Garmin Edge 705 GPS-Enabled Cycling Computer (Includes Heart Rate Monitor and Speed/Cadence Sensor) Immediately

It's difficult for me to find the words to describe how much I love this thing. I use it to track all my workouts, I navigate long and complicated routes effortlessly, I explore new areas - it's opened up a world of cycling in unfamiliar terrain.

I initially hesitated at the cost - but after using the 305 for almost a year and having logged > 3000 miles on it - I did not hesitate to upgrade and spend twice as much to get the 705 for the additional features it provides.

Hats off to the Garmin folks for creating such a great unit.

I highly recommend this GPS.

About me: I'm a casual rider. I ride about 600 miles per month and use the Garmin to track my rides (I visually load my rides onto MapMyRide and into Google Earth), track my progress and data associated with my rides.

I also have been using the unit to help me navigate long, unfamiliar rides. In this case, I load a GPX file on the unit from any number of mapping utilities ([...], [...], etc).

Some of PROS:

- Weather-proof - you wouldn't swim with it, but I've ridden in downpours with it quite a bit
- Sturdy, solid construction - It's survived many drops
- Navigation - Turn-by-turn alerts based on a saved route works well
- Screen - Legible, precise, looks great - beautiful full color maps
- Backlight / Crip display - Very good illumination
- Battery - After over a year of solid use, I still get 12+ hours continuous (without backlight).
- Accurate GPS - works well in almost all parts of Manhattan, for example
- Customizable screens - chose the data points you'd to show across 2 customizable screens
- Heart rate sensor - has worked flawlessly for me (unlike the Polar sensors, which I'd had issues with)
- Barometric altimeter - accurate - love knowing how much I've climbed (even as an estimate) and the % grade is neat
- Support for workouts - intervals, etc and riding against your previous performance

Some of the CONS (the PROS greatly outweigh any of these cons):

- Maps are expensive (I believe I dropped $100 on maps for my cycling trip in France).
- Map feature display priorities - The map name prioritization doesn't make sense to me... I wish the map displayed town names over park names, for example.
- Calorie count is completely wrong (based on distance - does not take into account climbs or heart rate) - but then again, I didn't buy this unit to count calories.
- Packaged Software - It's not great, it's not bad - it does the trick.

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