Garmin launch Edge Touring and Edge Touring Plus GPS computers

I'm just learning how to use my new Garmin Touring Plus. So far, it seems to be okay but I have found the screen difficult to read in the winter sun. Was advised by Garmin Help that turning the back light one makes it better but I'm not sure. One big question is how good the routes are that are offered when you ask it to route you from one town to another when you are touring. What criteria are considered - climbs, road size/traffic etc. Can Garmin be trusted to get it right? Has anyone experience of this because if the Garmin offers suitable touring routes it saves the trouble of designing your own unless you have something in particular you want to include. And comments or advice would be really appreciated.

Same here... "buy at your own peril" .. until Garmin sorts things out, this device is not a worthy navigation tool for your cycling trips ...

I have the Edge Touring. I couldn't agree more with the " buy at your peril" as indicated above. Not user friendly and extremely difficult to preplan routes and download to the device which is why I bought it in the first place.More trouble than its worth.I couldn't get support to answer the phone which irritated me even more.

I bought a Garmin Touring Plus, and was very excited at this low cost unit with preloaded maps!! it soon turned into frustration, when using the round route tripping it tried to send me down every alley, dirt track and un-paved road possible despite setting the unit to avoid these, the round route tripping, although found 3 routes around 30-40 miles ok if you asked for 80,90,100+ miles it was just searching for over 15 minutes without finding a single route, to abandoning the ride and returning home, and data corrupted and failed to upload!! In Short, buy at your peril-not impressed unit returned and refund issued. spent a lot of time on phone to support as well who talked me through a couple of hard resets to no avail, and told it should only take 2-3 mins to find 3 routes regardless of distance!!

Garmin has so much potential and builds so many almost-usable devices, then usually ruins them by trying to make them do everything at once. What they need is unit configuration, that would allow a "sport" GPS to be configured by the user for use in various sports.

Most of the stuff on my 800 is superfluous to me - I'm not racing anyone. I would be happy if it just had more usable mapping and routing and - ideally - at least 12 hour battery life.

Why should cycle touring require a completely different unit from... um.. what was the point of the 800/810 again?

Buy a used 705 on ebay as backup, then you can charge one while using the other one. Charging while using is very unreliable and there is always risk of the port getting wet.

Perhaps they should sort out the navigation, altitude and firmware on the 810 first?

If it did Geocaching too, then I'd be sold.

I will just buy a new 800 (complete performance kit) for an additional £60 and save me all the palavas of this new unit.

GPS gives you altitude - if it tracks enough satellites at once. I really like the look of these.

It does also include a 'barometric altimeter for accurate elevation, gradient, ascent and descent data'. Does this mean the base model doesn't give you gradient? That would be a shame. I still feel the Bryton Rider 60 offers a lot more, inc bluetooth, except that Bryton seem reluctant to actually sell them. Announced in May, they've yet to arrive in the UK.

Loving the garmin con. How much does it cost to enable Ant+ - certainly not £50.

i'll be sticking with a 500 and using my imagination to work out where to ride rather than be sent up an A road on a computer generated route.