User Review: Garmin Edge 305 (with cadence and heart rate)

Garmin Edge 305
Above: The current Edge 305, which may differ slightly from the version reviewed.

Reviewed June 14, 2006 by Bob Bissell

Rating:
Price Paid: $345

This is a slick looking bicycle computer that unfortunately has not been well designed or thought out. There is one sensor for speed and cadence. This works well on a standard bike, but not on any bike where the crank arm and rear wheel sensors do not pass the same location. This includes some MTN bikes and recumbents etc.

I ride a lot of miles and have a lot of experience with my speed, cadence, and heart rate etc. The basic speed, distance, cadence, and heart rate functions seem to be quite accurate. However that is where the accuracy stops. Calories are measured by the speed function. So coasting downhill fast displays more calories burned than working hard up the hill. This unit tells me I burn 800+ calories/hr when my previous Polar monitors say 450+.

This unit is also sold without the heart rate monitor. My guess is they pegged the calories to speed so they could sell the unit without the HR monitor. Of course, calories should be pegged to heart rate and possibly grade. The elevation gained and grade functions vary in accuracy. I have an old bubble indicator for grade incline that is very accurate. The Garmin will jump from 5% to 17% readings on the same 8% grade.

All the data downloads into a Performance package software. This is a very nice feature but for the high price it would be nice to have accurate readings of % grade and calories burned so you could accurately analyze your heart rate to the true effort. I could get a computer to read heart rate, cadence, basic speed, and distance calculations for much less.

It seems to me that this bicycle computer was designed by someone who does not ride very much. What good is a slick computer display when much of the training data is inaccurate?