Garmin Edge 800 review

The good news is that you can customise the ‘timing pages’ so they display as much or as little information as you like. There are five screens and each can show between two and 10 data fields. You’re spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing which items to show – so many, in fact, that they’re divided into categories: cadence, calories, course, distance, elevation, general, heart rate, navigation, power, speed, timer and workouts. We set the main screen to show speed, cadence (pedal revolutions per minute), time, temperature (using the built-in thermometer), and distance, but you can choose any combination for any screen.

It’s possible to create profiles for up to three bikes, but you’ll need to buy additional mounts (£9) and possibly speed/cadence sensors (£45) to use all the functions on each bike (there are two handlebar mounts included in the box, though). If you buy a bundle without the sensor, speed is determined using GPS, but you won’t get cadence.

Display

When you turn the 800 on, you’re presented with the first timing screen. This looks much like the display of a high-end bike computer, with black text on a white background. You can also choose white on a black background. As it’s a resistive touchscreen, you have to prod fairly hard to select things, but it’s possible to swipe between screens and menu options, just like on a smartphone or tablet. There are only three physical buttons: on/off, start/stop and lap/reset. The GPS receiver is stunningly sensitive. Not only does it acquire a signal faster than most car satnavs we’ve tested, but it’s also more accurate: you can see which side of the road you cycled on when zooming into the route on Google Earth or in the Bing map within Garmin Connect (see below).

Navigation

Arguably the biggest feature is turn-by-turn navigation. The 800 can act just like a car satnav in that you enter a destination via a number of different methods, and it will calculate a route from your current position. Unlike a car satnav, it won’t give you any spoken directions and there’s no 3D view.

Instead, you get a standard 2D top-down view and a clearly marked route (you can even change the colour of the route highlight). There are various options to warn you of turns, but we found the notification of every single upcoming side road a bit odd. As well as automatic route recalculation, you can choose various types of roads to avoid, but make sure that you set the routing to ‘Calculate routes for Bicycle’ rather than Car or Pedestrian.