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- Hey, whats up guys,
this is Tariq Ali from smartbiketrainers.com
where I review smart trainers
and talk about indoor training and other fitness gadgets.
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So this is the new Garmin Edge 530.
And it might be a better bike computer
than the 520 or 520 plus on paper,
but is it really any better?
Almost a year ago Garmin announced the 520 plus.
An upgrade to the Edge 520 with minor navigation upgrade
but it was also plagued with performance issues
and was very slow when using navigation.
According to Garmin,
the new Edge 530 received a faster processor
that gave it a very good bump in performance
which you can definitely see when navigating maps,
zooming in and out of maps and calculating routes.
Okay, so the best way to explain the the Edge 530
is to tell you what's different
versus the regular Edge 520 or 520 plus.
And this is everything that's different.
So the big seven are,
a faster processor,
bigger screen,
full navigation maps,
including trails and climb data,
mountain bike dynamics,
training plans API support,
bike alarm,
find my edge feature
and a bunch of other performance related metrics.
And oh yeah, Bluetooth support.
Yes, we finally got bluetooth support from Garmin.
Garmin this year is finally supporting Bluetooth
and adding Bluetooth support on its devices.
So the price.
The Edge 530 retails for $300,
which is similar price point as the Edge 520
when it was first released.
So kudos to Garmin for adding a ton of features
and keeping the price somewhat reasonable.
And it is $100 cheaper than the Edge 830
and $300 cheaper than the 1030.
But keep in mind that you can get
the 520 now for around $200 or even less.
And I still think Edge 520
is one of the best bike computers
Garmin released in the past 10 years or so.
So something to consider if you are looking
for a bike computer and don't care much
about navigation or mountain bike dynamics.
So first, the big screen.
The Edge 530 has a 2.6 inch screen compared
to the 2.3 inch of the 520 and better resolution.
A thick bezel is still there on top and bottom and side
so to make the screen bigger
Garmin made the 530 about 13% bigger than the 520.
Now this might not be that big of a deal
for most road cyclist, mountain bikers,
but not so much for triathletes.
Space comes out of premium on a tri bike.
Finding a space to mount a big bike computer
isn't that easy on a tri bike.
Actually one of the reasons I went from
a Garmin 510 to a 520 was a smaller size of the 520.
The screen has auto brightness set to on by default.
Using it outdoor I found the screen to be bright enough
and easy to read on a bright sunny day.
However, when indoors,
I found it to be a little bit on the darker side,
so you might need to adjust
that brightness setting a little bit.
The Edge 530 looks really clean
even though the Edge has a total of seven buttons.
On the right side,
you'll find the select or enter button on top,
and the return or back button on the bottom.
Three buttons on the left side,
the up/down navigation buttons
and the power on and off button.
The start/stop and lap buttons
are placed on the bottom of the device
with a mini USB charger port in the middle.
Not a big fan of the placement
of the start/stop and lap button
but that's all right with me.
The buttons all blend in well with the unit.
The power button has a little red color on it
and you have a big Garmin logo
on the front and the top of the screen.
Right below the device mount,
you'll find five electrical contacts
to use with Garmin battery pack.
Something new Garmin added to the Edge five and 800 series.
Next is the navigation.
Garmin added a full load of navigation features
with the full street names,
turn by turn navigation,
rerouting,
global trail data
and climb pro data,
showing climb related information such as
gradient information,
how much distance remaining,
average gradient,
total elevation
and ascend remaining.
Pretty cool stuff but unfortunately
for the climb data to work,
you have to preload a course
which I don't really do that often
unless I am in a new area,
but you will find the navigation maps
a lot easier to read than the previous devices.
Mountain bike dynamics.
If you are a mountain biker,
upgrading to the 530 is probably a no brainer.
The Edge 530 tracks jump count,
jump distance and hang time,
as well as grit and flow score.
Hang time.
That's pretty cool,
I need to get into mountain biking.
The grit score is basically
a measure of the trail difficulty.
The higher grit score,
the more difficult The trail is.
And a flow score,
which tracks the smoothness of your descent.
The smoother you are during descent,
the better flow score you'll achieve.
Training plan API.
This opens up the door for other apps
to load up training plans onto your Edge device.
Right now TrainingPeaks supports this and you'll see
more apps support this in the future such as Trainer Road.
I'm actually pretty excited about this.
Anyone else?
No?
As for battery life,
Garmin says you should get up to 20 hours
normal use with GPS
or extendable to 40 hours with the optional
Garmin charged power pack or in battery save mode.
Finally Garmin added a bunch
of other training and analytics related features
such as heat or elevation acclimation,
power curve data,
hydration and nutrition smart alerts
and a bunch of other stuff
that you may or might not find useful.
So yes, too many features that
you probably never going to use.
I personally don't see anything wrong with that.
Having all these features,
I think the device will appeal to a wider audience that way.
And for any one person
you might find yourself using only
about 10 or 20% of what the device can actually do.
But if you ever wanted to take on a new activity
or track a different metric,
you'll most likely find it here.
Also, a lot of the metrics, training alerts,
race predictors, hydration, acclimation
all rely on data that you feed to Garmin.
If you feed it wrong data or missing data,
you're going to get bad data or funny data back,
like now,
it's showing me as productive.
I wouldn't say I've been productive in my training lately.
but thanks Garmin.
You also have the option to turn on bike alarm
when you are away from your bike.
So for example,
you stopped at a gas station
or a bathroom break during your long ride,
you can turn on the alarm.
And if someone tried to move your bike or steal it,
it will start beeping
and you will get a notification on your phone.
(device ringing)
Now your phone has to be paired to your Garmin Edge
and in close distance for you to get those notifications.
Also, there is a new find my Edge feature.
Basically it will register
the last GPS location of your Edge,
and if you are close enough to your edge,
you can send an alarm to your edge
and it will start beeping for you.
(device beeping)
So that's basically it.
That's everything new with the device.
But what about the stuff that they did not add?
Still, there is a very limited interaction
between the Garmin Edge
and their mobile app or Garmin Connect.
They sort of talked to each other,
but on limited terms.
So for example,
you get some notification
like text messages, phone call alerts,
weather data, and some other type of alerts.
Some performance related metrics
transfer to your device and some don't,
like personal records, for example.
This whole thing is still kind of confusing to me
and just don't understand the logic behind it.
And you still cannot control or customize your Edge
or any Garmin device from your phone
and this is really a big deal for me.
I don't know about you and everyone else
but the fact that we can do everything
on our phone these days
and still can't manage a device using our phone
and have to rely on small buttons
to customize fields, pages
and navigate through confusing menus
kind of irks me a bit.
And it's behind times.
Other than that,
is it worth the upgrade from a 520?
I would say yes if you are looking for better navigation
or if you are a mountain biker.
But if you're just a road cyclist, a triathlete
and already on the edge 520 or 820,
and don't care much about navigation.
I'm not sure there is enough to upgrade.
Let me know what you think.
I would love to know what you are most curious about
and what you want to know about the Edge 530
and let's talk about it down in the comments section.
Hope you enjoyed this video.
Hit the thumbs up if you did.
Share it and thanks for watching,
and see you in the next one.
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