Garmin Edge 540 Review In this Garmin Edge 540 Review, I will be looking at Garmin's biggest-selling Cycling Computer for 2023-24, which is the one that competitors and reviewers benchmark against. I bought the Edge 540 myself as my main bike computer for the rest of the year. I have to say it's been a bit of a disappointment despite many excellent surprises. This review has been periodically refreshed throughout 2023/4. Please note that I have *zero* links with Garmin besides being a paying customer like you. If you want to support a truly independent Garmin reviewer, please buy through this link. [wp-review id="81778"] Garmin Edge 540 - Recommendations First up, avoid the Solar options. They add no real benefit to already excellent battery lives. Next, you should think long and hard about getting the Edge 540, as its buttons are a pain to use on Garmin's menus. If you must have a new Garmin, then the Edge 840 is the one to go for, you can use buttons most of the time and the touchscreen when you need to. The larger Edge 1040 is touchscreen-only, and its screen area is better for using Garmin's new cycling interface than what we see on the Edge 540. If you own the Edge 520/820 or earlier then 540/840 represents a solid upgrade. If, however, you have the Edge 530/830, there is no sensible reason to upgrade. Should you already be heavily invested in the Garmin ecosystem, it makes sense to have an Edge as your bike computer. Otherwise, if you want an easy-to-use, 'just works' experience then go for the Wahoo Bolt 2. It probably will have all the advanced features you need. Other than the 3rd party apps I need for my job of running this blog, Bolt 2 is OK (perfect) for me, and I used Wahoo continuously for several years. [gallery size="medium" ids="81859,81863,81865,81864,81861,81862"] Garmin Edge 540 - What's New? There are perhaps only four important new features on the Edge 540. I'll cover those in more detail in a minute. A new user interface, look and feel Instant ClimbPro Free-Ride & Climb Explorer - no routing required Dynamic, periodized race planning for target events Real-Time Stamina to show remaining juice in your body's 'tank.' Then these 6 features are much less important to the average cyclist but will appeal to those with more nuanced needs. Power Guide race/training pacing feature Training Status 2.0 Course Demands to compare course features to your abilities ‘Bike Shops’ & ‘Water Stops’ results in search eBike support for Shimano Steps Optional phone-based configuration On-device Garmin Connect IQ App Store Then we look at the new bits of hardware. The GPS/GNSS chip is a new market-leading one, and of course, there's already mentioned solar option and a USB-C port needed to charge and update maps. Solar panel option Dual Band, multi-constellation GPS with intelligent SatIQ mode USB-C connection Wider I will cover the newer aspects of the 540 in more detail. If you want a blow-by-blow description of all the key (historic) feature areas then check out my old review of the Edge 530 aka the Edge Bible. [gallery size="medium" columns="2" ids="80657,80656"] ClimbPro FreeRide Garmin's ClimbPro feature has been around for years, and all its main competitors have an equivalent. The feature's biggest drawback used to be that it would only work when navigating ie usually when following a route. For all the rest of the time, if you came across a random hill, the Edge simply couldn't give you any idea of what lay ahead. ClimbPro Free Ride fixes that and predicts your route, sensibly based on Garmin Heatmaps, and then shows the likely elevation plot of what is to come. It also gives you progress as you ascend and conditions change. ClimbPro FreeRide is both a great feature and an annoying one. It pops up on hills you know well and, with the wrong setting, pops up frequently on slight inclines that you probably wouldn't want to call a hill. I haven't yet turned this feature off, but I have turned down its sensitivity so that it only guides me through 'proper' hills. Should it occasionally pop up on one of the hills on my regular routes, that would be a rare occurrence, easily dismissed with a Di2 button press. This feature was obviously going to materialise at some point in time and I used to worry that only Garmin would have the necessary volume of heatmap information to meaningfully predict hills. Having used Hammerhead and Wahoo's offerings, there's no need to worry about that. Those companies' alternatives are perfectly fine. The biggest issue, surprisingly, is the detection of the start and end of the hill. For the few months following launch, I've found that my biggest grips are that the hill isn't defined from start to finish how I think it should be. I suppose it doesn't matter too much as the 'meat' of the hill, the steep bits, are always included. https://the5krunner.com/2023/04/11/garmin-edge-540-my-go-to-bike-computer-for-2023/ The other issue is that some reviewers and riders seem to be using ClimbPro FreeRide beyond its real purpose. It's not a tool to track your progression over time on a given hill. You need to use a decent hill segment on Strava for that....it's kinda what Strava was designed to do. ClimbPro FreeRide simply and relatively nicely guides you up the next unfamiliar hill. RealTime Stamina Garmin's Stamina feature will become quite useful once you've done some long rides and captured some accurate heart rate/power data. Let's say 'interesting' and seemingly accurate (indicative?). It looks at the decay in time of two abilities: your aerobic endurance and your anaerobic endurance. The former may well see you being able to ride 200 miles slowly never to recover by the end. However, your anaerobic trials and tribulations are shorter, and you can recover from them minutes or tens of minutes after easing off the throttle. Those two kinds of decay are factored into your starting capabilities/readiness and meshed together to show your actual stamina and then another level of potential stamina that you might soon achieve if you take it easy for a while. Your future stamina can be expressed in minutes or miles (km). https://the5krunner.com/2022/02/16/garmin-stamina-explainer/ Event, Training & Race Day planning Garmin has offered training tools for many years, but probably only over the last 3 years has it started to think about how its features tie in with the experiences you want leading up to race day and on the day itself. Garmin finally has all the various components in place, albeit somewhat piecemeal and sometimes uncoordinated. Garmin's race planning features are pretty cool in concept, and recent additions have significantly beefed up the offering to the point where you no longer need to pay for a 3rd party training plan. All Garmin needs to know is your exact race details. It will have all it needs once it knows the location, date, and duration. It already knows your training load, recovery, and sports abilities, such as FTP. It fills in all the gaps to create a periodized training plan. Periodization is a proven method to progressively increase your training load and intensity before peaking and tapering for race day. However, Garmin's plan is very much of the 2020-22 era in that it continually adapts to your progression and fatigue...if you improve more than planned, it will adjust, and if you simply had a bad night's sleep (recovery) it will adapt. It does not use AI/ML. As race day closes in, Garmin can offer weather advice. On race day, Garmin knows the elevation and can provide you with a power guide to best adapt your exertions over the course's undulations. There is a swathe of other physiological features that are all now on the Edge and the latest addition of Cycling Ability and Course Demands. The focus on race day here by Garmin is impressive in scope. Sure, it may lack a degree of flexibility once you've started, but the whole approach could better support multisport events, and all the various components could work together more cleanly. But all that said, this is still a more integrated and complete offering than is available anywhere else. You can get a better, paid-for plan, but it will inevitably be from a training plan company that doesn't sell bike computers. Garmin Edge 540 Physiology Garmin acquired Firstbeat Sports Physiology a few years back and has invested in and significantly grown the number and scope of feedback tools. Ultimately, they rely on accurate HR and power data to provide good insights. Here are just two insights. The first shows the kind of cyclist you are and backs up its insight with an explanation. Secondly, an older feature shows how your cycling intensity/duration components match the optimal levels. Both of these are useful even if you are following a training plan, simply acting as a sanity check on the quality of your plan and your adherence to it and if the work you are doing makes you the right kind of cyclist for the demands of your race. [gallery size="medium" columns="2" ids="81875,81874"] Garmin Edge 540 - Look, feel and Usability. I was shocked and surprised by what I found here. Another reviewer, Dcrainmaker, mentioned a few negative points about the 540 interface, but I thought he was picky. Nope. Background: I was impressed with the touchscreen Edge 1040 I used and reviewed at the back end of 2022. However, remember that I am more used to using a Wahoo, where buttons typically perform most tasks within a couple of presses. It seems that any beauty that existed on the Edge 1040's screens has been squashed and crushed when cramming it onto the smaller Edge 540. For example, the ClimbPro screen is just too cluttered. Next, we have times when icons overlay on each other, for example, the Radar icon. Then we have menus that slide down nicely from the top of the screen...well if you have a touchscreen, they do. Page down on the home screen for widgets but then get confused between the widgets and the 'ride admin' screen. Then we have the improved but still awful need sometimes to press buttons many times before getting to the desired option and then press the 'back' button numerous times to go up multiple levels. However, a LongPress (*below) can reach the home screen. It's a designer's joke as s/he left for another company before handing the work over. Worse than that, there needs to be a degree of pressure to activate the button (fair enough), but this requires you to hold the Edge when it's on your bike mount. Then, you must go through a repetitive strain-inducing dance as you contort your fingers from one of the seven buttons to the next. It's a mess. [gallery size="medium" columns="2" ids="81871,81872"] Against what I say here, Garmin has improved many interactions whilst adding new complications that spoil things further. It has partially made it easier to manage the Edge settings on the phone app. But then, there are two apps on the phone, one for the app store and one for Garmin Connect. Edge 540 tries to replicate the App Store on the Edge, but it's rubbish. I don't know what to say. I can't see how Garmin's soon-to-be best-selling bike computer had 10+ years of development to get to this state. It's just disappointing. Navigation The Edge 540 is a highly competent and nearly complete navigation solution that is, nevertheless, probably pitched at the right level here for most cyclists despite the 840/1040 being better. The Edge 540 has 16GB of space for maps, which seems like a lot. However, it is only sufficient to store one region due to significantly increased map sizes and expanded map information available for ClimbPro. While searching by POI, you cannot type in an address like on your smartphone or old car SATNAV. The Edge 540 is only for people who navigate when following pre-made routes, perhaps occasionally undertaking a POI search, navigating to a selected point on a map, or needing to be taken home. You can create routes on Garmin Connect that use a heatmap or import them from Strava, Trailforks, RidewithGPS, or wherever else. Often, third-party route services require a paying account to create a route, but you get a free heatmap routing creation service with Garmin Connect. Garmin also has map intelligence because it understands the nodes on a map. Other vendors simply overlap a line onto a picture where the picture just happens to be a map. Those competitors do not know how to route you back on course if you go off course. Garmin does. So Garmin has a pretty good navigational offering. It's not all perfect, though. I've mentioned some of the omissions on the 540, and without a touchscreen, it's challenging to use and annoying to use frequently. Other issues, like warnings for dangerous turns, are nonsensical and designed for car drivers, not cyclists. Perhaps the biggest drawback for Garmin's maps is their colouration, and the multi-coloured routing lines, in my opinion, are hard to process and visually follow on a relatively small screen. I know I'm not alone! (Wahoo is better) The final issue is that managing the whole shebang becomes painful once you've 'collected' a library of 50 or more routes. Solar I've not looked at the Solar models (840 Solar and 540 Solar), but I have looked at Edge 1040 Solar. Solar works to improve battery life, but the impact is minimal. [caption id="attachment_81902" align="aligncenter" width="606"] Disappointing: Cycle Speed Tours on YouTube talks about solar[/caption] GPS Accuracy Garmin has one of the most accurate GPS chips. Its level of accuracy is WAY more than you'll need for following routes on roads. It can struggle a bit in urban canyons, real canyons and under dense tree cover on trails, but it's as good as you'll get from any company. [caption id="attachment_81873" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] SatIQ and GNSS Precision Modes[/caption] Whether it's Surrey Hills, Cornish Hills or a suburban or urban centre, the GPS is excellent to the point where I can't find any bad examples to share with you in 1000 miles of cycling. [gallery columns="2" size="medium" ids="81813,81814,81815,81816"] For normal use to record a pretty track for Strava, you should use the basic GPS-only mode as it saves battery. If you have more demanding needs, then the SatIQ mode is sufficient, enabling higher precision GPS when needed. Elevation accuracy also appears excellent. [gallery size="large" columns="2" ids="81272,81275"] Manually calibrate your Edge 540 elevation outside your front door once. Forevermore all your rides will start with a correct elevation. Garmin Edge 540 - Notes Here are some other points that don't fit neatly elsewhere Edge 540/840 features a 2.6" colour display with screen dimensions of 2.3×3.4×0.8" Garmin Edge 540 Manual (link to Garmin) Edge 540 and Edge 840 claim these battery lives: up to 26 hours of typical DEMANDING usage and 32 hours with 75,000 lux on the Solar models. Those battery lives are significantly raised in low usage/battery saver modes to around 48 and 78 hours, respectively. Demanding usage assumes max accuracy GNSS; 4 ANT+ sensors; following a route; 15 screen interactions an hour; always-on backlight with auto brightness; with livetrack running on a connected phone; and eight notifications/hour - I'd say that is good DEMANDING usage scenario. Garmin Edge 540 Price, Availability & Discounts There is good availability globally today, although some Amazon stores only have older Edge versions. Older Edge models will now be significantly discounted and represent good value. However, it's unlikely the Edge 540/840 models will attract any kind of notable discount until 2024. Key Garmin partners have good stock, including WIGGLE (exclusively in the UK) and PowerMeterCity in the USA, which are linked here. Edge 540 - USA $350, UK £350 Edge 540 Solar - USA $450, UK £450 Edge 840 (touchscreen) - USA $450, UK £450 Edge 840 Solar - USA $555, UK £520 [caption id="attachment_38326" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Best Deals At A Local Country Retailer[/caption] Garmin Edge 540 Review - Summary I hope I have not dwelt too much on the negative aspects of the Edge 540. I usually find that cyclist-buyers are intelligent and see through the veiled 'it's perfect' reviews. You know the ones I mean. I like the Edge 540, but its usability is annoying, and it's annoying that some of the interrelated features just don't mesh smoothly together. Edge 540 seems like a work in progress. That said, I know that the Edge 540 WILL, FOR SURE, do everything I want throughout 2023/4 and with good battery life. It will connect to every platform and sensor in every possible way and sensibly display the data I want. It's okay for an occasional navigator like me who might follow a route once a month. My main disappointment with the Edge 540 is its usability issue whenever you navigate its complex menu system. A lesser weakness is that the buttons are unsuitable for more serious navigation. If you can afford it, go for the Edge 840 instead. That touchscreen will make a positive difference to your sanity. Thank you for reading and for your support. Edge 540 - USA $350, UK £350 Edge 540 Solar - USA $450, UK £450 Edge 840 (touchscreen) - USA $450, UK £450 Edge 840 Solar - USA $555, UK £520
