Cycling UK Forum

Having spent more minutes than wished standing at crossroads in Norfolk at the weekend, trying to work out where we were on our photcopied OS map, I have decided to invest in a sat nav for the bike.
I want to buy it for my husband as a Xmas present (great- cos I benefit too!) so no hurry, but I need info on what best to look for, prices, and operation.
If anyone can point me in the direction of info on these things I would be very grateful.
And if anyone can recommend particular types/makes, that'd be good too. Needs to be able to fit on handlebars of racing bike too.

Thanks

my mate has the Garmin edge 605 , he's not that computer savy but he uploads routes and say's it is great ,
i have boughty a Garmin eTrex Ledgend hcx and am having probs trying to get the routes to come up
but i could be me

For ease of use, Satmap is hard to beat - http://satmap.com/ - you would have been standing at the cross roads with a marker trail on a real map showing you exactly where you were and where you had come from. Whether that is best value is for you to decide. The base road map it comes with is more than adequate for road cycling outside of major cities. You can also buy true OS 1:50k and 1:25k maps on SD cards, which merge seamlessly with the base map, ie when you get to the edge of a 1:50k it reverts to the base map. It has an excellent bar mount, using a Rixen & Kaul snap fit. The li-on battery pack will last all day, particularly if you set the screen to sleep after x minutes.

It really depends on what you want to do with it!

If you just need an electronic map the the Satmap seems OK though a bit expensive, probably because of the OS license. I prefer my phone (Nokia 5800) which has a better screen, street-level European maps built in for free, and will also do small scale autorouting if you buy the 2-year licence for £6 (or you can pay a lot more for full sat-nav ability with voice guidance) - and it's a phone too!

If you want to do route planning on a PC and download to the GPS which will then do full auto-routing on the move, then I'm afraid the Garmin Legend/Vista is (IMHO) the only game in town.