computers
I took this out of the box and mounted it to my bicycle using the easy to follow directions. I did not know what to expect at the time but now don’t go anywhere without it!
September 10th, 2009 at 1:06 am
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Product
The Garmin Edge 305 provides excellent value at today’s Amazon prices. Software installation on MAC was quick and easy.
September 10th, 2009 at 2:08 am
1.0 out of 5 stars
Unusable before setup was complete
After fully charging the Edge 305, I set out to configure the unit and ended up with 2 significant problems.
September 10th, 2009 at 6:09 am
4.0 out of 5 stars
Works like a champ
I’ve been using the Edge 305 for nearly a month now and its great! I’ve found the speedometer and the heart monitor are more accurate than my old computer (cat’s eye) and the…
September 10th, 2009 at 10:58 am
2.0 out of 5 stars
If only it worked properly…
I am a Category 2 racer, and I adopted the Edge 305 many years ago, and wrote a glowing review of it. The first one stopped working. The replacement stopped working.
September 10th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great tool for keeping you interested in your workout
Pros:
- Easy to assemble: less than 1 hour
- Works good: wireless connection to HM and sensors works great
- Battery life is good: Will work for over 5 hours…
September 10th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not perfect, but great exercise tool
I’ve owned my Edge 305 w/ cadence and heart monitor for about 3 weeks now, and put over 300 miles on it and my road bike.