Just curious if they moved the charge port from the 520, with an aerobar stick mount you can’t charge the 520+ with an external USB battery pack. I haven’t found a good clear picture yet of where the USB port is on the 530, hoping in a more convenient location.
@MuddyPuddle great pic of charging port location in the users manual:
https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/edge530/EN-US/GUID-CE71E601-BA73-4807-8D30-84EDCC1CCBBA.html
ah I missed that, thanks, that is where I was hoping it was located
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Finally got my 530. Thankfully back button is all good. First chance I got to use it was at the Truckee Dirt Fondo last weekend. Have to say I was really impressed with the Climb Pro feature. The entire course was new to me and seeing each climb broken down into segments as I was riding them was totally cool. Really helped me mentally get through some of the tougher climbs knowing exactly how far it was to the top and when the grade was going to change.
Probably the coolest new feature I’ve seen on a bike computer in a long time.
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How good is the visibility into ‘what’s coming up’ on unplanned/unrouted terrain? I’ve been going back and forth between the Roam and 530. 530 seems like the most feature-full overall, but I really like how Wahoo seems to handle 3rd party integration (from a user’s perspective, sounds like they don’t have a mature API for 3rd parties) and device configuration. I really like the climbing profile on wahoo when on a route, but it has no info, then you don’t see what’s coming, just where you’ve been. The resolution of the elevation profiles also seems to jump between ‘too zoomed in’ and ‘too zoomed out’ with longer routes.
But if the Garmin does a good job showing climbing profiles on ‘unrouted’ rides, that would prob be enough to push me over the top. Though, I think I read that the Roam was going to have that too at some point.
At risk of going completely off topic - how was the Truckee Dirt Fondo? I didn’t even know about it until we stopped in Truckee for burgers on the drive home from Lost & Found and saw signs posted. Wouldn’t have been able to do it this year after having my knee blow up at L&F, but interested in adding it next year if I can be smarter and avoid overuse injuries.
As I understand it the Climb Pro feature only works if you are following a route that you have uploaded.
The Truckee Dirt Fondo was great. Really challenging course for me as I missed a lot of training the last couple months. Good mix of nice gravel roads, paved roads, and some pretty rocky terrain as well.
Used my new 530 for the first time today (replacing 520+). Sadly the battery went from 100% to flat in 1hr 37min so it’s going back to be replaced. I set it up the same as my520+ except that I also connected it to my Di2 as I just fitted the wireless bit to that.
Anyhow, a couple of questions arise from my brief time with it
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My Assioma pedals always returned a calibration number of 0 with my 520+, but with the 530 I got a value of -1 (twice). I wonder why that would be.
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530+ has Ant and BT - how does it decide which to use when connecting to a sensor (eg power meter, HR monitor) which has both - and does it make any difference? There didn’t seem to be any way to tell it which to use.
I liked the bigger screen and definitely noticed the improvement in route calculation speed. Got a bit of a wait now until the replacement is in stock but thankfully still have my 520+ in the meantime.
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Used my new 530 for the first time today as well, forgive me TR team, my first ride with it wasn’t a workout! lol
I loaded a route to see what the navigation was about, since I’ve been using a non-mapping pioneer ca500 unit the past few years. Worked wonderfully (the ride was pretty epic for a weekday, 62miles 185TSS)
My first ride with the 530 was 9hrs. You can guess how much battery I would have had left with a 520. But happy to say I had 60 odd % left on the 530. That was with power, hr, navigating and I guess linked to the phone.
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I have an 830 but they are basically the same hw/fw.
- I got the same -1 when calibrating for the first couple of times, while the assioma was connected via the BLE, it returns 0 when connected via ANT+
- Well, you decide which one to use, but since BLE is quicker to connect, you click on that one as soon as it appears and don’t wait for the ANT+ channel to pop up. Also on BLE it doesn’t seem to transmit the pedal effectiveness and torque smoothness which it does via ANT+. I removed my assioma, did a search again and selected the ANT+ one (6-7 numbers), and not the BLE one (looks like a MAC Address, AA:BB:CC:DD:EE)
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Great thanks, that’s really helpful and much appreciated.
Just got my 530 a couple of days back and happy to report no issues with the buttons, or anything else for that matter.
It’s a great looking unit, but I did feel that the build quality of the unit isn’t as good as the 520. It just doesn’t feel as robust in the hands, and the buttons feel a bit ‘plasticky’. Time will tell.
Processor speed is a lot more better than my current 520. I haven’t done any navigation yet, but just moving around the menus, you can feel the snappy response.
Getting it set up was a little bit of a learning curve, due to slightly different menu layout, but having done it once it’ll be a breeze from now on. I also dumped some custom maps on the unit without any problems.
When I’m riding, I have only Stages PM, HR and Di2 connected via ANT+. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi disabled.
On my first ride, I ran it in parallel with my 520, just to make sure nothing was out of whack. All the data was pretty well aligned between the 2 units, with only some very minor discrepancies. Could have been caused by me not starting the 2 units at precisely the same moment. After discussing with a buddy, maybe it’s the way the unit collects the data… Different GPS chip?
During the ride one thing I did notice was the screen quality, which is a huge improvement on the 520, both in terms of size and clarity. Usually I would have my 520 back light set to 10% brightness and on all the time, which was fine for all my riding. I set the 530 to auto-brightness and the difference was night and day. Super clear, even in bright midday sun.
Final step is to get my new Assioma pedals set up and get them hooked up to the 530. If all goes well here, I will be retiring the 520.
Anyway, happy days so far.
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Had my 530 a couple weeks now and done a few dozen rides.
Coming from an 820 I am totally sold on buttons over touchscreen. All the buttons work fine on mine and it’s just super easy to use the buttons on ride instead of mindless prodding at the crappy touchscreen on the 820.
Battery life is MUCH better as is time to calculate routes.
Just Cimbpro one ride. Was great during the one climb it come up for but it added a climb list page to the rotating pages which I found really annoying so I turned it off after that ride.
Bluetooth is still utterly broken. Syncing from Samsung S10 doesn’t pick up completed rides. Syncing from 530 fails many times. Turning bluetooth on/off and after multiple attempts it usually syncs. Close to sending it back because of the bluetooth but everything else is much better than my 820
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Try updating the firmware via Garmin Express - i had nightmare issues with connectivity on my new 830 until i did this and all sorted now.
Shame on Garmin for releasing a product with such poor intial software - coudl you imagine arrivign home formm the Apple store and your new Iphone doesnt work!!!
sorry, basic question here… why don’t you use the assioma app to calibrate? that’s what I always do and do not use the garmin for that. maybe I’m missing something…
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I’m pretty certain that Apple/Microsoft/Android (list could go on) users have all been victims of buggy software at some point
I think if we want to be the cool kids and be early adopters of the latest gadgets, we need to accept the bugs that come with them.
Just seems easier. As soon as I turn the Garmin on it prompts me to calibrate and takes several seconds. At this point my phone is usually tucked away in a pouch in a jersey pocket.
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Has anyone manage to pair their 530 with wahoo kickr? I’ve been told by Garmin support that it doesn’t recognise smart trainers but I still can’t quite believe it - my old 520 does
Should be possible according to Ray:
And the official Garmin Edge 530 specs page:
Seems like it is all pointing to the fact that it should work.
I just tested it with my 530 on the kickr core and it seems to work.
I selected the indoor profile and added the core as power meter
Edit:
So I played around a bit and pushed an outside workout to my Garmin unit.
It was a bit tricky as I couldn’t really see it under workouts but it was under training plan.
For the short test I wasn’t able to figure out ERG mode, not sure if even possible but it looked like this:
Ugh mobile edit is pain when there are pictures uploaded. Look at the pictures in the following order, pic 2, pic 3, pic 1
I am not sure if you can run a TR workout directly, someone would have to let me know how I send one to my device
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