Garmin Edge 510? Anyone have it? Like it?

John Withrow

Has anyone used the Garmin Edge 510 outside?  Is it any better than the Edge 500?  How is the touch screen in reality?  Do you use the auto update to Strava or Garmin Connect?  Is that seamless or a pain?  How about the auto tracking for family members during your rides?

So What say you EN gear Junkies...?  Is this thing worth it?

FWIW, it's $279.90 at BicycleDoctorUSA.com  

Robert Sabo

I have neither but I was just going to put this out as I'm thinking of getting the 500. The tracking/cell phone features don't seem useful to me. The touch screen is the biggest question for me.

Chris Kuebert

Think Dino has one....PM him.

Coach Rich

Several guys local to me are riding with it. I'll ask them

Satish Punna

I was trying to decide between the two as well.  The 500 is cheaper (and smaller) , and when I looked at reviews of the 510 on amazon and other places some people were complaining about readability of the colour screen as well as some firmware bugs.  I would have liked the touch screen functionality but I decided on the 500 in the end.  I am picking it up at the LBS on friday.

Robert Sabo

That was the sense I got from the reviews I looked at and was threfore leaning towards the 500.

Satish Punna

one reviewer on amazon said they initially liked the touch screen but then didn't like it and ended up returning the unit after 1 week.  That pretty much decided it for me.

Mark Cardinale

I made the leap to the 510 about 3 weeks ago, but take what i say with a grain of salt because i have never used the 500.  A couple observations....The colors screen is nothing special and only shows color on the main "race", "train" page.  The touch screen is not like your iphone touchscreen.  On the plus side, it works well with gloves and when it's wet. However, when you try to swipe from one data screen to the next you need to push down harder than you think or it takes you to a kinda menu screen.  Once you get the pressure right it works pretty well, but it's very annoying until you get it figured out.  The live tracker is nice to have, but not a game changer.  I send an invite to my wife before i leave for a ride and that way she can see where i'm at or how close i am to home.  I figure it will come in handy if she ever needs to come sag me for any reason.  I used my REI dividend to pay for it and at this point i'm planning on keeping it, but it you are debating between 500/510 i don't know if there is enough there to justify the extra $80.  Also for what it's worth, DC Rainmaker has a complete review of the 510 on his website.

 

EDIT: John, you asked about the updates to garmin connect....That actually works really well.  You download the garmin connect app and that allows you to start live tracker.  Then when you stop your ride recording, it's saved on your phone and in your garmin connect account.  For strava, i just start strava at the same time i start live tracker so garmin and strava are recording my ride data separately. There may be a more elegant way to do this, but i haven't researched this aspect in detail.

Dino Sarti

I have one! And it is killer. You think you don't need the tracking feature.... until you have it. The other crowd pleaser is that it will send your ride to Garmin Connect via bluetooth from your phone before you can put your bike away. Just hit stop and will ask if you want to save. Press save and it will use your phone to put your ride online. Then, when I get in front of my laptop, I go to Garmin Connect and save the .TXC file. I then drag and drop that file into the TP agent and then Strava. Easy. No wires or need to bring the unit in from the garage to the laptop.

PM me with your email and i will send you the tracker link to my after work club ride. We try and chase Coach Rich through the hills of Pasadena. You can watch gain, speed, HR and Power from your couch.

Also, you can set up bike profiles. If have have different power meters or cadence devices or HR straps you use on different bikes, just set it up and you can move from bike to bike with out the need to detect and pair Ant+ stuff.

Robert Sabo

Dino,
Does the 500 require search and detect for different bikes/PT wheels?

Dino Sarti

No. The 500 will only pair with one device at a time. The 510 is smarter and remembers device ID codes and will let you assign them to different bikes. I have two road bikes and a TT all set up with different ANT+ sensors.

jsumara

I just bought the Garmin Edge 510 last week and I’ve used it a few times on the trainer in the Pain Cave – not outside yet. It has been pretty sweat-soaked the few times I’ve used it without issue - the screen works fine. The screen is “resistive” touch so it’s a little less responsive than the capacitive touch of, say an iPhone screen. But that’s a good thing because its easy to accidentally touch the screen when you don't want to. You can lock/unlock the screen touch feature easily. The Edge has a lot of capability and configurability which takes some time to getting used to. I paired it easily to my Quarq PM and HR Strap (both are Ant+). Like Dino, I Bluetooth paired the Edge 510 to my iPhone and I installed the Garmin Mobile iPhone app that links the Edge to Garmin Connect. As soon as you finish the workout and selected “save” it uploaded the workout. Nice. And like Dino points out, the tracking feature is very cool.

Dino, thanks for the tip on moving from Garmin Connect to TP by saving it as a .TXC file. I initially got around it by plugging the Edge 510 directly into the USB port on my computer. The auto upload feature is very convenient - more so now.

There is one real “problem” I found that I'm sending a note to Garmin Support for help. Today (during my bike test – no less), I used both the Edge 510 and Forerunner 910XT to record the test. The 910XT has been solid for the past year and I trust it so I wanted to see how the two devices compared. The issue I found was that the Edge 510's Watt display fluctuated for very short periods of time during the wko which cannot be easily explained. During the FTP 20 min test I was hammering my normal 430 Watts (not) OK, it was more like 230 Watts at that moment. Anyway, the problem was that the Edge 510 seemed to lose the Power Meter signal for a brief moment which caused the display to briefly show 150 Watts. It quickly re-gained the signal and was showing the same watts as the Forerunner 910XT. Not sure what’s going on here but I noticed it kept showing very low Watts and then back - different than the normal PM watt bounce we're used to. At the end of the test, the Forerunner 910XT had me with normalized power of 232 but the Edge 510 had it at 227 watts.

The Edge is very configurable so it takes some time to figure it out. The tracking feature is very cool and the auto-upload of your workout is great. I need to hear from Garmin about what I found with the Power Meter signal or the Watts display issue. This is very annoying and needs to be fixed.

Dino Sarti

Weird about that issue. I had had that with my 500, but it turned out to the be the SRM. I sent it back and SRM replaced the guts for free. Interesting that you had two units measuring and caught it. Mine has seemed spot on.

Cheers!

[Deleted User]

I have one and so far I like it. I purchased it from TriSports with their 25% off birthday sale coupon.

I have never used the 500 so I cannot compare. The live tracking is handy for my wife, she knows when I am on my way home. The weather alerts were annoying so I turned them off. I used to have a Garmin 610 so I am used to the pressure it takes to change screens, etc.

It paired quickly with my Quark Riken, and the calibration works well. It is fast picking up satellites.

I like the bikes and profiles. It gives me a lot of options.

So far, so good.

Dino Sarti

Great point on the weather alerts! I would be riding on a completely calm day and EVERY 10 minutes I getting "high winds" alerts..... Weather alerts are way too macro for bike rides. iPhone weather app is way better.

jsumara

In an earlier response on this topic I mentioned an issue with my Edge 510 - specifically that I noticed the Watts Displayed fluctuated without reason and that I planned to contact Garmin. Here is the response from Garmin:

Dear Jim Sumara,
Thank you for contacting Garmin International. I am happy to assist you.
I am sorry to heat about the issues with your Edge 510. We are aware of this issue with the where the Edge 510 is reporting Power Meter data incorrectly. The root cause for this issue is being investigated and once a fix is developed it will be in a software update. However, we do not know if it will be in the next software update because we are still looking into the root cause. We do appreciate your patience while we have our engineers working very diligently to get this issue resolved.
I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
With Best Regards,
Ashley Ca.
Product Support Specialist
Outdoor Team - 2nd Shift
Garmin International

Hopefully this will be corrected soon.