Garmin Edge 1050 – Opinion
You are a new adopter of bike tech or have cleverly delayed upgrading your Edge 1030 so that you now have the option to skip the Edge 1030+ and Edge 1040 entirely. Is the Edge 1050 worth the $700/£650 price tag?
This article lists the changes from the Edge 1040 plus my opinions on the importance of each. None of the reviews and videos I’ve seen so far cover all aspects of the new features, which is a bit strange. For example, there is certainly Event Adaptive Training that I hinted at a few days ago (see the Garmin image below for PROOF), and Garmin PAY is also expanding to cover some new payment providers, this link explains a workaround to get ALMOST ANY bank working with Garmin PAY.
How to Guide: use Garmin PAY with most banks – here
Headline Updates
- Wholly different case shape and is slightly heavier, although the broad 3-metal-button, 3.5″ colour touchscreen format is unchanged – I don’t like the looks of the shape, poor. Personal preference.
- New high-resolution LCD coming in at 1,000 nits with 480x800px – the screen looks very bright with vivid colours. The ability for Garmin to use the higher resolution to generally improve on-screen visuals seems to have been taken. Nice. The updated ambient light sensor seems to have improved the responsiveness of screen brightness to changes in light conditions – Great.
- State-of-the-art GNSS chipset – What’s not to like? Being grumpy I’d say it’s more accurate than needed for cycling 😉
- The battery capacity is unknown but the battery life is claimed to be a minimum of 20 hours with up to 60 hours in battery save mode – 20 hours is a sensible and good starting level for a battery. Whilst I love my Karoo 3, its battery life wasn’t up to the job of a double-century ride over the weekend. 20 hours must cover 99.9% of single-ride eventualities, I’ll test the impact of max brightness later.
- Faster processor and graphics processor – are the days of underpowered Garmins gone forever? Finally?
- Garmin PAY – I use wrist-based payments all the time. I haven’t carried cash since before Covid. That said, I’m by far in the minority in the UK, albeit a growing minority. I would definitely use Garmin PAY on an Edge and leave my phone at home. I’d then tend to use the Apple Watch for LTE calls and…err payments. but LTE does decimate the battery so Garmin PAY would be a backup with my Starling account.
- Road surface type warning – we all want to be safe but we all don’t want continually annoying distractions. I hope Road Surface Warnings will be useful and one day save me from injury but I suspect I’ll disable it after a couple of weeks of antagonism.
- On-device map management (initiates downloads) – unnecessary for very many people. But I would use it. Nice to have. I guess frequent WiFi map-layer updates are necessary for some of the other new features to work?
- More fiddling with the interface – There are yet more ways to interact with widgets and Garmin appears to have used even more kinds of new screen styles. Some screens look excellent and significantly improved, but they make the other visual aspects of the device seem oddly disjointed. Some of the new tiles on the screen look (almost) good but then you contrast those to the tiles in the recently revamped Garmin Connect…a different look and feel. Apple has very strict style guides…Garmin clearly doesn’t.
Other Updates
- Onboard speaker doubling up as a bell – Fair enough there can now be audio coaching for those who need it but a bell? come on. I would set it up to work from a Di2 top-button press, but unless it responds reliably & instantly, it’s useless. In the past, top button presses have not produced instant responses on Garmin Edge. I’m just not going to press the on-screen button which adds a delay in moving my hand to it whilst of course taking one hand off the bars and moving it to an unstable central position, potentially whilst braking in the wet because of an upcoming hazard.
- Doubled storage space to 64Gb – this is required for the new map-based features…more map layers means more data.
- Community live hazard reporting – meh, it needs a live internet connection to report a new hazard or update a recently created one. If I had an LTE Garmin then maybe.
- Enhanced Group Ride features – meh. When the info about this leaked a while ago I was excited, hoping for near real-time updates on my ride buddies’ positions and current efforts (it should be there for hills). The Group Ride favours things like leaderboards, which is fine but on the meh-side of fine. That said I quite like the idea of a club ride with various segment-related challenges, the leaderboards afterwards could prove interesting debating points in the cafe/pub. That said, a thing called Strava is rumoured to exist. Sharing alerts and routes is also potentially handy but I’ve never been in a group where everyone uses these kinds of features, even Garmin-rich club rides.
- Power Guide for courses now includes the effect of wind – The somewhat awesome Best Bike Split won’t be happy about this. It’s a necessary change by Garmin, previously the feature was often useless due to wind.
- Gradient reporting improvements – I doubt this will rectify current problems, although it might improve them. When I last tested the Edge 1040 for this it was clear that the gradient came from 3D-GPS. Stop cycling and the gradient went to zero. Unless this is properly fixed it makes ClimbPro less useful than it should be.
- Road surface transitioning alerts – Handy because I never know when I go from smooth tarmac to gravel, only a bike computer can tell you this has happened. Oh…wait a minute, just remember I have eyes. OK now’s the time to cite cycling somewhere new in the dark.
- TBT Voice Prompts – That won’t get annoying at all, will it?
- USB-C and MTP connection. Don’t get me started, I don’t want the PITA that is MTP but I’m glad that charging is via USB-C.
- Changes to sports profile/data page customisations and layouts. Looks good.
Garmin Edge 1050 Opinion
I’ll probably do a review of the Garmin Edge 1050 when it starts shipping in significant numbers in a month or so’s time.
I do love sports tech and I do love a new feature or two. However, my disappointment comes when I don’t use the features I have.
Garmin’s business model, in part, seems to focus on including more features and deeper features than anyone else, which justifies the premium pricing and creates a significant barrier to entry at the high-end of the bike computer market. It seems that most of the really useful features that you use on most rides have all been well and truly invented. I just don’t need this new stuff and, were it not for this site, I wouldn’t want to spend the time learning and playing with the tech. There are obviosuly other cyclists who share this view and it doesn’t take too many of us, for example, to make Group Ride-type features useless as they require active joining and participation.
It’s almost like someone should invent some kind of persistent background Bike Intelligence. The intelligence looks for the group of riders forming or assesses the true severity of the hazard in the context of my riding and only rarely and when relevant will it pop up something useful like
- 4 of your friends have just created a group ride, do you want to join Yes/No? (That’s one key press not eighty)
- “Warning pothole in 50m” (But that’s the only thing that shows up on the ride, not all the other gumph warning me of an errant leaf that will inevitably pop up if I enable the feature)
- “You were third up Box Hill, do you want to see the leaderboard?” (That’s one disappearing key keypress but the feature would learn that I’m not interested in certain kinds of group ride failures like coming 4th and never show those again in the future)
- It should just know what metrics I’m interested in based on the ride type and what I’ve used before, it should just know the most popular routes starting from wherever I am.
- Why just Garmin PAY/ Why not integrate SplitWise as well?
Garmin seems to be creating an omni-jumble of niche features arranged in a labyrinth of menu options. The features invariably seem to be created because the technology allows with not so much regard for how they will be used in the real world. I want tech to simplify my life not just automate potentially new aspects that I’m not interested in. Garmin and I are clearly on very different roads.
So, rant over.
Should you buy the Edge 1050?
You’ll probably want a faster or larger piece of bike tech. Perhaps you’ll be intrigued by one of the new features that have come today and another that you missed out on with the last tranche of new Edges that passed you by on the Edge 1030+/1040.
Gone on the days when you HAD to buy the most expensive bike computer because those were the only ones that supported FE-C and power meters. Those bike computers are easily available for less than GBP/$100 these days. Today’s must-have ‘features’ are probably ClimbPro, Di2/AXS, Varia Radar and open platform connectivity but every other half-decent bike computer has those capabilities.
The best video I’ve seen so far is from GPLLama on Youtube. Have a click. Fill your boots.
The short Garmin promo video is also excellently made and looks spectacular with desaturated backgrounds, it headlines the new features in as artily a way as is possible! More>>>>: Garmin
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One of the first time in a long while that I’m not excited at all. And yes, I’m usually an early supporter; I really really hope Fenix 8 is not a similar disappointment.
Garmin Pay? As if I’d ever, ever go out without both watch and phone?
Battery 20h, that is from 100%. Which means, it’s more like 10-12 hours, which is still good, if you start from 50-60%. But with my 1040, I can just ride, unless it’s below 20%, I know I’ll make it for my routes.
The only two appealing features are a) the new display, but the shape/colour turns me off, so meh, b) the bell. Which, as you say, it really depends on how responsive it is.
One thing in DC Rainmaker’s review: “interestingly, almost every new software feature here is going back to the Edge 540, 840, and 1040 series […] Garmin says the Edge 1040/1040 Solar will not only stick around in the lineup, but continue getting the same updates as the Edge 1050, to essentially give the option of a crazybright display (Edge 1050), or extremely long battery life (Edge 1040 Solar)”. Very, very interesting.
I think, for now, I’ll skip this generation. I prefer the long battery life, given that I ride rarely nowadays (and running instead).
It seems they don’t think of this as a generation but rather as a younger sibling.
well, it’s a whole new gen of hardware so….
in terms of positioning and creating a mixed tech range in the same price range then it’s the same generation of that I guess
Curious, do people think 850/550 would be coming in about a year with similar updates (although not sure what the comparable updates would be, does it make sense to upgrade the much smaller screen)? That works out to about the same interval as 1040 to 840/540 but would be much sooner than 830/530 to 840/540.
indeed i would expect an 850/550 in a year or so
I used Edge devices for years and recently switched to Wahoo. I get the impression Wahoo is run by experienced cyclists, Garmin scientists and businessmen.
The Wahoo experience is easy, seamless, simple, useful.
The Garmin experience (sold my 1040 because of it) is frustrating, confusing, poorly thought through.
I spent so long on Garmin forums trying to figure out why my sensors kept dropping, can I improve font and map legibility, why can’t I actually read the power targets on the workout screen, and wondering why I could never read the massive dull glossy screen.
I haven’t visited a Wahoo forum once. The Zoom in / out feature is brilliant, the screen, map display, font visibility, climb pro, all so well thought through, and half the price. Paying for everything you need, and nothing you don’t.
I have to agree with you but the mass of internet reviewers seem stacked up against us, so we must be wrong 😉
I used a Garmin 840 on a 212 mile Chase the Sun in Ireland last week. It worked flawlessly still had 54% battery at the end. I’ve also never had a sensor drop despite having 4 and Bluetooth on. There’s no lag on the screens either and it efficiently calculated the route stats. By contrast, all the Karoo users were on FB asking how to break up the gpx route because the device couldn’t cope. They also needed battery boosts mid ride.
well…..
I also did Chase the sun (UK, South, 10 miles short of yours but hopefully hillier 😉 ). the old Wahoo ELEMNT users were asking for broken up routes and I wasn’t. One route file with elevation and TBT from, i think, RwGPS was perfectly fine. I obviosuly needed a battery boost though and I think one or two of them might have needed one as well. I was going to use my Edge 540 for it but prefer the Karoo navigation.
also used the 965 jsut as a ride logger not following a route. It was down to a fairly low battery by the end but not perilously low. Not sure the percentage it started out on though.
Almost seems as if they deliberately made the 1040 heavy despite it’s small battery (half way between bolt and roam) so that the numbers for the 1050 won’t look as bad as they are. Expect a lot of broken “user replacible” quarter-turn ears, and/or holder inserts, and/or holders. It’s why Hammerhead introduced their slide mount, they tried hard (very hard, that was when they still talked about tech WIP on their blog) to find a plastic that would hold a >150g device on the garmin quarter turn format and failed.
What’s interesting, from a pre-release speculation standpoint, is how this time nothing at all appeared on the usual FCC crawlers before release. Apparently the 1050 is IPH-04741, that one popped up 2024-06-25 and it kind of matches the M/N:A04741 visible on the back side pictures. Seems like they have changed their certification partner to one that goes the extra mile to avoid any early info drops, and not only for the 1050 but phasing in that new partner for all products, because the last six months have seen a steady decline in “six months before publication” preview drops of IPH certifications. Used to be ca one per week (across all Gamin lines from dog trackers to aviation) and dropped to none-per-month recently so I expect the pace to pick up again now that the first nothing-before-release device has been released, but with no more leaks. Interesting to see that they started the change with the 1050, so perhaps the Edge line still has some status inside Garmin.
yes that could be an issue. i’ve just had a peek at the 1050’s mount. it seems to have been consciously designed, maybe made of metal https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/p/1196129. i’d hope garmin are aware of the potential for lug breakage.
leaks: yes the closure of the FCC registration loophole by garmin was always going to happen. There are PLENTY of other sources that are better and more detailed
Im running a 1040 together with the FR160 headlight on a Topeak Frontmount, both stacked up in the single quarter turn connecter. This works flawlessly and without breaking even on my gravel bike wich gets a fair chunk of single trails.
I wouldn’t expect to many broken mounts.
Long time (former) Garmin Edge user here, I just upgraded to the “new Karoo” when it launched, coming from a duo of Edge 840 and 1040.
First of all, I think the Karoo found the sweet spot in terms of dimensions: I personally find the 1040 too big and the 840 too small. Also the buttons are great, much better than on the Edge devices!
The UI is also so much nicer on the Karoo, and in “normal” use (switching between data screens or saving your ride) there’s no lag at all.
So I think the new UI of the Edge 1050 is long overdue, but no buttons, seriously? meh
Also, Karoo does some stuff better such as sensors attached to the bike, attached to the profile. So it won’t try to connect the sensors of my other bikes like my Edge devices used to…
Regarding battery life, I left for a 5-hour ride on Sunday and noticed my Karoo’s battery had only 44% left… I thought I might be in trouble, but I eventually came home with 17% battery, without any power saving mode applied… Extrapolating the numbers it would make for 18 hours battery life… And that’s with the following devices connected: my smartphone, XX SL derailleur, XX SL power meter, Tyrewiz valves, Garmin Speed Sensor and HRM strap. Not too bad?
So unless you have very specific requirements that only exist on the Edge 1050 (bike bell lol), don’t spend 750€ on that device!
hi ty. yes I prefer karoo too…it would be nice if it had 20 hours battery with L1-GPS.
yes i’ve done some specific 100+ mile rides with karoo (2×100 one weekend and 200 another on one day). i leave it running at all the coffee stops just for funsies.
the quoted life for karoo is about right BUT it is very susceptible to higher screen brightnesses. with my sunglasses on and the screen dimmed and my fialign eyesight i fond karoo hard to read in that scenario, i had to invert the colours to black font on white background and now everything is hunky dory at the lower brightnesses.
i’m going to crank out a long ride on the 1050 with max brightness, I suspect it will decimate the battery (and probably blind me 😉 )
One thing where Garmin has the advantage though is the Connect platform… So I’m also recording my activities with my FR965 having the same sensors connected to it.
That way I can keep track of the Garmin health, training and performance metrics.
And should I have a GPS unit failure, that ride will still exist as it will be on Strava 🙂
On the other hand I find the Hammerhead dashboard really good for ride analysis, it’s just too bad it lacks seriously on the long term tracking features.
have you tried the Suunto app for Karoo data?
i think Karoo and Elemnt have a valid platform proposition as they are sufficiently open to send/receive whatever you need for analysis/planning
yes the Connect app is now pretty good in terms of the feature coverage (ignoring presentation and whether or not said features are ‘made up’ composite metrics)
Bell? For dcr the best feature of the 1050: “ It’s awesome. Seriously – the absolute best feature here.” 🤣
I’d heard several people calling for an integrated front light. Never heard anyone asking for an integrated bell. It is an innovative idea though.
Problem with a headlight is that it’s feature that no matter how you build it, it will only ever satisfy a small fraction of the audience. Some would be happy with a “be seen” light for visibility when dusk turns into darkness after a puncture too many, but many would deride it for neither providing meaningful midday visibility nor allowing fast nighttime riding (aka violently blinding oncoming cyclists). Yet others will hate everything that doesn’t come with an StvZO cutoff like the orginal Varia HL 500/501. It’s a fight they can’t win and I suspect Garmin still feels a bit burned by the lackluster success of 500/501/800. A virtual bell is just a virtual bell and many physical ones are so bad (silent) that the virtual one might actually be quite competitive.
But now that we have established that 20h endurance might actually enough for many, and that different models can coexists at the same screen size (we knew that before, 540/840): how about Garmin takes the 1040 screen, pairs it with a light 1000 mAh battery (would put it right alongside the 1050 in terms of runtime) and focuses some engineering on wrapping that up in the slimmest, lightest case that can still hold that battery, the 1040 screen and a set of buttons to achieve feature parity with the 840? That would be the device many cyclists would want who aren’t thrilled by the 1050 bulk or by 1040 Solar zombie apocalypse fantasies.
true
my idea is a light that is compatible with a garmin CHARGER mount ie it attaches on the underside. the light acts as a battery and of course a light. preferring daytime alert mode but with the capability of a couple of hours of proper night time light. there would also be another option in a similar format with a much more powerful light coming at the expense of extra weight. the latter might replace the ut800 and both would form part of a Garmin light network. perhaps there could even be a a front radar sensor of some sort to detect when to flash the light if there is any movement greater than the speed sensed from GPS (tricky to make that work but someone can think about it).
None of these are actuall reviews ( there just reading the garmin promotion features apart from Rainmaker ho must work for Garmin to some degree ( why does only he and the Aussie bloke get to play with new gadgets months before the components are released.
All. I want from a headset is to be able to store long routes 1000 k plus .
A goog route line to see where I am going. ( garmins purple line is shit most of the time .
And a battery what isn’t going to die on me . Running for 4/ 5 days .
To me the rest of the functions are just gimmicks
ty for the comments.
Garmin devices are so full of features that dcrainmaker/gpllama jsut can’t ‘review’ ALL the features that have been reviewed before. **I have the same problem**. the only practical solution is to ‘review’ the new features,perhaps a selection or recap of oolder ones too. as a result, I agree it does sound a bit like a promo feature tho, tbh, i will do a similar thing in a month or so unless someone can suggest a better way.
Garmin’s purple line – I agree. the garmin map colours are not good. Used my Karoo today… MUCH better (IMHO)
storing 100km routes and a 4/5 day battery life is a highly niche requirement but certainly NOT a unique one. Garmin has a good option with its branced add on battery that attaches underneath the mount and/or the solar models.
I have the 1030+. Is it worth the upgrade to the 1050?
probably not. try this comparison – https://www.garmin.com/en-US/compare/?&compareProduct=1196129&compareProduct=704417
if you feel there is something lacking in what you have now then go for it. I suspect 1030+ already does all the jobs you want it to
maybe if you’ve used it a lot and the battery isn’t holding its charge too well?
maybe sell the 1030+ now while it has a bit of residual value
My wife and I bought 1050’s recently, upgrading from a 1030 and 1040. The screen is lovely and the buttons are more easily accessible than the old Edges. However, we are both having intermittent problems with the grade not reading accurately. Eg going up a sustained 12% that we know well, it might read 3%. But I went out with both 1050’s mounted on my bike today prepared to take some screen shots and they both read perfectly. I have reported to Garmin support but no solution so far.