Garmin Edge 705
With the Garmin Edge 705 Garmin have married the previous ‘training aid’ features of the Edge 205 and 305 with full on navigation. The unit is slightly bigger than its previous bake specific units but features a colour screen and navigation mainly using a joystick.
The maps are getting better and easer to understand, they are stored on a Micro-SD card that slots neatly in the base.
Although there is enough information to relate to where you are the detail is not as good as normal OS mapping. This is due to in part the system using Vector based maps to reduce the data size down.
There are various map upgrade packs to get but doing this often can cost quite a lot. For road use there is full routing capabilities that even take into account that your on a bike and want to avoid the main roads obviously this isn’t available off road but the PC interface allows you to plan rides.
The battery life is improved giving approximately 15 hours. Overall an impressive bit of kit that has many features however it is a lot of money (£359.95) to spend just to get a small map on the handle bars and a lot of stats you may not want.