I went looking for a heart rate monitor that would record my entire session and found this instead. Why pay premium for a HRM that will download to your computer when all it records is your heart rate? Why not see where on the road your heart rate peaked at and all the other features a GPS unit can offer?

GPS, cadence, speed, elevation, slope grade, heart rate, HR zone, compass heading, cyclometer functions as well as a bunch of stuff I'm leaving out; I mean, it seems like a no-brainer to get this rather than a nice HRM. This IS a nice HRM, but with extra stuff.

Now, mind you, the software that comes with the Garmin looks like crap and doesn't offer a lot to the mix, but that can easily be rectified by Googling "SportTracks", downloading that software and using it instead.

Some cons to the unit: the aforementioned yucky Garmin software that comes with it, the mount for the cadence/speed sensor has trouble being mounted on other than roundish chain stays (diamond shaped is not good, but it did work), and it the display can be a little hard to see if you're a umm ... more seasoned ... cyclist who needs reading glasses. I also wonder about the longevity of the little rubber protective cover thingy that goes over the USB port.

On the other hand, the unit looks and acts like it was designed by cyclists for cyclists. I really like the Garmin; with the SportTracks software, it adds a another dimension to your riding/training that can up your game. It's easy to mount onto your bike and is just fun to use.

Oh yeah: and you can replace the battery in the chest strap.

no problem so far. I already used it for 5K since I bought in June07. No battery replaced yet and no weak signal for cadence, Heart Monitor and GPS. Very accurate for distance and speed. I compared with the car odometer and didn't get a huge variation. At maximum for 200km rode by car, i got 2Km the delta to Garmin. The speed was very close to the car odometer. I recommend this even the Garmin already launched the EDGE 705 (color screen and SD card with GPS maps - for me this extra features is not usefull for my training and competition)

REAL SIMPLE. You CANT live without this if your serious about riding. I race road bikes every month or two doing anywhere from 50 to centurys. And do about 30 a day.

NOBODY does it better than Garmin. It provides feed-back you cant go without. Tells you what your bike is doing and what your body is doing.

Easy to use. ZERO complaints. And I own over 10 GPS units from aircraft to boats to cars. And have been a Garmin customer since 1992.

It ROCKS!!

Ps. I learned more on the first time using it on a 70 ride, then I knew about myself and bike after over a year of riding. PLUS, I take my bike all over the US weekly and ride unfamilure places. The navigation that is offers from just the GPS part, is great for finding your way back home. It just does NOT GET EASIER.

Ok, I really love this gadget. It's great to have heartrate, speed, distance, cadence, grade, and averages all on one unit. After a ride, you can review, graphically, the entire data for the ride. Also great to have your entire history of rides on your computer. But it takes a fair amount of effort to keep that history. The software just randomly loses your history from time to time--so you have to back up frequently. This is not just me--check out the forums on Garmin's sites, and you'll see that everyone seems to experience these glitches from time to time. Calorie calculation is, well, bizarre---I don't really need exact calorie counting (though the forums at Garmin's site certainly suggest that others do), but I'd like it to at least serve for comparison purposes. Not so--the same exact ride, with very similar speed, can show up with dramatically different calories burned. Another glitch has even earned its own acronym of JFS--jersey flap syndrome, when certain synthetic jerseys, at high speed, interfere with the heart rate monitor sensor, causing impossibly high heart rate readings (no, my heart rate did not actually go to 265 on that downhill section).

The unit also interfaces with Garmin's web-based program, Motion Based--- a very interesting concept that lets you look at your own and other people's rides, and search for them using key words. You can then download these rides to your unit and follow them on your bike using the course map. That's a really cool idea---essentially a community created trail guide, but it could be better. The ability to comment on these rides would be nice---much like this Amazon review system, users could choose or modify routes that are posted according to their own purposes if comments were permitted. It would also be nice to search for rides by GPS coordinates (this is Garmin, after all) but right now that doesn't appear possible.

If you back up frequently, it is nice to compare one ride (say a favorite route early in the season) with another (same route later in the season). You can watch your heartrate lower as you train from ride to ride. But as I mentioned above, you will lose this ability if you don't back up often. You also have to occasionally reset the device, or it will begin to misbehave both in interfacing with your computer and on the bike. Recently, my unit has developed an irritating habit of shutting off mid-ride--though turning it back on keeps the mileage count going , the elapsed time after restart is mysteriously, almost randomly, altered--completely messing up average pace. You get some, but not all of this data back when you upload to motionbased (as opposed to using the training center software), but it's still no longer accurate once it shuts down. Again, reading the forums, this shutting off appears to be a common problem.

Transferring non-Garmin GPS routes to the unit, for use as a course, should be a lot easier. There are free third party programs out there on the Web that are useable, but it's difficult and hit and miss. One would hope that future upgrades will allow for easy transformation of the relatively few GPS coordinate files out there (e.g. .tcx) to Garmin's .crs format. Following a course (once it's successfully loaded) is really cool--zoom in and out on the map, and race the person who initially rode the course virtually. It's easy to convert a course you've ridden to a stored course to ride again, a little more involved, but not difficult, to use someone else's ride from the Motion Based website--it would just be nice to download a course from the several other GPS sites and use it as a cue sheet for a new ride.

Honestly, I've had my Edge for 3 months and I've enjoyed it tremendously. I will continue to use it, and really wouldn't want to do any significant ride without one. (I believe I could send it back to Garmin to resolve the shutting-off mid-ride issue, but I'm waiting until the weather isn't so nice for riding before giving it up for a few days--I'd really miss it). But its software is finicky, and you have to use the user forums on Motion Based from time to time to figure out how to get the thing unstuck or on or reset or backed up. The Motion Based Trail Network idea is absolutely killer, but I fear that with Garmin's apparent weakness in the software area it will be a long time before they start to really exploit its potential. And it's not the only source of GPS routes out there, but the only source that is readily useable with the unit (though a bit of tinkering around on line helps thios a bit). Let's hope they hire some good software developers and make this thing really fly.

Added 8/4/7: If I could, I would lower the rating to 2 stars. Customer Service is nice but it doesn't make up for a weak product.

I bought this unit to be able to record my rides to computer and have one unit that does it all. I ride 4/5 times a week for about 125 miles. Previously I used a Vetta 55 odo/cadence unit, a Sunotto heart rate monitor and Garmin 60csx GPS and recorded everything in Excel. I have been using the 305 for several months now and his unit has it's problems:

1 - Usually the heartrate readings are inaccurate when going fast (downhill) and/or into a strong wind. By inaccurate, I mean readings of over 225! This is caused, according to Garmin customer service, by the pressure of a "flapping" jersey which gives a stronger reading than your heartbeat. Garmin does not have a fix, they suggest wearing a very tight jersey or none at all. I find if you cross your arm over the chest strap to stop the wind, it sometimes corrects after a several seconds. Bummer to have to ride this way. The other bummer is that these miss readings are transferred to the computer program and distort the workout totals (ie average heartrate) and graphs.

2 - The altimeter is often inaccurate with the starting altitude. When I review my ride on the computer, I see the the starting altitude is lower than the finish. I know this is not right because I start and end in the same place! I don't use the altitude during my ride but I like to know the overall assent/descent for the ride and I have to subtract the beginning from the ending to make an adjustment.

3 - I had a real problem trying to install the cadence meter. In fact, I gave up and use the old wired Vetta that I previously installed. The Garmin is bulky and interferes with the spokes. Vetta works great but I do not have the cadence data to download to the computer.

4 - The computer program is nice but has it's limitations. You cannot get an overall view of all your rides as it is organized by week and day without the ability to rename a ride. If you do many different ride routes, you have to switch to the map tab (vs the stats tab or note tab) to see which is which. Seeing only one tab at a time makes it pain to compare rides. You have the ability to break a ride into "laps" (sections) during the ride but the program will not allow for comparison of laps of different rides. My favorite ride starts with a 4 mile flat and then 3 mile climb. I would like to compare the climb between different days but no can do. I still load everything into Excel and use that, with adjustments to the data to compensate for the altitude and heartrate problems, to give me an overall ride review.

5. The battery is rechargeable and gives over 6 3/4 hours use, my longest continuous ride. I have had it quit during a ride, however, when I forgot to recharge it after the last use. I now make it a habit to download the data after each ride and leave it plugged into the USB port. It does recharge rather quickly.

On the plus side, and why I gave it a 3 and not 2 rating, is Customer Service is good. Minimal hold time and the reps seemed knowable of the products: they admitted the heartrate problem and they replaced my other product (the GPS) quickly when it died. The GPS function matches the other GPS and I don't now carry that bulky unit.

There are also "workout" and "course" functions but I usually don't ride the same route often so I don't use this.

If I knew then what I know now, I would not buy this again - at least not until Garmin fixed the HR function.

This is a beautiful thing. If your standard cycling computer isn't doing the trick, get one of these suckers. If you have several bikes, you can help justifying the price by getting several mounts and just trading it between bikes.

I love the overload of data it provides. HRM, cadence (on my non-recumbent bike), altitude, maps, etc. Two things you'll want immediately after getting this: Google Earth (upgrade to Google Earth Plus to interact directly with the GPS), and also get a login at mapmyride.com. That also talks directly to the Edge, meaning you can blog your ride minutes after getting home, if you're so inclined.

I'm posting this for those who are considering purchasing one or those who keep telling themselves the lie that this is a good product. It's not. Here's my opnion why.

I'm on my third unit which died yesterday after updating to the latest 3.2 software. Dead - no amount of reset button combinations, plugging into AC and other tricks will work. After updating the Sw, the screen went blank. So now I'm faced with forever hold times to talk to someone at Garmin who is going to tell me that it's out of warranty and I can send it in to be fixed & returned within 4 weeks for a charge of $X.

The first unit did not read heart rate. Took over a month to get it replaced. The replacement unit didn't either. Finally the third unit reads my heart rate "most" of the time. It has nowhere near the reliability nor accuracy of my Polar HRM. I've used 3 different types of HRM cream, spit, etc.

I fully recognize that there can be defects in any product and maybe this was just bad luck but I think the problems with this device go much further. There have been constant firmware & software updates over the past year to fix things that should have been correct in the first place. Remember when the alarm volume was so low you couldn't hear it while riding? Or how about the lap issues & altitude issues and average grade issues. All things that should have been right from day one. Instead, it appears they rushed this product out the door and used us as beta testers. This isn't a small step up from a simple cateye - this is for people who take biking seriously and really want to rely on the data to improve and enjoy and understand their cycling more.

After using this product for a while I feel they got the user interface wrong. The screen should be horizontal not vertical in my opinion. The map data and metric data would fit much better and be easier to read while riding. I own one of their handhelds for hiking and to me it looks like they just adopted the hiker approach for the biking world. The interface doesn't translate 1-to1 like that. Biking is completely different. The way I interface with the product going 25mph down a road is much different than the way I use a GPS on a hike.

This product needs to be dependable and based on my experience and reading post after post on the [...] forum of people who are experiencing major problems it's not.

What would happen if Garmin released a product this unreliable in their aviation division? They couldn't. If they can do it right for planes, why can't they do it right for bikes? I would have gladly accepted a product that had less features but was rock solid.

The whole experience has not been worth it. If someone is reading this considering buying this product I'd look elsewhere. I'm a geek and really wanted to like this product. But I spent all last summer lying to myself that this was a good product. Now that a simple software upgrade has completely wiped out my unit, I'm finished with Garmin.

The Edge 305HR+ is a great add on to keep track of your bike training. Keep in mind this unit is not a "TOMTOM". It's geared more towards storing data of what you've riden as opposed to telling you where to go. I use it for mostly mountain biking and keeping track of my weekly progress as well as using Garmin's Motion Based website to create maps of the trails I ride. I'm still getting to know how some of the features work, but for the most part was very simple to setup and use right away.

I've had this device for a little over a year. I was an early adopter. I must say, I really enjoy this thing. This with the services provided by [...] make for a really nice setup. I did have issues with the HRM, but garmin send me a new one, no questions asked, by email request (no hold time!). The battery life issue should be noted, it only lasts about 5 hours. Garmin has been great about addressing defects; when the product was first released there was a defect in which the device wouldn't shut off when plugged into a USB port, but it was quickly fixed. All in all, a great product with great support.

I love this product. I purchased the Edge 305 to go on a new bike, it was easy to install, with decent instructions. It was easy to get started using it. It gives all the information you could possibly want about your ride, and its simple to download. Some people might think its too much information, but you can tailor the data fields that are displayed to see as little or as much info as you want. The data (milage, elevation) appears to be very accurate.

On the down side, the display can be hard to read in the sunlight. I've played around with the contrast tool, but still have problems. I also think the use instructions could be clearer, on my first ride, I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting milage, and later realized you have to turn it on! I'm used to bike computers that start automatically. Changing the data fields being displayed is a bit of a pain, I want a timer showing when I'm on the indoor trainer, and % grade when I'm on the road, and its a pain to constantly switch the fields. Also, if a data field is not being displayed because you don't need to see it constantly, (average speed comes to mind) you have to change the data fields being displayed to view the info, and then change back if you are not at the end of your ride. I am fortunate because several people in my bike club have the Edge 305 and they could answer questions so I didn't have to constantly thumb through the instruction manual. The software that comes with the Edge is very basic, but I have no complaints about it.

All the issues I mentioned above are annoyances rather than problems and I feel this is a great product and I recommend it to anyone who is not intimidated by all the features.