The Garmin Edge 530 is a refinement of the non-touchscreen, Edge 520 Plus and is an unexpected addition to Garmin’s 2019 range of Edge bike computers.

The Edge 530 could be described as Garmin’s “entry-level” bike performance computer, as it does just about everything a performance cyclist or navigator needs. Yet both the 830 and 1030 have a few more features. Perhaps I will better describe it as the industry’s BENCHMARK PERFORMANCE BIKE COMPUTER. Another vendor bike computer might offer a better UI, another Garmin Edge might offer a bigger screen, yet another vendor might offer better 3rd party integration…and so on.

The announcement of the Edge 530 is complicated by the simultaneous launch of the Edge 830. The 530 IS highly similar TO THE 830 but with buttons. I’ll cover the Edge 830 separately. The Edge 1030 is similar too…but bigger and with a touchscreen.

Return to the main Garmin Edge 530 Review

Garmin Edge 530 – What’s New

The fact that there is a new Edge 530 is interesting in itself. The 520 Plus from 2018 deserved the title of ‘530’ as it included many new improvements over and above those in the original Edge 520 – not least of which included maps, trend line popularity routing and re-routing abilities. You still get all that … and more.

Here are most of the headline changes and it is all impressive stuff, addressing the obvious issues in previous models.

Form Factor

On the outside it’s a nicely rounded unit, with a slightly bigger shell and a slightly bigger screen than the previous 520 Plus. Just like with the new 830 you can optionally plug on a Garmin CHARGE battery pack to your Garmin and charge in-ride. This is NOT a feature just for multi-day rides, it’s really a feature for day-long navigation rides when the stated 20 hours will significantly be eaten into by your sensors and numerous re-routing events and alerts.

Hardware

The trend for 2019 looks like all new Garmin devices will see the addition of the new, power-consumption-friendly Sony GPS chip. For the new Edge head units I’m NOT expecting any GPS issues to arise due to the general nature of GNSS when cycling. So the resulting 5 extra hours, or so, of battery life is a great bonus.

• BLE sensor support & WiFi have been added.
• ‘Theft-alarm’ and ‘Find-My-Edge’ features added

Physiology

Firstbeat Analytics (FB) are spreading their physiological wings further into the Edge devices and we are seeing the heat and altitude refinements that better model some of the FB stats when in more extreme environmental and physical conditions. I’m not expecting the altitude-adjustments to make much difference to many of us but I’m sure heat and humidity adjustments will play their part in improving accuracy. The new WORKOUT LABELS look like a nice way of seeing what workouts have done for you and Garmin deserve credit for some of the new screens that present our workout data more clearly. I’m going to delve into this some more at a later stage – it just feels that much of this info, despite some of it being the same as before, has finally been presented in a more cohesive and succinct way.

Hydration & nutrition tracking plus related alerts are also added. I’m guessing these might help some people but I remain to be convinced on usefulness over and above a basic timer feature even though hydration/nutrition tracking will make efforts to take into account factors like your weight and the temperature.

New Features

There is a nod towards MTB riders with new MTB Cycling Dynamics and MTB in-ride-routing options. I’ve no idea if the GRIT, FLOW and JUMP details will be liked by MTBers but those metrics do look superficially of more interest and ‘fun’ than the robotic, advanced cycling dynamics info like PCO. The further integrations of TRAILFORKS and FORKSIGHT for MTB routing look OK but I think the worry here for the likes of LEZYNE is that Garmin are obviously taking the whole MTB scene MUCH more seriously than before and MTB features are likely to be expanded in the future, perhaps to the point where a fully ruggedized 530 variant is produced just for MTBers.

The other features that grabbed my attention were

• CP Curve – your best CP curve & performances over select periods. This is ‘old hat’ sports maths on a new head. I was wondering only last week why this was not on Garmin Edge units. I would expect to see this relatively basic initial implementation expanded significantly over coming years. It’s useful info for a performance cyclist and Garmin do not provide any such analysis on CONNECT. So features like this together with some of the Firstbeat features signal that Garmin are moving more of the post-ride ANALYSIS features onto the device and so restricting the need for us to move away from their environment when we get home. From what I’ve seen so far some of the touches, like CP Curve, start to tick a LOT of my boxes.
• CLIMBPRO – It’s a seemingly-simple feature that has partly been on Wahoo for a while and even Hammerhead Karoo implemented forward-looking elevaton plots. It’s just an elevation plot of your upcoming hill, with supporting metrics about the climb ahead, and is genuinely useful when doing proper climbing. The Edge 530 ‘knows’ the elevation profile only if you are following a course or routing.
• POPULARITY ROUTING – has long been available on CONNECT but now the rather extensive routing and re-routing navigational engine within the Edge 830 includes it too. I like popularity routing…others don’t. Note: the 830 has a couple of extra navigational featurettes.

Price, Availability & Garmin Edge 530 Discount

The RRP for the Garmin EDGE 530 is US$299.99 / GBP259.99 with a likely delivery to you around mid-May for orders placed in April.

• Garmin Edge 530 **£10 indirect discount** (UK) via wiggle.com, New Customer Code: NEWGB
• Garmin Edge 530 (USA) via via powermetercity.com Code: THE5KRUNNER10

I’ll be producing a  detailed Garmin Edge 530 review  Here is an Edge 530 manual and the official specs from Garmin …

Garmin Edge 530 Specifications & Garmin Edge 830 Comparisons

Source: Garmin (modified where known to be wrong)

Return to the main Garmin Edge 530 Review