Cycling UK Forum

Can anyone offer me any practical advice on which GPS would be best for audax riding and taking off to the continent touring.I have been told the the Garmin edge is good, but that the map detail is poor, my sight is not what it was and I am hoping that a GPS will avoid having to stop to use glasses to look at the map. I am not worried about measuring my heart rate or cadance and just want to be able to navigate my way through the back lanes, recording my distance and speed. Also is it easy to program your audax event, how does this work?Please if you have practical knowledge and experience of which GPS would be most suitable for my use, I would love to hear from you.

Frank Kinlan's blog is just about the best resource regarding the Garmin. Have a look at his site and there are tabs to the Garmin 705 and 305. Just about everything is there. Frank is not as active on his blog as he was and so may not give a fast response to questions not covered in his documents.
http://frank.kinlan.co.uk/
Cheers Smitton
http://531c.blogspot.com/

I've no personal experience of the later units, but from reading articles from Francis Cooke and others, I believe the Legend/Vista series are still the best choice for Audax/Touring

I've had the Legend C for over 4 years now, and still rate it highly - the replaceable AA batteries are a great feature, vibrations problems notwithstanding!

Hi

I use a Garmin Etrex Vista Cx. It's about four years old now and has never let me down.

Used it for an end-to-end in France last year and will be using it for the LEJOG this year.

I've also used it for Audaxes and when I'm leading a club ride.

Would not be without it.

Look at his link:

http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~jwo/landserf/audax/

I'd suggest either an Etrex Legend HCx or an Extrex Vista HCx.

H=high sensitivity receiver, holds the signal under trees etc better
C=Colour
x= expandable - ie. takes an SD card with mapping data on. This is pretty much compulsory for touring over a considerable distance as the non-x models won't hold maps for a wide enough area.
AA batteries last longer than the built in ones on the Edge 605/705, and came be replaced without overnight access to mains power.

I use mine in follow roads mode, just entering the final destination and sufficient intermediate points to make it take me the way I want to go. I add extra intermediate points to keep off major roads - setting "bike" mode tends to make the routing do weird things. I usually do this on the GPS itself the previous evening after consulting with a larger scale paper map.

Another vote for the Etrex series.

Like you, my close-up vision is not what it was. I don't need glasses riding, but I can't read much of the smaller text on a GPS without getting my glasses out. Even with 20:20 vision, I think that, if I had OS-standard maps on a GPS, I'd ride into something trying to read them on the move. The simpler maps on an Etrex are better.

There's even an argument for just using the large black arrow on something like my original Summit - I only need to know which way to go, after all. On Audaxes that may be better than worrying about detail.

If you do go off-route, of course, some kind of map is better, but the Etrex is still good enough.