29 thoughts on “Garmin Edge 1050 – Half Baked and then some”

1. I found that Edge x40 and x50 changelog (beta work) looks “good” but do not have it to confirm stability 🙂

   Watches, my comment on the forum :
   “OS discrepancy since new Fenix 8 product line provide a new “system” but not back-port to Fenix 7 … when F7 is based on the same SOC and components.

   When Fenix E is only a remark of the Epix gen 2 (non sapphire) !

   We are all wishing for a stable system that do not request regular shutdown, reset, re-apply of settings, fixed issues but working like that …”

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2. Agree both companies release products too soon at times

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3. The Fenix 8 came all riddled with bugs, yet the usual reviewers mostly praised it. The software problems of the Fenix 8 were on the same level of bad as the new wahoo, but were brushed off and usually put on background with only a minor mention. But I guess Garmin is a bigger fish to get blacklisted from their products.

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   1. https://the5krunner.com/2024/10/01/garmin-fenix-8-astounding-number-of-bugs-so-far-fixed/

      the only way to make serious money is from garmin-related content, they have a bigger market share than most people probably realise.

      do you think WAHOO ACE was unfairly/disproportionately criticised

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      1. It’s not so much that wahoo was unfairly criticized but that Garmin gets off easy with the same amount of software problems. This past year they launched two major products the edge 1050 and Fenix 8, which are barely improvements over their previous editions. These came at very steep price increases, with almost no features to back that up. On top of that they were absolutely riddled with bugs at release. Yet looks like most of the reviewers talk to each other before launching the reviews and agree on some kind of script. Most of the Garmin reviews this year were mild for the amount of problems and the products were often praised. This contrasts very much to what wahoo received. I am not in favour of hiding criticism but Garmin does not received the ones they deserve.

      2. I agree. don’t forget the super-awesome, mindblowing bell on the Edge though…definitely worth the upgrade (Brit=Sarcasm)

         i hope my ‘Cash Grab’ take on the Fenix 8 was to your liking 🙂

         as i say, I waited for months before writing and reviewing the Edge 1050. I was pleasantly surprised

   2. I am already using a “-“ before the word “review” when I am searching for some information about a product. It has been gradually becaming a clear negative correlation between this word and the usefulness of the hits, of course there are always some rare exceptions.

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4. i can’t comment on wahoo but i do think garmin get off easy. thinking about my garmin purchases in recent years:
   – edge 530: reasonably reliable but frequently loses any/all ant sensor connections, reconnecting moments later. garmin support had no assistance to offer
   – FR935: standard garmin barometer issues every year or so
   – FR955: software quality was appalling with huge numbers of notable bugs. eventually mostly stabilised after about a year but still notable issues, often recurrences of previously fixed bugs
   – FR965: pretty good actually, nothing major that i’ve noticed (got an upgrade as about the 4th warranty replacement for my 955)
   – Index S2 scales: the absolute worst joke of a product, just completely unable to perform body composition analysis other than using population averages to estimate. ok-ish as wifi scales but unreliable even at that.

   none of these products have been lambasted and called half-baked or such in reviews, not even the index s2

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   1. Funny. My 935 year was ok, except when they added galileo support you could choose what ever setting you want, accuracy was the same and battery usage was high.

      My 965 has a s..tload of bugs and annoyances.

      But I do agree garmin gets it easy with reviewers. I suspect reviewers need to keep a good relationship with garminto get early access to their products and their reviewblogs/youtube channel needs the garmin reviews because that draws the most people.

      Even the most known sportgadget blogger (that starts every blog how independent he is) likes to mitigate garmin problems and ridicule other brand problems.

      But I don’t read reviews anymore. Most are just reading the speclist out loud or they emphasize things I don’t care about and don’t mention things I discover to be annoying for me. But other people may find them useful.

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      1. thanks Leo

         I think it depends on how people use these very complex devices.

         If your kind of usage coincides with buggy aspects of the device you’ll be unhappy yet a reviewer might not encounter it even with 30 hours of other use.

         Brands will not deal with people who they think unfairly criticise their device. The problem they then have is that the reviewer will just buy the device with their own money.
         DCR is probably an exception due to his audience size. If brands want access to that audience at launch they have to cooperate – I cant think of any other reviewer that’s true for in this space. the media outlets are different as there are different relationships going on there with perhaps the likes of GCN at the extreme who appear to be paid to entertain (I like their content)

         ” Most are just reading the speclist out loud or they emphasize things I don’t care about and don’t mention things I discover to be annoying for me. But other people may find them useful.” I think it depends whether people are reading the review for entertainment or education (prior to a purchase). What did you have in mind for things I could include about what you care about? (genuine question), i specifically don’t want to list bugs unless newsworthy but DO want to list annoyances linked to design choices.

         “I don’t read reviews anymore.” I agree, I read them WAY less than before and even then tend to skip to the summary.

      2. I try not to make this about me.

         Bit what I miss is comparing a new device with an older or even 2 versions back.

         Is the gps really better than older devices (I find the gps on my 965 not really better than on my old 935, maybe unless you find difficult places tike downtown New York) and the same for heartrate sensor. Do have to say, I’m only looking for ‘good enough’. Gps has been good enough for me for quite some time, optical heart rate isn’t good enough for me, yet.

         If you follow garmins forum you get a good impression about what’s good and bad about devices. Do the new models address these bads?

      3. ty Leo
         yes i would say the 965 is better than the 935 for gps tracks. both are good enough for strava tracks
         you should notice the difference on instant pace with the 965 more accurate. tho not as accurate as a footpod.

      4. I run intervals twice a week. Shorter (200 -600) on a track, longer (600 -2000) on a straight road with 100m marks.
         Both 935 and 965 are not very useful for instant pace during intervals. It takes too long for the pace to become steady. Also after a corner, it takes some time, even with the overhyped multi band gps.
         For longer runs, I can do with the 1k autolap function, but there may be some advantages of the 965.

         But your usage may differ.

         Most people I speak who are impressed by the 965 gps accuracy come from older fenix models, who had notoriously bad gps antennas

      5. yup

   2. Have had no issues with my Index S2 as a Wifi scale. The body composition feature is a mess, but that is well know and expected – there currently simply exists no technology to accurately measure these metrics.

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5. I think Garmin might have gotten off a bit lightly with the F8 bugs – there sure were a lot of them. But that might have been in part because most reviews had already slammed the F8 as pointless or not very compelling, in light of the very limited number of additional features and the extremely high price.

   On the bike computer front, I think it is about fair: The Edge 1050 had fewer issues, far fewer missing/’coming later’ features, and was for more polished at launch than the Wahoo Ace.

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   1. The are well over 100 issues listed for Edge 1050 in the article above.
      There isn’t a list of ELEMNT ACE bugs/missing features AFAIK. I would be interested to see one if it exists

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      1. Sometimes you can’t win against fanboys. You are open and honest about your bugs and improvements – then someone still uses it as ammo to claim that you’re more buggy than the competition that doesn’t even provide a list?
         Not sure how you count adding support for 13 speed SRAM as something that should have been available at launch given that the this launched two months after the Edge 1050.
         Also, there are bugs and bugs. Some that only .001% of people will ever notice. A large number of those bugs are translation issues – again misleadingly comparing that with a company that doesn’t even support those languages.
         Wahoo looks like it’s grown up and now has legacy issues just like Garmin. Wahoo’s decision to completely re-write their OS will no doubt give them long-term benefits but that in the mean time it’s unsurprising that they’ve not only had to drop features but also introduced a lot more bugs than its user-base has been accustomed to.
         Garmin *was* more buggy about 5 years ago and and they rightly lost market share to Wahoo back then. The magic of competition is that they fixed it. And kudos to Wahoo for making Garmin raise their game. My personal experience with an Edge 840 is that it is solid and reliable. Their battery life claims are also more than honest, with my usage often exceeding the manufacturer’s claims, which is pretty unique in the marketing.
         I get that you had a bad experience in the past and now you have emotional connection to your new brand. The reality, however, is that all brands have good and bad releases.

      2. i agree with most of what you say.
         FYI: My review of the Edge 1050 was one of the most positive i’ve done for years. Great device, probably the best Edge ever despite its quirkiness (fugliness)

         but what is the half-baked threshold? genuine question

6. The sports tech review industry is essentially the marketing arm of Garmin.

   Every device update, Garmin breaks more than they fix. They do not seem to understand how their software works.

   Case in point, my 955 has a pairing issues Garmin says is caused by Pixel 7/7A phones. 10 weeks since I reported the problem, 7 weeks since Garmin admitted there is a problem, and no fix in sight. The watch has to be re paired to Garmin connect several times a week. Garmin seems to think this is acceptable.

   Garmin is the dominant player in the market ..but they seem as vulnerable as blackberry was in 2006. Surely it can’t be hard to knock them off their perch?

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   1. At the moment it is next to impossible to knock them off their perch.

      People want to quantify their live to the max. And garmin caters in that.

      If garmin says some metric is 45 then users think that is the one and only truth. If they read somewhere 45 is on the low side, they first doubt the selves before they consider garmin might be making a guess or just use a buggy implementation of some algorithm.

      It might be that they overstretched their legs with their absurd price policy, but with low firmware quality they will get away.

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   2. to be fair to Garmin, the reason i switch to iOS many years ago was simply because Bluetooth is differently implemented across android devices. I have to pair things a LOT and was wasting too much time.
      with apple…pairing just works 99% of the time.

      “The sports tech review industry is essentially the marketing arm of Garmin. ” there is probably a lof of truth there albeit an indirect marketing channel. That’s why I have no relationship whatsoever with the company…i don’t even get press releases.

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   3. “The sports tech review industry is essentially the marketing arm of Garmin.”

      Maybe but is Garmin is the worst offender here?

      Watch the review of the Ace on that GCN and if you blink you’ll miss the popup in the corner saying this is actually a paid advert. This is despite that Wahoo and GCN were censured in 2017 by the Advertising Standards Agency for not making this clear.

      You may still get your wish for somebody to knock Garmin off their perch. But it’s more likely to be Apple. They’ve already overtaken Garmin in running watches and with 1000 times the research budget and their own chip foundry it would be easy for them to do the same on bikes if they wanted to. Whether that would be good for the cycling community, for us all to be swallowed by Apple, is another question…

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      1. I mostly agree with George.

         In the watch area, Garmin is somewhat safe for the moment because Apple is focused on growing its smartwatch presence overall and not really going head-to-head with Garmin in the core sports segment. And all the other sports focused brands (Polar, Suunto, Coros) have mostly fallen behind/made a meal of it and are being squeezed in the middle. Slight exception might be Amazfit with their aggressive and differentiated budget pricing positioning.
         But make no mistake, in the medium term Garmin will be under huge pressure, because the sports and fitness offering on Apple watches can (and will) be improved relatively easily through software (from Apple or 3rd party) while Garmin will have a much harder time enhancing its smartwatch functionality. This is exacerbated by the fact that the current Garmin functionality range for the core sports offering is more than good enough for the vast majority of people the and improvements are leveling of, so the relative advantage in this area is shrinking.

         Bike computers are somewhat different, as a much more niche segment and with longer replacement cycles. Don’t think this market would be very interesting or attractive for Apple – but maybe I am wrong.
         For now Garmin has a huge installed base advantage in bike computers. Wahoo made some inroads when the Garmin offering was more messy and the software buggy. But over the last few year the Garmin offering has evolved to be the clear leader in totality (tracking/recording activities, sports metrics, navigation, user experience, battery life) and even leading/near leading in _each _ aspect (except perhaps usability).

      2. @SG
         yep, Verdict: pretty much entirely agree with all of that 😉

         i’ll only disagree very slightly on this: ” the sports and fitness offering on Apple watches can (and will) be improved relatively easily through software (from Apple or 3rd party)” I don’t think the Apple-specific part of the fitness UI can easily become more feature-rich without significantly impacting usability/aesthetics. Apple has made its big step forward with atheltic features over the last couple of years and i see the next 3 or so years being just drip feeding the addition of a few bits and pieces. Even they will be high-level tickbox type features. obvisouly 3rd party apps will do whatever they can (eg the stryd watchOS app is feature rich). Thus I think Garmin will come under pressure subtly differently to how you think, I think it will just be that large numbers of fitness people (not athletes) default to a smart watch that jsut so happens to also be good enough for their sports.

         Amazfit: I think there are quite a few other similar brands to Amazfit. The cheap chinese brands will surely take over the lower end of the market. I assume there muct be public code bases on github of all the advanced sporting features that these guys use. cheap sports watch AND cheap bike computers can now be surprisingly feature rich.

7. IMO: nearly all reviewers are soft on Garmin and knockle hard on anybody not called Garmin (Wahoo, karoo but also Suunto, Polar etc ) up to a point that a certain guy calls himself seriously “independent” even he receives free media loaners and then even has the guts to lie to his readers that he “would send back the unit and buy by his own money the same item he just send back once again…”

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   1. All bloggers get free media loaners at some point ( FWIW I don’t get anything from Garmin, I buy **EVERY** Garmin I use with my own money).
      Almost all reviewers will NOT send them back.
      DCR probably does send them back in batches (IDK, iirc he posted a video of him doing that a while back, I’ve no reason to doubt what he says)

      Larger media outlets produce some content in exchange for significant advertising revenue or as sponsored content. Some large media outlets just get generic ‘media loaner’ with no strings attached.

      A few years ago, Garmin did have a strictly loan-only policy. I’m not sure if that was ever enforced nor if it is still active.
      it’s kinda pointless either way. People can use amazon returns to the same effect (but then the reviewer doesn’t have the watch for future imagery..I like to have wacthes for future imagery).

      Media loaners/freebies just make things easier for the reviewer and gets more timely content for the brand. Yes there will at least be a subconscious positive bias.
      As I say, I get NOTHING from Garmin – I’m still happy to say that the FR965 is the best tri watch ever and the Edge 1050 is Garmin’s best ever edge and one of the best bike computers ever, albeit one with quirky aesthetics. I’m also quite happy to say the Fenix 8 was a complete cash grab

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8. Wanted to comment on one point under the FR 965 review but you closed the comments. This seems like the right place to comment instead.
   “My 965 has given me a 1% lower FTP than my Edge 540 despite recording the same workouts with the same sensors. This is very strange.”
   It’s not that strange if you realise that even though you’re connected in parallel to the same sensor(s) you don’t get the same data points. Garmin probes power meters with 1Hz frequency, not continuously, and if you have 2 devices connected in parallel the measurements (snapshots) are not taken at the same time. This also means that your max power doesn’t represent the actual max power, only the max power from all the 1 second snapshots. If your cadence is in the 90-80 range you will lose valuable power metrics, depending on which phase in the pedal stroke you are during each measurement.

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   1. hi
      yes I understand that there can be variations from many sources including transmission, recordings and the issue you describe. It is strange they amount to a 1% difference in FTP (not max power), that’s a large error in this context. I agree that degree of error might occur for high power/short durations but not over 15,20,30 minutes

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