I have a Garmin 800 at the moment. It is fine for single day rides, even beyond the standard battery, but multi-day I think its a little weak.
I know lots of people who have had issues when trying to use and recharge simultaneously, myself included.

What devices would others recommend?
Looking at things like the eTrex, Oregon & Montana.

Needs to be durable, reliable and able to plot a route and ideally put in custom waymarkers (can the 800 do that?) such as shops, etc.
Main use will be HT550, so 4-5 day use (I hope!) and I will certainly take my 800 as a spare.

Dakota or Etrex 30 are the usual recommendations.

As Rich says, those models are the most popular.

For the HTR, id wait for Mr Barter to finish one of the projects hes been working on.

Nearly done. Rendered the first full UK version this weekend and am testing on the bike next week

Matt, make sure you use lithium batteries, and take what you need with you, youll be lucky to find them en route.

Matt, the 800 can be fine. I used mine for the HTR last year and it was fine, but I use it with an external battery pack. It's been on a few multi day rides as well and been ok, the only issue I have had is with 24 hour rides where the ride log file size gets too big and then the unit needs a hard reset (happened to me once, never again!) you can stop and restart the log though to have more smaller files.

For checkpoints, I am not sure how I have managed to do this, but it is possible - I think I have done it somehow with memory map. Last year I had a piece of laminated paper with all the food shops and major distances on, which helped with the mind games the terrain was playing.

If you're not sure the etrex is popular

Richpips wrote:Dakota or Etrex 30 are the usual recommendations.

Slight highjack, sorry

I've got an old Garmin Etrex Vista HCx with a very, very basic topo map which is ok of sorts.

For those who use the Dakota or Etrex 30 please can you tell me where is the best (cheapest) place to get the OS maps from and which of the 2 is the most up to date and which is easy to use on the move?

JohnClimber wrote:

Richpips wrote:Dakota or Etrex 30 are the usual recommendations.

Slight highjack, sorry

I've got an old Garmin Etrex Vista HCx with a very, very basic topo map which is ok of sorts.

For those who use the Dakota or Etrex 30 please can you tell me where is the best (cheapest) place to get the OS maps from and which of the 2 is the most up to date and which is easy to use on the move?

Dakota and Etrex are broadly the same at each model level, it's whether you prefer a touchscreen or buttons to operate it.

OS (and other countries) are around £20 a set from a retailer with Dazzler in his username on www.ioffer.com

If you get a dakota with the touchscreen get a screen protector to stop muddy gloves wrecking it!

Oregon 450 for the past 4 years and it's been great.
Bought it over the Dakota as it had a bigger screen but batteries last about 2 hours less. About 16-17 hours off a pair of lithiums.

I've had loads of Garmin models over the years, and they are good when they work, but have all been quite 'buggy' (esp the Edge 705) and all died earlier than I expected. The Edge 800 has just went into 'diagnostic mode' which I can't escape from, so another one for the bin, I expect. Trouble is, I don't know of any other manufacturers producing anything worth looking at. I had a Satmap Active8 a few years back, but it died after getting wet, and was probably too chunky for the cockpit.

There are some good smartphone apps out there, but they hammer the battery, and I want to keep my phone charged for when things go wrong and I really need it!

I expect I may get an Etrex 30 next; light, long battery life, and cheap.

I had a Dakota and it works just fine. I do prefer the larger screen of the Oregon though.

I also prefer the touch-screen interface to the buttons on the Etrex.

Did the Divide this summer with an eTrex 30, it did very well in some harsh/wet conditions. Acceptable battery life overall and easy to transfer files. Loved the elevation plot feature and the barometric altimeter, with that in mind I'd say to definitely take the plunge and get the eTrex 30 as opposed to skimping and getting the eTrex 20 if you decide to go with the eTrex line in the end. I haven't tried any of the Garmin models with the touchscreen interface for comparison but I will say the little joystick interface on the eTrex was sometimes annoying and hard to get to scroll/select when rattling along on dirt road trying to change from elevation plot to map and back, or such. Performance for zooming in and out with a base-map enabled was excellent on the eTrex 30. I saw more than one Garmin Edge have major issues out there, just the size of the route seemed to cause problems on them, whereas the eTrex 30 handled it just fine.The Garmin bike mount for the eTrex could have been designed better but does work, is light, and is inexpensive(~8 USD).

JohnClimber wrote:

Richpips wrote:Dakota or Etrex 30 are the usual recommendations.

Slight highjack, sorry

I've got an old Garmin Etrex Vista HCx with a very, very basic topo map which is ok of sorts.

For those who use the Dakota or Etrex 30 please can you tell me where is the best (cheapest) place to get the OS maps from and which of the 2 is the most up to date and which is easy to use on the move?

I use the free one from talky toaster. It's the complete UK and have had no troubles with it to date. It offers both contours and basic topo versions but I use the basic. The screen gets cluttered easy.

The Edge 800 is fine to charge and use at the same time. Charging from a dynamo directly with the 800 can have problems if you don't use a battery in between. I wrote an article here: http://www.composite-projects.co.uk/201 ... the-trail/ on using the 800 and charging etc.

62 series here. Its great

Yetiman wrote:62 series here. Its great

I currently have in my mind weighing up various gps'. I like garmin packaging. I like the OS optimised mapping designed to work on them so they work efficiently.

I am however struggling to get proper hardware specifications from the internet so I can work out things like number of points on a track before the garmin falls over, the speed of the processor etc. Sizes, battery lift etc. are easy to find, real specifications are not, and hence how it will perform realistically is a bit difficult.

I expect to have researched a bit more in March to add more useful information to this thread

I am however struggling to get proper hardware specifications from the internet so I can work out things like number of points on a track before the garmin falls over

I try not to stress my Garmin on long trips. I set the track record function, to least often. For the HTR I split the track into 9 sections, each no larger than 500 points, and around ~50kb in size. Each night I save the file, "Reset Trip Data" and "Clear Current Track"

None of my Garmins have ever crashed.

I skimped and went with Etrex 20. Holds a map and a line just fine which is all you really want when you're busy pedalling and glancing at the screen. Excellent battery life (between 5 and 7 days with 12 hour sessions each day) when activating the backlight only occasionally.

Go with the genuine Garmin mount - I've used both a 3 quid Amazon knock-off and the real deal and the Garmin one holds the device in place well enough I'm comfortable not to tether it. I'm probably pushing my luck though and really should tether it back up. With the knock-off mount, I often looked down to find my GPS bouncing against the head tube when on bumpy surfaces.

Greetz

S.

Matt - Love my Satmap Big clear screen, with OS mapping. No hassle with file types, file sizes, transferring of files etc Logical to use. No issues whatsoever
Solid Bike Mount and able to use it for other hill duties (climbing/mountaineering)

Feel like the odd one out (in the Garmin conversation) but Im still very happy with my purchase

Scattamah wrote:I skimped and went with Etrex 20. Holds a map and a line just fine which is all you really want when you're busy pedalling and glancing at the screen.

Cool, the reason I mentioned not skimping was because after riding next to two different racers that were running eTrex 20, they both said... I should have gone for the eTrex 30. One of the racers went with the eTrex 20 consciously so as to not have any altimeter data, thinking it would drive him insane on the climbs, but in the end he said he'd wished he'd had it. eTrex 20 is certainly a great device and sufficient for all we do, though, sometimes some bells and whistles can be nice(or a pain, depending on what you want out of your device). Cheers.

WARNING, WARNING

SILLY QUESTION OF THE DAY

Is this
http://www.ioffer.com/i/garmin-uk-gb-di ... -574074184
the correct SD (it comes on a micro sd) card with the 1:50 OS mapping which we all know and love?

yes

One of the racers went with the eTrex 20 consciously so as to not have any altimeter data, thinking it would drive him insane on the climbs, but in the end he said he'd wished he'd had it...<snip>

Snap! Precisely why I didn't bother...I didn't want to know how long I'd be climbing for. "I'm hurting and there's 1500' to go" knowledge can be the start of a negative head game affair.

Greetz

S.

JohnClimber wrote:
Is this
http://www.ioffer.com/i/garmin-uk-gb-di ... -574074184
the correct SD (it comes on a micro sd) card with the 1:50 OS mapping which we all know and love?

WOWSERS!! So the complete mapping of the UK for just over 20 quid?!! For that price I'm gonna have to dig out the Garmin and make a purchase, bargain

You can get maps for almost anywhere off there'.

I can vouch for the Spanish ones too