305 garmin

Overall Rating: ( 78 reviews )

1. Posted: Sep 1 2008

   As a Mac owner, I could not be happier with this product. It looks like it will still be a while before the 405 is made compatible with Macs, and longer still before the third party software makers support it. While the 405 has a better form factor and is arguably more accurate with its GPS, neither is designed to be a fashionable wristwatch and I probably wouldn't wear either except for when going for a run. And the 305 isn't as bulky as the photos make it look. The heart rate monitor is comfortable and adjustable, and the 305 tracks the heart rate accurately. Also, despite what another review said, you *can* adjust the display settings to make the heart rate display appear as big as you want. I use it on every run now - I hit "start", hit the lap button for any location I want to mark on the nature trails I run, keep tabs of my heart rate, and then come home and plug it into my Mac to track my routes, speed, and heart rate. It's an invaluable training tool, and the best one on the market for a Mac. And the price here on Amazon is a killer deal compared to what it used to be.

2. Posted: Aug 28 2008

   I had the 101 I think it was called and that worked but when I got the 305 and hooked everything up it was great! what a great tool and so indepth. more stuff then i need but it's nice to know if and when I need it, I have it!

3. Posted: Aug 26 2008

   I'm completely satisfied. My runs have improved w/this watch. I totally recommend it.

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Overall Rating: ( 19 reviews )

1. Posted: Aug 25 2008

   Clearly a great tool for cycling, and I love it - when it works. But I've now had to return mine for the 5th time, due to the unit shutting itself off mid-ride. Very annoying, and dealing with Garmin customer service is super slow (usually 30-45 minutes on hold before you can find a human) Love it, just wish it were reliable.

2. ( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 13 2008

   I have had the 305 for 2 weeks now. I like it, but it isn't all that I hoped. Installation is easier than any other computer you can get (unless you get the cadence meter). Strap it to the stem and that's it. It does come with mounts for 2 bikes, but if you want to mount both to the stem you will have to realign one mount from the handle bar mount angle (just takes a little prying, but I almost did break it in the process). Stem is the preferable mount just because it is a bit big for a handle bar mount. It comes with one piece of rubber that is for mounting it on bars/stem smaller than 1" diameter. The rubber also helps prevent slipping. Also it only comes with one angled spacer that makes it easier to read from a stem mount. If you want to mount on the stem for an additional bike you will probably want to purchase an additional mounting kit just for the angled spacer. I did, and the extra kits should be a lot cheaper than $17. I do have a problem on one of my bikes with the 305 rattling against the handlebar mounting screws on the top of the stem. It hasn't damaged the 305, but I don't like that it constantly rattles against the bike so I am going to try to pad it. After a little playing around, it is easy to use. Doesn't take long to figure out the screens. I have profiles set up for two bikes, but I am not sure of the purpose of this if you don't have the cadence package (if you had it on one bike on not the other you can set this in the profile). The profile asks you to enter each bikes weight, but I have no idea why it needs this information. I was disappointed that it doesn't save the screen settings for each bike, so there really doesn't seem to be a point to switching profiles (unless you do have the cadence meter). It would have been nice to set custom displays for each bike (for instance I don't wear the HR monitor when commuting on bike 2, so I don't want to waste screen space on this). Most of my disappointment comes from it's accuracy. Calories burned is worthless. It just computes the value from distance traveled, so it's so far off it's laughable. Since people have been complaining about this since the 305 was released I am surprised Garmin hasn't fixed this. Elevation is all over the place. Sometimes when I do a a loopback it shows a difference of up to 50' difference in the same areas. I realize that weather fluctuations will throw off a barometric altimeter, but the 305 is supposed to use the GPS to help stabilize it. From when I turn the unit on, after waiting a minute for the satellite reception, it takes another minute for the elevation to settle. And even when it's settled and sitting perfectly still it's constantly fluctuating +/- 10'. It also seems to lag a bit behind too so when you crest a hill it still shows you as climbing for a couple of seconds longer (sometimes for quite a few seconds). This affects grade too. Going up a hill it said I was on a 6% grade, going down that same hill 30 minutes later it said it was a 4% grade. Heart rate is hit and miss. Sometimes it's perfect, sometimes it reads very high and I get warnings to lower it (in the impossible 230 area). I know all HR monitors can be finicky and it depends on your clothes, power lines, amount you sweat, etc, but I used to use a Polar and had less trouble with it (although it wasn't perfect either). I have some HR monitor gel coming to see if that helps. The distance traveled is also off, but this is fairly common for a GPS to be a bit off. It isn't enough to worry about, but if you want exact measurements every time you are better off with a traditional computer. Where the 305 is really great is the virtual partner. For a quick work out you can set the partner to a time/distance/speed and race against it. It can be fun to set it to run 20 miles at an 18mph pace and try to beat it. Sure it's just basically setting a time to beat, but as you are riding it shows you how far ahead or behind your goal that you are. It can be a real motivator. Courses are even better. Once you ride a route and set lap points, you can ride the same route again and try to beat your past performance. You can also set up other training programs such as intervals, but I have not used this feature. Also as others have said, the 305 is of no use to find your way around. You want a 605/705 if that is what you are looking for. The screen isn't hard to see when riding. Most screens you can customize how much you see, and if you set too many fields it can be a bit hard to see everything easily. At first you also find yourself playing with it a lot when riding, which is a bit dangerous. This week I looked up from playing around with it and rode right through a broken bottle flattening my back tire. (Yes I felt stupid after the fact.) GPS reception has been good, but I live in area without any trees. When riding through a tunnel on the local bike path, it auto-paused itself when it lost contact but picked up contact immediately as I came out the other side. Software is bad. I have it on my Mac and PC but haven't played around with the Mac version enough to comment. You can't really do much with the software besides look at graphs of your ride. Which is nice, but it isn't done very well. The included maps it uses are pathetic and you can't even click on your route to highlight on the ride's pace/elevation graph to compare where you were. Although if you click on a section of the graph it will show you where on the map you were. It also doesn't mark your lap sections on the maps or graph of your ride. You can't edit your courses either. Motion Based (which Garmin owns) looks neat, but it's almost $100 a year or $12 a month. Seeing I am lucky if I get 5 months of riding where I live, $60 for this service seems a bit much. Battery life has been excellent so far, but it is a new unit. Lithium Ion batteries decrease in performance as they get older. You can charge it all you want, and it won't kill the battery, but age will. If kept in a warm place the battery dies at a quicker pace. This would be less of a big deal if you could change the battery yourself. But after a couple season you can forget it lasting for any longer rides. I searched Garmin's site to see how much they charge to replace the battery, but couldn't find anything. If you do a Google search for Edge 305 battery you can find people talking about using cell phone battery boosters to give the 305 a longer life. Overall I like the product, but think it could be vastly improved. Garmin doesn't seem to be listening to users though since the 605/705 suffer the same problems, so it doesn't look like we can expected an improved 305 or better software anytime soon. In the end I think I would suggest a normal computer over the 305 if accuracy is important to you.

3. ( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 13 2008

   I have had the 305 for 2 weeks now. I like it, but it isn't all that I hoped. Installation is easier than any other computer you can get (unless you get the cadence meter). Strap it to the stem and that's it. It does come with mounts for 2 bikes, but if you want to mount both to the stem you will have to realign one mount from the handle bar mount angle (just takes a little prying, but I almost did break it in the process). Stem is the preferable mount just because it is a bit big for a handle bar mount. It comes with one piece of rubber that is for mounting it on bars/stem smaller than 1" diameter. The rubber also helps prevent slipping. Also it only comes with one angled spacer that makes it easier to read from a stem mount. If you want to mount on the stem for an additional bike you will probably want to purchase an additional mounting kit just for the angled spacer. I did, and the extra kits should be a lot cheaper than $17. I do have a problem on one of my bikes with the 305 rattling against the handlebar mounting screws on the top of the stem. It hasn't damaged the 305, but I don't like that it's constantly rattles against the bike so I am going to try to pad it. After a little playing around, it is easy to use. Doesn't take long to figure out the screens. I have profiles set up for two bikes, but I am not sure of the purpose of this if you don't have the cadence package (if you had it on one bike on not the other you can set this in the profile). The profile asks you to enter each bikes weight, but I have no idea why it needs this information. I was disappointed that it doesn't save the screen settings for each bike, so there really doesn't seem to be a point to switching profiles (unless you do have the cadence meter). It would have been nice to set custom displays for each bike (for instance I don't wear the HR monitor when commuting on bike 2, so I don't want to waste screen space on this). Most of my disappointment comes from it's accuracy. Calories burned is worthless. It just computes the value from distance traveled, so it's so far off it's laughable. Since people have been complaining about this since the 305 was released I am surprised Garmin hasn't fixed this. Elevation is all over the place. Sometimes when I do a a loopback it shows a difference of up to 50' difference in the same areas. I realize that weather fluctuations will throw off a barometric altimeter, but the 305 is supposed to use the GPS to help stabilize it. From when I turn the unit on, after waiting a minute for the satellite reception, it takes another minute for the elevation to settle. And even when it's settled and sitting perfectly still it's constantly fluctuating +/- 10'. It also seems to lag a bit behind too so when you crest a hill it still shows you as climbing for a couple of seconds longer (sometimes for quite a few seconds). This affects grade too. Going up a hill it said I was on a 6% grade, going down that same hill 30 minutes later it said it was a 4% grade. Heart rate is hit and miss. Sometimes it's perfect, sometimes it reads very high and I get warnings to lower it (in the impossible 230 area). I know all HR monitors can be finicky and it depends on your clothes, power lines, amount you sweat, etc, but I used to use a Polar and had less trouble with it (although it wasn't perfect either). I have some HR monitor gel coming to see if that helps. The distance traveled is also off, but this is fairly common for a GPS to be a bit off. It isn't enough to worry about, but if you want exact measurements every time you are better off with a traditional computer. Where the 305 is really great is the virtual partner. For a quick work out you can set the partner to a time/distance/speed and race against it. It can be fun to set it to run 20 miles at an 18mph pace and try to beat it. Sure it's just basically setting a time to beat, but as you are riding it shows you how far ahead or behind your goal that you are. It can be a real motivator. Courses are even better. Once you ride a route and set lap points, you can ride the same route again and try to beat your past performance. You can also set up other training programs such as intervals, but I have not used this feature. Also as others have said, the 305 is of no use to find your way around. You want a 605/705 if that is what you are looking for. The screen isn't hard to see when riding. Most screens you can customize how much you see, and if you set too many fields it can be a bit hard to see everything easily. At first you also find yourself playing with it a lot when riding, which is a bit dangerous. This week I looked up from playing around with it and rode right through a broken bottle flattening my back tire. (Yes I felt stupid after the fact.) GPS reception has been good, but I live in area without any trees. When riding through a tunnel on the local bike path, it auto-paused itself when it lost contact but picked up contact immediately as I came out the other side. Software is bad. I have it on my Mac and PC but haven't played around with the Mac version enough to comment. You can't really do much with the software besides look at graphs of your ride. Which is nice, but it isn't done very well. The included maps it uses are pathetic and you can't even click on your route to highlight on the ride's pace/elevation graph to compare where you were. Although if you click on a section of the graph it will show you where on the map you were. It also doesn't mark your lap sections on the maps or graph of your ride. You can't edit your courses either. Motion Based (which Garmin owns) looks neat, but it's almost $100 a year or $12 a month. Seeing I am lucky if I get 5 months of riding where I live, $60 for this service seems a bit much. Battery life has been excellent so far, but it is a new unit. Lithium Ion batteries decrease in performance as they get older. You can charge it all you want, and it won't kill the battery, but age will. If kept in a warm place the battery dies at a quicker pace. This would be less of a big deal if you could change the battery yourself. But after a couple season you can forget it lasting for any longer rides. I searched Garmin's site to see how much they charge to replace the battery, but couldn't find anything. If you do a Google search for Edge 305 battery you can find people talking about using cell phone battery boosters to give the 305 a longer life. Overall I like the product, but think it could be vastly improved. Garmin doesn't seem to be listening to users though since the 605/705 suffer the same problems, so it doesn't look like we can expected an improved 305 or better software anytime soon. In the end I think I would suggest a normal computer over the 305 if accuracy is important to you.

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Overall Rating: ( 46 reviews )

1. Posted: Aug 31 2008

   If you're looking to train for events or just want to know your progress, this is a nice piece of gear. Easy to install (all pickups are bluetooth wireless and "pair up" without any effort). I have a fairly high heart rate for a guy over 60 (MAX 190), so my biking buddies aren't much help when trying to determine "zones". I had a VO2 and lactate performance "test" and it resulted in exactly the same conclusion I found using the Garmin (166 is my sustainable climbing MAX). You can setup training routes, a virtual training "partner", etc. If I had it to do over, I'd do the same thing.

2. Posted: Aug 28 2008

   Very easy to install and configure. The bike mount is a little bit flimsy but it works. It is easy to transfer between bikes (not the cadence meter though). GPS reception is fantastic - on out-and-back courses I can clearly see which side of the road I was riding on. So far it has proven to be waterproof and I have not had issues with the battery life (I haven't ridden with it for more than 4 hours though). While riding there is a whole slew of info to look at but I tend to look at speed, time , distance and HR zone. All the rest is icing on the cake. After the ride, the data collected by the 305 becomes the cornerstone of a digital training diary - I can compare speeds, grade and HR on various portions of my favorite routes, plot elevation profiles, view the data in google earth, etc. It is a data analysts dream.

3. Posted: Aug 22 2008

   The brackets are poorly desinged or designed with the purposeful intention of breaking such that you have to buy new ones. Mine broke and a car ran over my GPS. Nice work Garmin. The software provided by Garmin is also poorly desinged and my unit alway had a hard time connectiong to my computer.

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Overall Rating: ( 7 reviews )

1. Posted: Jun 12 2008

   Product arrived on-time. Excellent price on Amazon (through Warehouse Deals versus current market price). Fairly easy to install. Have used on aggressive mountain bike trails (mounting method is solid) and on the road. Have also used it to navigate with - this is not going to give you Car GPS functionality. Any route you want to follow you will need to pre-load and use BikeRouteToaster or other application to make a .crs file - some fiddling required - the result is a black line you will need to follow (no map / other roads shown). I used it for Bike to Work week and followed a route through the center of Baltimore on quiet back streets - no problem - 1st time I used the unit out of the box. Happy so far.

2. Posted: Oct 23 2007

   I returned to cycling after a 20-year hiatus last year. Being a dyed-in-the-wool sucker for gadgets, I had to get the Garmin 305 as my bike computer. Cyclist friends of mine made fun of its size, made fun of my desire to map my rides afterward, and generally mocked the device. I ignored them, and I'm glad I did. The 305 has been a great training partner. Thanks to its data recording ability, I can really easily correlate perceived effort on a day's ride with my actual performance in terms of speed, heart rate, and cadence. Setting up all of the sensors on the bike was relatively straighforward (though the combined wheelspeed and cadence sensor setup was somewhat novel), and the directions were clear. You charge the 305 through its USB port. It comes with a separate power supply so that you can either charge it from a wall outlet, or from the USB cable connected to your computer. On the bike, the display is large and clear. I've found it readable in any of the lighting conditions in which I'd be willing to ride the bike. The interface is relatively easy to navigate, though a bit puzzling to set up. Garmin's origins in navigation show in a couple of funny places. One of them is the default data fields displayed on the device: your heading is shown by default in the five data field configuration that I prefer, but your heart rate isn't. I was able to reconfigure it to display the fields that I watned to see, but I found the choice surprising in a product that is ostensibly aimed at athletes. In use, I found that the GPS reception was generally good even in tree-shaded areas, but the startup process can sometimes be irritatingly slow. Data reception for the heart rate and cadence sensors has been glitch free. In terms of durability, I've banged the 305 around quite a bit and ridden it in conditions that left other electronics begging for mercy (don't ride in the driving rain without putting your mobile phone in a plastic bag). The 305 still performs like a champ thousands of miles later. As a Mac user, I found the Mac support lame at first, but it has been steadily improving with Garmin's release of their Training Center software for the Mac, a Mac version of their Web Updater tool, and improvements they've made to Mac support [...]. It's still not perfect, but it's very useful. The ultimate endorsement of the 305 is that I'll be replacing it soon. Garmin has announced their upcoming new generation of Edge cycling units, and the 705 looks too good to pass up. I'm hooked on the capabilities and insight that the 305 has given me, and I'm looking forward to even more with Garmin's next generation.

3. Posted: Aug 10 2007

   I recently purchased the Garmin Edge 305, w/cadence, plus I added the heart monitor a couple weeks later. I commute daily on my bike and I do 350 - 450 miles per week, with weekend centuries. This is a great tool for anyone who wants to have a better understanding of their effort and cadence. I have found very quickly that by focusing on my cadence and heart rate, I have improved my overall times and have become even more efficient on my bike. The ability to, customize the display, set up interval trainings, upload rides to the computer, analyze the ride as a whole or part and compare to other days is outstanding. I would recommend the Garmin to anyone who wants to become serious about cycling, get the most out of their time on the bike, and improve their performance. A little expensive but worth every cent. It has even helped me find my way home when I have gotten out in an area I am not as familiar with. Must have for anyone who really wants to track results, understand effort, maintain data and improve performance. One negative is the battery life is truly only about 6 -6.5 hours, so for the longer rides I have left my Cateye on my bike so I have some reference for speed, mileage etc... another is the unit will go to "sleep" if left for more than a couple of days, but by holding both the Mode and Reset button for 30 seconds it will "wake" the unit back up. Still awesome!!! Ride Strong!!!

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