Garmin

I upgraded from an Edge 530 for the bigger screen, as I am getting older and having a harder time seeing things. And the screen itself is great.

The bell is a nice feature as well.

That being said, this product is really buggy. It has been out for almost a year and it has many issues.

1. It randomly reboots in the middle of rides (it doesn't lose the GPS up until then, and after reboot you can hit start to continue recording. But if you are in the middle of a Strava segment, it gets dropped from your results, which is annoying).

2. I often (80% of the time?) need to reboot this before going for a ride as the buttons stop working. The touch screen and actions mapped to my di2 buttons work, but since I didn't map the start/stop to a non-physical button, I cannot start the ride. Long pressing the power button works to reboot and restores functionality.

For a computer this price that has has a bunch of time to push updates, I think this is pretty bad behavior.

I bought this to replace an Edge 830, which I was very disappointed with, as I have been with all my Garmin units, starting way back with my 500. The problem is Garmin doesn't support older units; once a newer version comes out, forget getting bugs fixed on the old one. And maybe there is a reason for that (older hardware can't handle it), but of course they sold the old ones with the claim that all the prior problems were fixed.

Example: phone connectivity was supposed to be fixed on the 830 (from the 810), but it was as random as before, never stayed connected/paired whatever. And the claim for the new 540 is the same; so far, it actually does stay paired, so maybe it is fixed? But the point is, it may be fixed now on the 540, but they are never going to fix the 830 or 810. And that is sad for the cost.

The 540 is clearly faster; that was a big problem with the old units, as they just seemed to crawl in map updates, even to the point of having the graphic hang up at critical points. And don't confuse it by route following or some other computation; it will screw it up. But the 540 seems fast enough that I haven't noticed a problem.

Of course, that leads to my major gripe, an unannounced change from the 830: they removed the perspective map view, which is essential for seeing both near and far. You know, like every car navigation system (made by Garmin) can do. I am really disappointed here.

I deliberately didn't get the touch-screen of the 840 because I had it on the 830 and it was terrible. Not worth it. I still touch things, only to realize the buttons have to be used, but overall I prefer buttons. If they could make a touch screen work in the rain, winter, etc, maybe I will change my mind, but I won't believe it if they claim so. They claimed all that before, and they lied.

Yes the newer climb pro and other new features are incrementally better. At least when a turn comes up on a climb now, I get the intersection image so I can make the correct turn. That was a big flaw in the old one. But most of the other new stuff is less impressive, like training plans and "connected" features.

I know this sounds a little negative, but I am a grumpy old man. This ranks as a positive review in my book.

I've always used Strava and my iPhone for my rides. I recently got a new bike and wanted something more aero. Bike Tires Direct had a great Memorial Day sale and I was able to pick this up for a steal. I really love having the Garmin. You can change what's on the screen for your stats and there are several options. I live in the mountains,and there is an option for current elevation grade, something I've always had to wait until the end of the ride. Knowing what I know now I would have paid full price and been more than satisfied.

I have put about 600 miles on my Garmin Edge Explore 2 GPS.

So far it works great!

The touchscreen is a big improvement over my old Edge 530 buttons.

I easily set up custom data screens just the way I wanted them.

The larger screen size of the Explore 2 vs Edge 530 makes the data

much easier to read.

The map is also much easier to see for the same reason.

The combination of the great pricing on BikeTiresDirect and the GPS

features make this a very happy purchase.