Definitely an improvement from older Edges! Much clearer screen and much faster. Much nicer software to set profiles. Just nicer to set and control options. And one friend noted how nice the new sound was with my radar light. Still, there's lots of stuff I'll never use, though I'm sure some people will. And then there are the warnings about an animal ahead, and I wonder when that was seen. It was a splurge, even on sale, but I am enjoying it.
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.
After a 14 day tour of 50-70 mile days for 12 of 14 days, the battery went from 100% to about 65% with all sunny days to charge the battery. The screen is easy to read and the navigation is spot on with mostly good rerouting, if you miss a turn. But, you still should double check the rerouting the unit chooses, as one reroute it chose, close to my home, I knew was not the best. Also, it could be more intuitive to use, though it's not bad. So far, I've only downloaded Ride with GPS routes and used that for navigation, so I know there is much more functionality to research and use. Overall, it's been great to use and I would recommend the unit, especially for the battery life.
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
