Garmin Edge 1050 In-Depth Review: Brilliance or Battery?

As has been the trend for the last 2 years at Garmin, they’ve apparently grown tired of people complaining about their display tech looking like it’s from 1987. Following various Garmin watches getting brilliant and responsive AMOLED displays, it’s now time for the Edge series devices, starting with the Garmin Edge 1050. The unit now sports a brilliant 1,000nit display that’s as responsive as most cell phones. Except, with longer battery life than most cell phones.

But it’s not just a new display. There’s also a host of new features, many tied to group riding scenarios, or leveraging the larger cycling community – such as crowdsource identifying road hazards/issues. And perhaps my favorite: A bike bell. Seriously, it’s surprisingly well executed. Beyond shiny features though, the company has also significantly revamped its gradient responsiveness, as well as other algorithms for better performance. Of course, with this power-hungry battery life comes some major cuts in battery life compared to previous models.

In any case, I’ve been putting the Garmin Edge 1050 through its paces across a wide variety of terrain from mountain bike, to gravel, to road riding. Both solo, and group rides, to see how it handles. Note that Garmin provided a media loaner Edge 1050 to test. As usual, I’ll get that back to them here shortly. I’ll go out and pick up my own to continue testing the new features once they arrive. If you found this review useful, you can use the links at the bottom, or consider becoming a DCR Supporter, which makes the site ad-free, while also getting access to a mostly weekly video series behind the scenes of the DCR Cave. And of course, it makes you awesome.

With that, let’s talk newness.

What’s New:

The screen. That’s what’s new. Oh, and a bunch of other features. But really, this is the screen. Oh, and the nifty big bell.

The Garmin Edge 1050 is of course Garmin’s top-end cycling computer, but interestingly, almost every new software feature here is going back to the Edge 540, 840, and 1040 series. Additionally, many are also going back to Garmin’s Edge Explore 2 units. Part of that is because these features benefit heavily from *more people* using them. If Garmin saved these just for the x50 series devices, then frankly, they’d be irrelevant. Still, there are some hardware features on the Edge 1050 that drive the overall newer looking user interface (due to processing power), and of course, the screen itself.

Oh, one quick super important thing: Garmin says the Edge 1040/1040 Solar will not only stick around in the lineup, but continue getting the same updates as the Edge 1050, to essentially give the option of a crazybright display (Edge 1050), or extremely long battery life (Edge 1040 Solar). More on that down below.

– Changed display to 3.5” Transmissive LCD display (with 1,000 Nits brightness, resolution 480×800)
– Added an actual speaker (as opposed to just a beeper)
– Added Audible Bike Bell (and can even be triggered by remote shifter buttons)
– Added Road Hazards (potholes, dangerous dogs/animals, downed trees, etc…)
– Added GroupRide Challenges & Awards
– Added GroupRide Incident Detection (notifies everyone in a group ride of a crash)
– Added Road Surface Type to on-device data
– Added WiFi Map Manager for Updates/Downloads (previously required computer)
– Added Garmin Share (direct device-to-device transfers, kinda like before, but to be expanded to numerous Garmin device types)
– Added Garmin Pay contactless payments (NFC payments)
– Updated PowerGuide to better account for Stamina/Wind
– Revamped User Interface to leverage new processor/display
– Added on-device tutorials to explain things this review somehow doesn’t
– Added new ‘interactive data pages’ (basically swipe up/down to view more/less data, like Hammerhead Karoo)
– Added on-device course creator for point-by-point courses (versus round-trip courses previously)
– Revamped data page customization (also, like Hammerhead Karoo)
– Significantly increased instant gradient responsiveness (e.g. how long to go from 0% to 6% as you start climbing)
– Increased the weight to 161g (Edge 1040 is 126g)
– Claimed battery life is 20 hours, and 60 hours in battery saver mode (see my testing later on)
– Maintains IPX7 water resistance
– Maintains 64GB internal storage
– Increased length slightly, which may not fit in some mounts
– Price is at $699 ($50 less than the Edge 1040 Solar which is technically $749)

Ultimately, the stand-out feature of the Edge 1050 is the crazy brilliant/fast display. It seems Garmin got tired of people asking for a cell-phone like display on a bike computer. But of course, that display means one thing: Less battery life. It’s a factual reality of today’s tech, no matter the manufacturer. Sure, Garmin’s battery life is basically double that of Hammerhead’s Karoo 3, but that’s still a fraction of Garmin’s existing Edge 1040/1040 Solar units.

Thus, Garmin made sure to reiterate multiple times that the Edge 1040/1040 Solar are seen as Andrew Silver, Garmin’s Cycling Product Division Manager, saying:

“Both Edge 1050 and Edge 1040 / Solar will remain core parts of our range, with Edge 1040 / Solar continuing to receive feature and software updates where screen technology and underlying hardware allows. This essentially gives users the choice between super bright screen and resolution and the long battery life that is core to the x40 series.”

As proof of that pudding, Garmin will also be releasing a public beta firmware today (well, hopefully, today) that brings virtually all of these features to the Edge 540, 840, 1040/1040 Solar, and some to the Edge Explore 2. There are a handful of hardware-specific differences that aren’t coming, such as the bike bell, since that requires the speaker. And the revamped user interface requires the faster processor and display. But in terms of the actual underlying features like Hazards, WiFi Maps, Garmin Share, Power Guide, etc… those are all coming to the x40 series units.

Here’s the nifty chart explaining it all:

Got all that? Good.

Of course, as always, we’ll have to see long-term just how long that ‘keeping both units equal’ commitment really lasts. To Garmin’s credit, we have seen that last with the Garmin Fenix 7/Epix units getting all the new Fenix 7 Pro/Epix Pro features. Same goes for the Forerunner 955 getting virtually all the Forerunner 965 features. And we’re now roughly a year-on from those announcements. Maybe the times have changed, after all.

Now, I’m going to add in a bunch of sections to this review including all the ‘basics’ stuff covering things that haven’t changed in years. But for now, I want to dive into what’s different, and whether I find them worthwhile. Expect a full expanded review/guide of sorts in the coming days, but for the moment, I’m curious if a more distilled/focused review is useful.

The New Display and User Interface:

First up is the new display. As noted above, it’s unquestionably the cornerstone of Garmin’s strategy here. But it’s not a new strategy. We’ve seen them first start off doing more brilliant displays in the wearables realm with Venu, then Epix, then Forerunner, and more. Frankly, it’s what consumers are demanding. Or at least, the vast majority of them.

And Garmin has tried to find balance in offering various models appealing to both crowds (battery vs brilliance). Which, is what they say they’re doing here by keeping the Edge 1040 in the lineup, and updated with new features.

In any event, as for the display, the backlight is technically always-on now. Whereas with an Edge 1040 unit, there was on/off. Instead, it’s a matter of ‘how much on’. For that there’s the usual automatic mode, and then that slider takes it from “totally readable but dim” (at 0%) up to “Maine coastal lighthouse level” at 100%. It’s astonishingly bright. In my video above, I show that transition, and how it completely blows out the locked exposure on my camera:

But what matters is outside. Here’s a shot side-by-side with the Edge 1040 Solar and Hammerhead Karoo 3 in mid-day summer sun. Obviously, it’s quite visible there.

Which then gets to the next question people often ask of these displays: Will it overheat?

For better or worse, the last few weeks has found me in constant hot conditions, roughly 90*F/32*C (and warmer) for the majority of my rides. These rides lasted up to about 3.5 hours, and never once did I get any sort of overheating type issues. But, not content with that, I stuck it out for more than 2 hours in the direct afternoon Greek sun, where the air temp was 94*F/34*C, with no wind. Just let it bake, recording. From there I grabbed my FLIR camera, and measured. Basically, it wasn’t much different than the surrounding surface areas:

So, the next question, becomes speed. As we saw with the Hammerhead Karoo 3, it’s got very similar brilliance to the Edge 1050, but it has a bit of lagginess to it. Does the Edge 1050 exhibit that lag? Nope, almost never. In the video I show a slate of fast-moving actions. Garmin said their goal was to get this as close to a phone-like experience as possible, while still giving people the battery life they expect of a flagship bike computer. They clearly delivered there.

Which isn’t to say there isn’t any lag. It can happen. For example, if I zoom out fast/far enough (to roughly 20-30KM range) on the map, you’ll see map tiles might take a second or two to enumerate. Loading a course can take 1-2 seconds. But again, that’s more than fast enough for me. Processing time was never an issue for re-routing, or turn-by-turn prompts, or anything else. It just did what it was supposed to do.

Now within this new display, powered by the new processor, is a revamped user interface. You can see it on all the shots. This revamped UI is most prominent in four core areas:

A) Main homepage/dashboards
B) Swipe-down menus
C) Some full charts/graph data pages
D) Configuring data pages/fields

Which isn’t to say the UI is exactly the same elsewhere, but it’s very similar elsewhere. Starting off on the main homepage, all of this feels cleaned up, and a bit nicer to use. You can swipe left/right in the ‘Dynamic’ area, like with the much-discussed Garmin Connect UI revamp. Here you’ll find recently added courses, recently completed rides, suggested workouts, and so on.

Whereas up above, are your ride profiles, somewhat like before (e.g. Gravel/Road/MTB/Indoor/etc)… The distance shown on each profile is how many kilometers you’ve spent in that given profile. Overall, I’m a fan of all this, it works really well.

However, the singular area I’m not a huge fan of, yet, is the swipe-down area. This has vibes of the previous swipe-down menu, but there isn’t any left/right arrows anymore. Instead, you get to play whack-a-mole with the icons at the bottom, which change around to show other control panel type pages – such as nearby Strava Live Segments, or the Garmin Pay NFC payment wallet, or your actual control panel, etc…

To me, this doesn’t feel finished yet. It’s not bad, but it’s not intuitive – especially for my first few rides. And even now nearly a month later, I still feel like I’m just stabbing at icons on the bottom trying to find the right one. The ‘Controls’ icon and ’Status’ icons look very similar at a glance, as does the wallet icon. Speaking of which, that’s how you access your wallet, which does first require using a passcode of course:

Then simply tap as expected:

All this worked fine. I wouldn’t say it’s something I’d use often, but then again, neither is that 10EUR bill in my saddle bag. It’s there in case my phone dies and I need to pay for something.

Still, other areas of the UI are improved. For example, the new area to customize your data pages is so much better. It’s basically a knock-off of what the Hammerhead Karoo does for their data pages, but it makes a ton of sense. It’s clearly designed so that you can easily understand what pages you’ve got configured, versus the previous ‘Going in and out’ of all pages titled ‘Data Page 1/2/3/etc…”.

And taking another apparent page from Hammerhead’s Karoo, they’ve made it so you can adjust the height of certain data page panels. For example the Strava Live Segments or ClimbPro pages can be increased/decreased from partial pages to full-size pages, as you ride. Below, that middle-line between the map and the Strava segment, I can swipe up, to increase the size of the Strava Live Segment piece.

I like this too, albeit, I wish they’d also copy the Strava Live Segments features and layout from Hammerhead while they were at it. Unfortunately, the Strava Live Segments implementation here is definitely behind the times.

Still, on the whole, the UI changes are well done and clean – it feels more modern and certainly feels more polished.

Of course, all of these display things ultimately impact battery life. That’s the big drop here compared to the Edge 1040 Solar, which gets upwards of 90 hours of battery life depending on sun conditions. Whereas the new Edge 1050 is in the 20-30hr range, which of course, is still double their Wahoo & Hammerhead competitors. Here’s the official battery usage chart:

And then, more importantly, here’s my actual test data. Note that in the two cases, this is without any screen recording on, but with everything else enabled: Power meter connected, heart rate sensor connected, shifting connected, LiveTrack enabled, GroupTrack enabled, navigation running, etc… Literally, all the things.

If we look at this first 3-hour ride with the default brightness settings, you’ll see I’m on target for about 20 hours of riding time:

However, I went out again, and turned down the brightness to about 20-30%, which is still brighter than the Edge 1040 Solar screen. In that case, with all the same things enabled, I was on target for about 30 hours (again, still with sensors/navigation/GroupTrack/etc.. all enabled):

Yet, keep in mind you can still do Battery Saver mode, which here shows upwards of 70 hours:

And ultimately, that’s what this all comes down to. Garmin is betting that there’s more users that want a pretty/fast/brilliant screen that lasts 20-30 hours, versus one that lasts 50-90 hours. And for those that want the 50-90 hours? Garmin still has that for them too.

The Bike Bell:

Hot take: The bike bell is the best part of the Edge 1050.

Sure, much ink is spilled on the screen and pretty UI, but ultimately, the bike bell is the real winner. Especially if you know you can configure it to your remote/extra shift buttons on SRAM AXS and Shimano Di2. But first, for those without electronic shifting (or the Garmin Edge remote buttons), you can use your finger to tap the screen once, which brings up the bell icon:

And then simply tap the bell. It’ll ding-dong, just like a real bell.

So much so, that nobody in the streets of Amsterdam once looked back and thought it was something electronically weird. It sounded just like any other bell on the streets here. And more importantly, everyone simply shifted out of the way, like any other bike bell coming from behind.

But the real interesting bit here is that you can assign it to a remote shifter option, including SRAM AXS Blips, the SRAM RED bonus button, and the Shimano Di2 extra buttons. This means that to trigger the bell (instantly), I just tap the blip or extra button on my handlebars:

It’s awesome. Seriously – the absolute best feature here.

Road Hazard Feature:

Next up there’s the new ‘Road Hazards’ feature. Note that again, Garmin is rolling it out to all the 540/840/1040/1050/Edge Explore 2 units. Thus I suspect, in quick order, it’ll actually be pretty darn useful. Not as useful as if they rolled it out to the x30 units too…but hey, can’t win them all.

The goal of the Road Hazard feature is to notify you of upcoming hazards, or nearby hazards (since some hazards can move). As you’re riding along, you can simply tap the screen to mark a hazard. You’ve got five options: Animal (that always-there angry dog), Obstruction, Pothole, Slippery, and generic ‘Hazard’ (for Godzilla):

These hazards are then near-instantly reported back to Garmin Connect (via your phone), and presented to other riders as they near the area. It’s actually pretty darn cool to see how quickly this entire process happens.

DesFit and I managed to get it to work when I was only a few hundred meters ahead of him, for an upcoming dangerous animal (a bunny rabbit, obviously). When you start approaching a flagged hazard (from a few hundred meters out), it’ll show on your screen in the lower corner as a red box:

And then as you get very close, it’ll pop-up and show you more detail:

At this point, you can confirm or deny the existence of that hazard (it’ll go away after a few seconds if you don’t do anything). And this is the critical part – they’re crowd-sourcing the validation of these hazards. As long as the hazard continues to get a 50% upvote, it’ll remain. Though, some hazards also have a time-based component too. Garmin says they’re going to hold-off on detailing the time-based pieces, until they get riders out there, as they might tweak the algorithms (similar to how they tweaked ClimbPro algorithms in the initial few months).

If you’ve ever ridden in an area with a known-annoying-AF-dog that chases every cyclist that comes by, this is actually super useful. Most of the times, those dogs are ‘guarding’ their particular driveway. The same goes for that nasty pothole that still isn’t fixed, years later. The ‘slippery’ one will probably be subjective, but again, everyone knows that one road riding hidden corner that’s somehow always got light gravel or water pooling on it.

Now fear not, if you don’t want to know about that grizzly bear or pothole, you can turn this off in the alert settings on a per-ride profile basic.

GroupRide Challenges & Awards:

Garmin is expanding their group features with expanded ‘GroupRide’, which, is different than the ‘GroupTrack’ you’ve probably known from the past. GroupRide is for x40/x50 units, while GroupTrack is for older units (e.g. Garmin Edge 530). GroupRide has allowed you to see the location of others in your group on the map, as well as send them messages. Now, GroupRide is getting three additional new features:

– GroupRide Incident Detection: Simply put, if your buddy crashes, you’ll get a notification, as well as options to navigate to them. Obviously, if you’re in a single group and crash, then you probably don’t much care about your buddy’s body’s location lying atop yours. But, if that person was off the back out of sight and crashed, you’d never know. Now you will.

– GroupRide In-Ride Climb Challenges: This is basically like a live version of Strava Live Segments, for ClimbPro Climbs. It’ll award winners, based on the fastest time up that climb, live during the middle of the ride. It’ll even do this before your buddies get to the top of the climb, if it determines your buddies can’t beat your times at that point (or inversely, notify you that Lauren won, because Lauren already went faster than you could ever make it up the climb given how much ground you have left).

– GroupRide Post-Ride Awards: These are new awards that are handed out after a ride. They’re mostly whimsical, and are a blend of both general ride data (top speeds/etc), as well as sensor data (e.g. power values). In total, Garmin says there’s a starter set of about 50-60 of these, though in my testing I mostly saw the same handful over and over again.

I’ll take a look at both the Climb Challenges and Post-Ride awards a bit closer from my ride testing. First off though, you’ll need to create a group ride. This assumes you’ve got your phone with you, along with the Garmin Connect Mobile app running on it. This leverages a lot of the existing LiveTrack pieces, so those will need to be given permissions too. Though, you probably did that ages ago.

From there, you can either create a new GroupRide session, or join one. Either way, you’ll simply swipe down to enter the code in the GroupRide session area, or, create a new GroupRide. Here’s joining a code:

And here’s creating one. In this case, you can also select a course/route, and that’ll automatically be sent to all other participants. Thus, you don’t have to do the whole route sharing thing.

Once that’s done, off you go. You’ll see the existing GroupRide functionality, notably seeing others on the map, and how far they are from you (keep in mind all of this requires cellular coverage, else, it basically freezes in time):

As well as the ability to message them mid-ride:

Of course, the messaging mid-ride does still depend on your riding buddies actually paying attention to the alerts from their Garmin Edge device. As I discovered with my wife, there’s a 66% chance that my electronic messaging pleas for help will be completely missed, and I’ll be left for dead on the road. That said, the messages only stay for a few seconds on your friends units, so if they don’t see/catch the notification – there’s no reminder alert (the messages are still in the message panel, in the event your wife bothers to go into that…).

Next, as you approach a climb, you’ll get the usual ClimbPro bits showing climb status. However, you’ll see others on the climb, and their little icons of where they are:

As you reach the top of the climb, the system will start handing out awards. If you’re the fastest up the climb, you’ll get awarded the win. Note that this is *purely* based on the climb segment time, not the first person to reach the top of the climb. Depending on how others are doing on the climb, it’ll even award the win before others finish. Else, sometimes it’ll award it a bit later.

Here’s an example where the winner wasn’t declared immediately at the top, despite me easily loosing and Des winning, which Garmin says they’ve improved in an update since we did this climb a few weeks ago.

Whereas this other climb we did during the ride declared Des as the winner immediately upon me crossing the virtual line:

Additionally, everyone will see the list of climbs, and who won each climb:

During my testing, I had some mixed success on just how quickly it would enumerate the winners after each climb. In some cases, it did it instantly, in others, there was a bit of a delay (minutes or longer). Garmin looked into the problematic cases (now a few weeks ago), and implemented various fixes to address them. However, back in The Netherlands, with only so many friends with Edge 1050 devices here (read: none), I haven’t been able to validate these fixes.

I will make one request though: I wish that Garmin could be a bit more clever in no-cellular areas. Specifically, for riders riding together, I’d love to see Garmin leverage some sort of Bluetooth mesh network to send the data back and forth between units in the ‘peloton’. In the case of some of my rides with Des, we went well beyond cellular range for quite a long time, and all of our GroupRide stuff basically kinda froze (in terms of updates). Sure, it reconsolidated later on, but it’d have been nice to have that updated since we were literally riding together most of the time.

Next, post-ride we’ve got the awards. There are some 60 different awards given out to participants in a group ride, based on a variety of different factors. These can be fastest top speed, best power to weight ratio, most time standing (with Vector/Rally pedals), most time spent off-course (…lost), and so on. Here’s how these look:

These will show up as each rider saves their files, so the full slate of all the awards might not be immediately present if someone forgets to hit save at the end of the ride. Still, you’ll get a tentative list of them. In my case, there was also a bug present that led to the text ‘Not all riders are finished’ text you see there. That was resolved server-side, with a fix last night. It didn’t impact the awards, simply text thinking there was someone still left behind.

Looking at all the group ride sessions I saw, for the most part I saw the same awards over and over again, despite the mass quantity of award options. Perhaps we’ll see that get a bit more variable in the future.

Note that the awards are also seen in Garmin Connect Mobile, as well as even Garmin Connect website:

And this also includes the climb stats too:

Ultimately, whether or not you’ll find this feature useful will probably depend on how much group riding you do – and whether your friends have Garmin Edge x40 or x50 series devices. In my case, I don’t tend to do a lot of group rides. If I’m riding with someone else, it’s likely to be just another individual, not a group of people. So for me, this feature won’t get much use. But, to each their own.

GPS & Elevation Accuracy:

This section will be boring. Simply because, it’s just as accurate as before. Which, seems to be the theme for today’s reviews.

However, I’ll point out that not only is the GPS & elevation data accurate, but so is all the other ride data. Things like connected sensors have been flawlessly recording as they always should. After all, the core point of a bike computer is recording your data accurately – an area we’ve seen some industry struggles with recently.

In any event, let’s quickly look at a few different rides for funnies. First up, we’ve got this gravel ride in Colorado I did. This one starts off on a famed road canyon route, before going up a very painful 15-18% grade for quite a while into the mountains. Here’s the high level overview:

And if we look at random snippets along the way, there’s really nothing of note here. It’s all spot-on:

And again, also spot on:

The remainder of the route, from a GPS standpoint, is again, boring. But you can look at it here.

From an elevation standpoint on that route, things were very similar between the units, despite some early rains during the ride, and significantly shifting temperatures. That big flat-line portion at the top there, is when we ate cookies at a cafe (obviously).

Next up, we’ve got some mountain bike tracks here, in…well…said mountains. I saw very little differences between the Edge 1050 and the Garmin Epix Pro or Apple Watch Ultra 2. They were all very close on this ride.

And again, more tidbits from that ride, notably the sharp switchbacks at the right side going up ever-so-slowly in the steep woods, and then the fast downhill switchbacks on the road going down (at left)

Again here, no meaningful difference between the Edge 1050 and other units I’d trust.

All of my other Colorado rides were similar, without anything of note.

Back home, we’ve got a 90KM ride from this weekend on what should be the final firmware. This covers a variety of terrain from some city/bridge/etc stuff, to open fields, to woods.

It literally looked like this, the entire time, from a track accuracy standpoint. All the units were happy.

Finally, I want to briefly mention gradient responsiveness. That’s an area that Garmin says they spent a lot of time on, with an entirely new algorithm for the Edge 1050 (also going back to the Edge 540/840/1040). That algorithm increases the speed of responsiveness.

For long-time followers, you’ll know I’ve made several videos about the differences in gradient responsiveness between Garmin/Wahoo/Hammerhead. In short, Garmin was almost always notably slower when the grade changed steeply, very quickly. You virtually never noticed the differences if it was more gradual grade differences. As a result, if you quickly hit a sharp/steep climb, you’d see Garmin lag sometimes 10-15 seconds before it showed the right value.

That lag is now entirely gone. And more critically: It’s been stable when it quickly shifts.

Meaning, that while Hammerhead & Wahoo almost always changed faster, there were times where it wasn’t quite correct either. In this case, Garmin seems to have found the right balance with being just as fast (and almost always faster than Hammerhead and certainly Wahoo), while not overcommitting for the climbs I tried.

I outlined/show this in the video a bit more in realtime. I might try and find a few more climbs that can better illustrate this, as some of the screen recording sessions I had (thought I had) recorded elsewhere failed in various ways. Still, good to see this change.

Wrap-Up:

I suspect for about 90% of the population, they’ll be thrilled with the more visible, more brilliant screen – regardless of the battery life implications compared to the Edge 1040 series. After all, the Edge 1050 battery life still exceeds that of any unit from Wahoo or Hammerhead, and even more so, it means charging it only once every 2-3 weeks for most riders. Of course, for those that prefer much longer battery life (such as due to multi-pizza-long riding durations), you might have hoped for something else. Thus, I’m glad to see Garmin is committing to continued updates on the Edge 1040 series, and proving it with the immediate public beta updates.

I’ve been pretty happy with the Edge 1050 overall from a riding perspective. Display-aside, it basically feels like an Edge 1040 with a spruced up user interface and a few social-focused features. It’ll be interesting to see the ride hazards feature mature over the coming months. It won’t take long for people to start flagging hazards (and the community to confirm/reject them). Depending on the road (and dog) conditions of where you ride, this could be a very legit useful feature. Whereas for me personally, I rarely ride with groups, so all the group features aren’t super useful to me personally. But to each their own.

In terms of stability, the unit has been very stable for me. I’ve had a handful of small bugs over my testing period, with virtually all of them having been resolved, and the last some user interface one around other GroupRide riders not yet completed, being resolved tonight in a server-side update. My only tangible complaint at this point is that the turn notification loudness/sound got seemingly tweaked in the last firmware update, and is much harder to hear now on a windy day. But that’s easily tweaked in a future update, and Garmin says they’re already looking into what might have changed in recent days. Undoubtedly, other small things will pop-up, like most other units. But overall this is a very solid/stable unit, similar to what we saw Hammerhead deliver with the Karoo 3 recently. There’s value in not rushing a product launch, if nothing else, having largely positive reviews across the board from reviewers.

With that, thanks for reading!

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