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 List Price: $269.99 Sale Price: $449.20 
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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
- High-sensitivity GPS receiver
- Heart rate monitor and speed/cadence sensor
- Automatically records up to 1000 laps. Download to your PC
- Look up and navigate to stored locations
- Virtual Partner lets you "race" a virtual competitor, making training fun
Rating
I’ve only used it a couple times since receiving it 3 or 4 days ago. So far, it is great. The best computer I’ve purchased, with all the bells and whistles, the easiest to use also. I was using a Polar s720i and it is nice also but not as user friendly either on the road or at home. The Edge also will allow for battery changes on the heart strap, cadence/speed sensor and the main unit is rechargeable. Can’t say that for the Polar.
The Edge is self-calibrating for wheel size so you literally put on the speed/cadence sensor, 5 minutes to install, strap on the heart monitor, get on the bike and go. There are lots of ways to set up the screen for the items you like to view while riding, speed, cadence, almost anything you can think of is viewable.
I especially like the “virtual partner”, it is great to “race” against yourself on a course you made. Sometimes you don’t have a riding partner, now I always do.
While I have not had the battery life problems others have had, I also haven’t been on any long rides yet, just got it, so really can’t give my opinion on that. The only drawback I have had so far is that you can’t upload maps to it from Garmin’s other products. Although, your tracks are viewable through Garmin mapping software used on other products, I have an eTrex Vista C also.
Overall, pricy but feature loaded, I love it so far and all in all, it’s not much more than Polar’s 720.
Rating
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!!).
Rating
Thought I might be paying to much for a cycling computer but this one is worth it. Easy to install cadence/distance unit. Easy to follow instructions. Easy to set up computer for your personal readouts to follow during your ride. Incredible data and software to analyze it following your ride. If you are a mountain biker, this would be incredible because it will show you exactly where you are in relationship to where you started. Fantastic for any level of rider. Very highly recommended. I spent a lot of time researching the market and I think the Garmin Edge 305 with the Heart Rate and Cadence bundle is the top system on the market today in this price range.
Rating
Simply a great training tool. A little buggy in some areas, but with firmware updates any little problem can be easily fixed. Team this up with a subscription to Motionbase and you’ll spend as much time analyzing your workout as you actually spend working out.
The product literature shows mounting the unit on the stem, but I found that too distracting to try and view it while riding. So I moved mine to the handlebars and can see everything great.
Did have one snafu of finding that the battery to the cadence unit was installed at the factory backwards. Once I figured that out, it worked fine.
All my buddies are envious. One just ordered his after he saw all of the data it collected on our workout.
Rating
I have owned this unit for a few weeks now and my comments are:
Pros:
**Extremely accurate display of speed (My Cateye Double Wireless is also on my bike) Easy to read.
**Stem mounting is rugged. I was a bit concerned that this would be awkward but I like it better than units that mount on the handle bars. Also, the angle of my stem at least makes for easy, solid button manipulation and viewing.
**No magnets or other sensor mounting required. The unit comes with two mounts, so you can easily switch between two bikes. Because of the GPS, you are not required to mount a wheel sensor. I think this is a real plus. I bought the HR and wheel/cadence sensor 305 unit but have yet to use them. Looking back, I probably would have purchased the 205 instead of the 305 because of the simplicity and clean mounting, I’d imagine this would be great for mountain bikes as well, where mud can be an issue.
**The software interface is quite impressive. You can view your route plotted against the map. Haven’t explored all the options, but software was easy to install and GPS unit data was easy to upload via USB.
Cons
**Battery life When it comes to battery life, it’s kind of like a cell phone. They say 12 hours, continuous use but I have yet to experience. All I know, is that I have to remember to charge it the night before I go out to avoid a nasty surprise. On the plus side, it will seem to continue to function on low battery for quite some time. I have yet to lose data because of battery failure.
Rating
I admit to being a bit of a tech-junkie and have previously purchased a several HRM and GPS-enabled bicycle computer systems. The Edge 305, which I have owned for three months, is the first one that I felt was worth the investment. It strengths are: user configurable displays, high contrast screen with backlight (last several hours for night riding), user-friendly downloads with fast USB communication/charging, very lightweight (~ 3oz), with secure mount/dismount, very straightforward button/menu system, waterproof (haven’t tested this yet).
The ‘Training Center’ software is excellent, with a full set of graphs and maps, much easier to navigate than e.g. Ciclosport or Cambietta software. Ride histories are downloaded automatically as soon as the USB cable is plugged in. Even better, there’s a website (motionbased.com) that one can upload rides and get complete reports, including overlaid Google maps, weather, and lots of statistical information about the ride (HR, speed, grade etc). Note that motionbased.com charges a monthly user fee (currently $8/month). The ride history storage is quite good – in the ’smart’ recording mode, a data word is recorded every 10 seconds. There are 13,000 storable points, so it should be possible to record about 36 hours of ride data before a download. This would be handy for multi-day trips when a computer isn’t available.
Nothing is perfect in life. Here are the issues I have found so far with the Edge.
1. The battery life is close to 9 hours, definitely not the advertised 12 hours. I completed a 200K brevet last weekend, which took 9:10 with stops (the Edge was left on). About 20 minutes before the end I got a ‘low battery’ warning’ but it kept running to the end. Note that I don’t have a cadence unit, which probably decreases the battery life. The Edge was fully charged before the ride.
2. The ‘grade’ display is useless. It bounces around +/- 5% on hills. I think the unit is sampling too fast – Garmin will likely fix this in a firmware update soon.
3. The map display is simply a track history, and does not display actual map information (roads, towns, etc). It’s handy for out-and-back rides, since you can see approaching turns on the return trip, but it would be terrific if one could load map data. (Note that positions are recorded and the route is displayed on a ‘real’ map after download to the ‘Training center’ or motionbased.com software.)
4. Although there are two bike mounts included, they are at different orientations (90 degs apart) so if you have 2 bikes with the same setup, you’ll have to buy another mount ($15).
Rating
I love this product. I purchased the Edge 305 to go on a new bike, it was easy to install, with decent instructions. It was easy to get started using it. It gives all the information you could possibly want about your ride, and its simple to download. Some people might think its too much information, but you can tailor the data fields that are displayed to see as little or as much info as you want. The data (milage, elevation) appears to be very accurate.
On the down side, the display can be hard to read in the sunlight. I’ve played around with the contrast tool, but still have problems. I also think the use instructions could be clearer, on my first ride, I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting milage, and later realized you have to turn it on! I’m used to bike computers that start automatically. Changing the data fields being displayed is a bit of a pain, I want a timer showing when I’m on the indoor trainer, and % grade when I’m on the road, and its a pain to constantly switch the fields. Also, if a data field is not being displayed because you don’t need to see it constantly, (average speed comes to mind) you have to change the data fields being displayed to view the info, and then change back if you are not at the end of your ride. I am fortunate because several people in my bike club have the Edge 305 and they could answer questions so I didn’t have to constantly thumb through the instruction manual. The software that comes with the Edge is very basic, but I have no complaints about it.
All the issues I mentioned above are annoyances rather than problems and I feel this is a great product and I recommend it to anyone who is not intimidated by all the features.
Rating
If you are looking to get more out of your biking make sure to try Garmin Edge 305 bicycle computer. Despite the hefty price tag it delivers a lot of value and make rides more enjoyable.
Edge 305 provides the following high level features:
* typical bike data (speed, distance, cadence and ect)
* heart rate monitor (heart rate zones)
* map (rudimentary)
* altitude graph
* virtual partner
Stuff I like about device:
Very easy to install. Not need to know tire radius, the device would use GPS data to calculate all required information (and in most cases would use GPS to calculate your route anyway)
Automatic heart rate zone calculation based on your Max heart rate.
Ability to upload all info about route (map and data) into the computer or web site to see how you did and where exactly you biked. You can sign up (free account) into [...] and upload data and see other peoples routes. (I only wish this site used Flash/Flex technology instead of html/ajax to make it more interactive and usable).
The only somewhat bad comment I have – battery life. For most cases as long as you remember to charge it’s not a problem. But it’s somewhat different from my previous bike computer that didn’t require any charging at all.
Overall, if you like to bicycle (road or mountain) and somewhat geeky, Garmin Edge 305 would give you more data then you even need.
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Rating
I bought the Garmin unit because I was tired of riding the same exact route and getting pretty large differences in distance readings with other computers. (Power lines, etc interfere and mess up the readings.) With the Garmin unit on the same courses, the readings are consistently within a few hundredths of a mile over 25-35 miles. (The difference is probably just how I am taking the curves.)
Also, I really like being able to look at the heart rate and elevation trends on the computer after a ride. It makes me feel better about courses that I thought were flat but actually were not. Also, it’s really good for seeing exactly how high/hard different hills are. Finally, for competition routes, it helps finding where the hitting-the-wall points are. i.e. I felt like I was riding consistently through the ride, but the heart-rate fell off by 5-10 bpm… That helps me in determining when to take a power gel pack or when to conserve/expend energy along the course.
I’ve read about the battery life issue, but personally, I am not doing 5-7 hour rides. 3-4 hours / 60-80 miles is the high-end for me. On longer century rides, I am more interested in time anyway so a simple stopwatch is more than enough.
I do however wish that the unit had an auto-off feature if no movement was detected in 10-15 minutes. (My girls have found it, pushed the button, and left it on before…. I only discover this when I go out the next day to ride.)
The altimeter is very accurate. I keep a “total ascent” field on my primary display to give me an idea of the climbs done. This is a cumulative count… i.e. If you climb 10 feet, fall 10 feet, climb 10 feet, and fall 10 more feet, the field reads 20 feet — even though your actual altitude did not change. That’s exactly what I wanted. I use this information on a route to let me know how much climbing effort is remaining. i.e. If I know a route has 2200′ of climbs, I am riding fast/hard, feel fine, am past half-way but see on only 500′ of climbs have been done, I know to back-off and pace myself to finish strong.
I have had some minor communications issues with the software. However, I just wiggle the cable and retry and 99% of the time the unit works fine. On that rare 1% exception, rebooting fixes the problem.
The heart rate monitor is very accurate. I’ve used high end Polar monitors — and this one is every bit as accurate as those.
Installation is a snap. The ergonomics of how it fits on my stem (90 mm) is perfect. It looks like it was made for the bike.
As far as the issues others have had, I really don’t know what to say. I did upgrade the firmware. Other than that, I’ve done nothing different. There’s clearly issues since so many people have bad things to say. I simply did not experience those issues. I would suggest buying from some place like Amazon, using it a lot upon reciept, and sending it back for credit if you have problems.
All in all, I would highly recommend it even with the minor issues mentioned above.
Rating
I got the 305 HR+ to consolidate a basic cyclometer and Suunto altimeter/HR monitor. The installation is very clean with one sensor on the chain stay and no wires. The display is easily configurable and easy enough to read. It’s a huge step up from the way I cobbled info together before and priced cheaper than the sum of the other devices I was using.
pros:
- Records a comprehensive set of training info. I find it especially useful for rides involving a lot of climbing.
- Friendly and helpful tech support.
cons:
- Adequate but mediocre Mac software.
tips:
- Battery life: I hate wearing out built-in batteries with frequent deep discharges so for any ride longer than a couple hours I use an Eveready Energi w/ mini USB (from Circuit CIty – cheaper than Amazon). I checked with Garmin customer support first and they assured me the Energi and 305 were compatible. With this battery pack, I can get well over 12 hrs without running down the internal battery.
- Occasional glitch: The 305 hung up right at the start of the Markleeville Death Ride and was frustrating brick for the entire event. If only I had known the simple two-button reset that clears the unit without erasing anything.