I'm a longtime fan of the smaller form factor of the 830/840 series. Was going to go to 850 until I saw the battery life hit the new screen causes. I decided to go for the 1050 as a compliment to my 840 rather than a replacement. Overall, I like this setup. As other have said, the screen, the nav, the bell and on are great. Also, having lived with slow, short runtime devices like the 820 with radar, the 1050 is fast and has plenty of battery life. Only downsides for me are the mounting requirements and the weight. If you have aerobars, the Garmin supplied mount won't work and it's likely your existing mount that would work on an 1040 will be short for the 1050. Good choices like Silca exist for aero bars but factor in you may need to get one with your 1050. On the weight, it's a heavy unit. That battery life has a price and its weight. My solution to this is to use my 840 when if I'm concerned about it. Switching between the 840 and 1050 is simple. Now back to the positives, that big screen is worth a few grams for 95% of my riding. Super happy I got the 1050.
I ride on a mix of a state highway, with an 8' shoulder, and quiet county chip seal roads. The Garmi Varia works very well, with no false positive or negative alerts thus far. I also ride with a rear mirror attached to my glasses at all times. This combination works well.
Although the rubber o-rings that attach the mounting bracket to the seat post work ok, I was not confident they would not eventually fail. So, I bought an aftermarket mounting bracket on Etsy [reasonable price) that uses a machine screw and nut to attach to the seat post.
As others have commented, the old style USB charger is not up to modern type c charging standards. However, it works fine and the sale price was very reasonable. This is a fair compensation for the outdated, but not obsolete, charging technology.
love the options, but not the battery life. Many times this thing dies on me after just 1 hour and 15 minutes. It override the low light switch all the time witch drains the battery even faster. for this much money I demand better. I use a garmin head unit and radar tail light so this seemed like a no brainer, but I am going back to my cyclic head light. It's half the price and does everything this garmin does for twice as long. sorry garmin, you missed the mark on this one.
Finally picked up a radar taillight with the outgoing Varia RTL515 on discount and I have to say, I've appreciated the radar/light more than I thought I would. I haven't used it in the dark yet, so I cannot speak to the effectiveness of the tail light, but the radar function has made me wonder how I survived so long without one. I assume no bike radar is 100% perfect when it comes to picking up cars, but in several weeks of usage, this model has been probably 99% accurate. Get yourself one before they're all gone!
