This Edge 840 is a very good upgrade to the Edge 520 it replaces. I've ridden with it for over a month and have these observations.
- Battery life is greatly improved, with many more rides between charges.
- Display is larger on a similar sized device, permitting more stats while maintaining readability.
- Touch screen controls easier to navigate than buttons, especially during a ride.
- Improved map details, which includes road and traffic alerts.
- Fewer false incident detection for urban riders. Much of my ride is in urban landscape, with rapid stops that triggered incident detection on the Edge 520.
I did a lot of research before buying a "fancy" bike computer. For years I had a simple bike computer that gave me cadence, speed, etc. But, with my new bike, I wanted something with GPS and routing capability. Garmin 840 does all that and a ton more. When it comes to devices, I've been trained to believe that either devices are ultra customizable or they work well. This device somehow manages to do both! It has a massive amount of capabilities and customizations and yet it works flawlessly. For example, it automatically found my SRAM AXS components, bike radar and uploads routes from my phone or computer quite seamlessly.
Highly recommend this
Between my wife and I, we have owned every version of the Garmin 800 series GPS. When my 810 died I bought an 830 for the front of our tandem bike. When we bought a second tandem for another location, we bought 2 more 830s for the front and rear because my wife, the stroker, also likes to have one. When her 820 died recently after many years we bought her an 840. This one is probably more capable than its predecessors but more complex to program due to the confusing menu system. Not to mention the 3 extra buttons. We don't use most of the available features; just navigate courses given to us on group rides. This unit has way more capabilities than we need, but it does what we need with a nice bright color touch screen and beeps that are louder than previous models, which makes them easier for old ears to hear.
I had an Edge 530 for several years before getting this, and I loved it. Upgraded to the 840 because it was a good price and waiting to spend $200+ more on the 850 didn't seem worth it. This is definitely a good bike computer--it does everything you could ever want and lots of things you'll never want, or even be aware it can do. That said, I knocked a star compared to the simplicity of the 530 because this thing is beeping at me and throwing up ClimbPro screens constantly, and it had a run where it wouldn't wake up without me hard restarting it several times (that seems to have gone away for now). You can change the settings to make it beep less and turn off ClimbPro, yes, but it's so excessive out of the box that I have to point it out. And I liked ClimbPro a lot on the 530, but this thing considers EVERYTHING a climb. Literally, any incline it seems. I actually got lost on a long ride because the computer kept throwing up ClimbPro and the new hazard pop-ups over my navigation as I was going 20+ mph and I had to stop, figure out how to exit back to my nav, turn around, try to figure out where I was going in advance (because when I went back the screen popped back up again), etc. If you can't tell, it got in my head a little. BUT, with all that behind me, this thing is a darn good computer.
