Garmin Edge 520

This is my first Garmin ever, as well as my first GPS bike computer ever and I fucking love it! I was so sick of switching my wheel base non gps bike computer from one bike to another so I decide to get this rather pricey Garmin ($300).

However, pricey might be, it has everything you dream of. It comes with three mounts, one extended upfront mount for your handle bars and two little plug in discs to put it on your stem or handle bar. I’m not going to go into any of the technical details as I’m not really savvy in that area but other than the expected features like any other GPS computer is expected to have this Garmin Edge 520 also have the following. Edge has a base map which you can replace with detail map of your area with navigation, very cool. It does not have an option of memory card so you have to do it by direct upload to Garmin. It also links to your phone so you get texts and calls while you’re putting hammer down on the bike. Even your sweet darling can check on you online to see if you are on the path which you told her/him to be and not banging neighbor’s wife/husband. For the Strava maniacs, it has Strava integration so you can splurge yourself in KOM’s live and see how you stack up against your buddies while riding.

There are couple things about this little machine which pisses me off. Well it might be a strong word but couple things could be better. I bike in the dark a lot over the winter as I lived in Alaska and we do not get much light from October to March. The lightning system on Edge 520 is cool in the sense that you can set up longevity of the light before it turns off ( 5sec to 1min), but  I cannot come up with how you turn the light on without switching screens. To be clear what I mean: you are biking and your edge is in whatever mode you have it in so you have the info which you want on your screen. Well, you wish to check the “info” so you wish to turn the light on, you do it so by pressing any button, but when you press any button it will either switch the screen or count another lap or whatever else which you do not want to happen. You just want to turn the fucking light on! It does not have designed button which would just switch the light on (well at least I don’t know about it). Secondly, you cannot set up your riding profile/screen with temperature, which you could see just like you can see average speed or whatever. Some of you will think why the fuck you need to see temperature on your main screen, well I really would like to know what is the actual temperature at given moment to kind of link it with my tire pressure, snow condition, clothing/gear and my comfort for future rides.

I have one other thing to complain about and it is regarding the extended handle bar mount. In simple words it broke! Well the inside mount disk broke so it does not hold my Garmin anymore. It is not a design fault or Garmin fault it’s all my clumsiness. I went out for little snow bike ride on rooty single tracks the other day, while I was going through one of those quick downs and quick steep ups ( I called it rollercoaster) my front wheel hit a hidden root. My body swung forward and I quickly rebalanced it back but my jacket caught on the extended mount and ripped the Garmin out. And that’s how you break a shit! The inside disc is removable but the question is if it is replaceable, so now I’m hunting down if I can just replace that little disc and not all extended mount. (Will update later with results)

Well this is my personal observation so far about Garmin Edge 520 and I have shit load of features to explore on this little gem, but if you are interested in full blown top notch review here is the link:

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/07/garmin-edge-520.html