The Eurobike show opened today in Friedrichshafen, Germany, drawing 40,000 visitors and 1,600 journalists. This is where the trends on two wheels are set on a worldwide stage. And we couldn’t be more proud to be there showcasing Edge 800 — the first touchscreen GPS-enabled bike computer. Our booth will have an ongoing stream of gear-loving press and cyclists who want to be among the first to get their hands on this fine device. Once they start to play, they’ll discover there’s a lot more to the Edge 800 than good looks. Providing navigation and performance monitoring, it’s ideal for the “I wanna get lost but still find my way back” mountain bikers, the touring/commuting/recreational crowd and the performance cyclists, including the pros from Team Garmin. Congrats to Team Garmin’s Tyler Farrar for winning the sprint finish at the Vuelta a España today!

Last Friday, I had a chance to take the 800 out for its maiden voyage. This was a lunchtime ride with four cycling coworkers who’ve been collectively logging lots of miles from Garmin HQ. Needless to say, I didn’t have a chance to touch, tap and admire the Edge during this ride. I have to work my tail off to not get dropped by this group, but that’s exactly the way I like to roll. Our group included Owen, our lead-out man who rides for a local cycling team. Matt, who’s strong as an ox and I believe could pull me up the Tourmalet in a headwind. Scott, who holds a steady line ideal to draft off and probably has more bike miles logged than the rest of us put together and squared. And then there’s Ryan, who, in the span of about a month, ran his first half marathon, got hitched, biked across Iowa, signed up for his first marathon and committed to his first MS150 ride. Ryan was also Edge 800-equipped for this ride. Here’s a peek at our short-but-sweet ride in Garmin Connect.

From a Garmin insider who’s accustomed to our engineers pulling out all the stops, I have to say, our fitness team really outdid themselves on this one. The display is beautiful and crisp, the touchscreen very responsive. And knowing our design engineers have put this unit through the testing rigors, I’ll have no worries getting caught in the rain or subjecting it to the elements. Can’t wait to take it on a 70-mile ride this coming Monday. What better way to celebrate Labor Day than a long ride? Stay tuned for more Edge 800 news. And if you’re lucky enough to be at Eurobike this week, be sure to stop by our booth, A5-201. Or see us at  Interbike, Sept. 22-24, booth 2631.

When we talk about how Garmin’s Forerunner 110 is meant to simply answer runners’ two most important questions – How fast and how far? – the answers get even easier when the runner is Ryan Hall. How fast? Very. How far? Very.

While Forerunner 110 is easy enough for beginners training for their first 5K, its GPS-enabled features are powerful and accurate enough for elite runners such as Ryan. Check out this video from Ryan’s YouTube channel (which is full of helpful training tips) and hear him talk about his favorite features … while he runs … uphill … at a 7-minute pace. Sigh. And to learn more about these easy-to-use features, visit our online learning center and watch Peg’s demonstrations in the short tutorial videos.

Many people don’t realize that when we’re developing products we put them through extreme test conditions. We drop ‘em, dunk ‘em, freeze ‘em, and heat ‘em, and that’s just a few of the tests engineering puts products through. We’re proud that our devices are rugged and can stand up to the challenges our customers give them — even accidental challenges. Here’s a great testimonial sent to the Garmin inbox from Kevin, a satisfied Garmin customer, and his GPSMAP 76s that survived his accidental challenge. 

I just thought that you would like to know that your products have gone up a notch or two in my book this week. I always like to give credit where credit is due, and I think that your products have earned some praise following an accident I had with one during a recent road trip. 
 
I’ve been a Garmin customer for many years now, and currently use a Foretrex 101 and GPSMAP 76S for hiking here in Colorado. I also still have my original Garmin unit (a “GPS 40″ from the mid 1990′s). All of these units have performed as advertised, though I never had the opportunity to subject them to a true durability test…until this week.

I often keep the GPSMAP 76S in my vehicle when I travel, and that was the case during the past week when I traveled to Ohio to visit family. Unfortunately I wasn’t very careful with the storage of my GPS on this trip, and didn’t realize that the unit had been knocked out of my car’s door pocket while I was unloading the vehicle at my parent’s house. When I backed out of the driveway a short time later, I immediately felt a solid bump as the front wheel of my vehicle drove squarely over my GPS unit. 

I honestly didn’t even realize that I had driven over my GPS unit at the time, and I got out of the car expecting to find that I had run over a brick (or some other equally inconsequential item) in the driveway. I was greatly disappointed when I saw my GPS laying in front of my tire on the pavement. Although this unit was being stored in a soft-sided nylon case, this case is not really padded in any way, and certainly wasn’t designed to protect the product from anything more than the most minor abuse.
 
When I opened the carrying case I was surprised to see that my GPS unit had not been completely destroyed (I expected that it would have been crushed and/or cracked). I was also shocked to see that the screen appeared undamaged, and the only mark on the unit was a small (and very superficial) scratch near the antenna area on the unit’s case. I immediately turned the GPS on, and was surprised to see that the unit still functioned normally. The device quickly acquired a satellite fix, and the backlight functioned just as it always had.
 
Given that I had originally purchased this GPS unit for use during sea kayaking trips, I was well aware of the fact that it is designed to float. Because I had just driven over this device with a car, I was also concerned that the integrity of the case may have been compromised during my unplanned quality control test. However, as you can see in the picture I attached, my GPS unit is still functioning normally - even while it floats in a sink full of water, after being run over by nearly 3,000 lbs worth of vehicle!
 
In my opinion, that’s pretty impressive for an 8-year-old precision electronic device! Thanks for making a great product, and I’ll be sure to look to Garmin again as I begin to shop for a vehicle-based GPS system!

Thanks, Kevin, for sharing this great story! To learn more about our other rugged and waterproof marine handheld products, visit the On The Water section of Garmin.com.

In announcing the new Garmin Edge 800 cycling computer today, we took the best of Garmin Edge technology, added a touchscreen color display and made route planning easier than ever before with a one-stop shopping for creating, previewing and downloading routes to ride. New mapping options such as Garmin’s BaseCamp route planning and BirdsEye™ Satellite Imagery make it perfect for training, touring and riding on the trail.

“Whether you’re on the road, in the mountains or around the city, Garmin’s touchscreen Edge 800 puts the most important information of your ride at your fingertips,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “Thanks to its simple mounting system, improved mapping and route-planning capabilities, and the GPS-based features that make wires and calibration obsolete, we can easily say that one Edge fits all.”

Building on its popular GPS-enabled predecessors, Edge 800 is smaller and sleeker than the Edge 705, yet features a larger 2.6” display with a simple touchscreen interface. And while Edge 800 gets its streamlined design from the ultralight Edge 500, the color display and versatile mapping options make exploration more enjoyable and efficient than ever. The latest version of Garmin’s free BaseCamp software (www.garmin.com/basecamp) gives users an easy tool to survey the terrain and plan routes. BaseCamp lets users plan and preview routes – along with viewing elevation changes – and then send those routes to Edge 800, Edge 705 and Edge 605 as courses to follow. 

Edge 800 will debut at Interbike (Booth 2631) and Eurobike (Booth
A5-201), where it won the coveted Eurobike Award for electronic
components.

In its third year as title sponsor of the Pro Tour cyclists of Team Garmin-Transitions, Garmin has worked closely with the sport’s top athletes in developing Edge products that can be appreciated by cyclists around the world using a cycling computer to get their fastest time – or for the first time.

“At Garmin-Transitions, we’re going to be on the cutting edge of technology, in everything we do,” said Team Garmin sprinting sensation Tyler Farrar. “Edge 800 can track all of our performance data, and it also keeps things interesting on training rides because we can use it anywhere in the world to plan and follow new routes – on and off road – and always find our way back to the start.”

Cyclists can view Team Garmin’s featured rides – or download, analyze and share rides of their own – at Garmin Connect™ (http://garminconnect.com), the free-to-join online community of more than 30 million activities from around the world. Garmin Connect displays metrics such as time, distance, speed, elevation and heart rate through charts and a variety of map representations, including street, satellite, topographic, and elevation maps. Garmin Connect users can search for activities in their area and try them by uploading the data to Edge 800, which will guide the way.

“I can come back and do even more on the computer when I download it,” said Team Garmin’s Christian Vande Velde of combining Garmin Connect with the Edge products he used in consecutive top-8 finishes at the Tour de France. “It takes all the guessing out of everything in my training.”

Using information directly from GPS satellites, Edge 800 accurately tracks speed, distance, time, GPS position, elevation, calories burned, climb and descent. For even more real-time data on display, Edge 800 syncs wirelessly through ANT+™ technology with compatible third-party power meters as well as Garmin heart rate monitors and speed/cadence sensors. For extra-precise climb and descent data, Edge 800 incorporates a barometric altimeter to pinpoint changes in elevation.

Because Edge 800 requires no calibration, it can be switched quickly between bikes thanks to a low-profile, quarter-turn mount that fits easily on the stem or handlebars with tight-gripping rubber rings. Boasting a high-sensitivity GPS receiver with HotFix that quickly acquires and maintains satellite reception, Edge 800 displays temperature readings, changes time zones automatically, lasts up to 15 hours on one charge and alerts riders if they’re moving but the timer has not been started.

As powerful as it is for performance cyclists and speed specialists, various mapping options make Edge 800 an ideal device for singletrack exploration, everyday errands and casual commuting.

On the trails, using a separate TOPO U.S. 24K DVD or microSD card brings you the highest level of topographic detail available, with maps comparable to 1:24,000 scale USGS maps, featuring terrain contours, topo elevations, summits, routable roads and trails, parks, coastlines, rivers, lakes and geographical points. In town, optional City Navigator mapping provides detailed street maps, millions of preloaded points of interest and onscreen turn-by-turn directions to your destination.

Subscribers to BirdsEye Satellite Imagery can quickly transfer high-resolution satellite images to Edge 800 and seamlessly integrate those images into the onscreen maps to get a true representation of the surroundings. And Garmin’s Custom Maps can bring the details, labels and landmarks of your existing paper or electronic map to Edge 800 in just a few simple steps.

It’s hard to believe, but it was less than a month ago when we were at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh announcing numerous new products and talking to hundreds of customers (some more famous than others!) about our current and new products. The news coverage from Oshkosh continues to roll in. If you weren’t able to be there, this video will give you another glimpse of one of our big announcements — ESP — which is our new stability augmentation system. This electronic monitoring
and exceedance-correcting technology is for the G1000 and G3000 and it
helps keep pilots out of trouble by helping them maintain the aircraft
in a safe, flight stable condition and therefore helps prevent the
onset of stalls, spins, and other loss-of control conditions. The G1000-equipped King Air will be the first to get ESP. Watch to learn more.

The Android-powered Garminfone received 3.5 out of 5 stars from PC World magazine. Kudos was given throughout the review for different capabilities and features, but one of the many accolades is that it’s a good bang for the buck. “The Garminfone has the full functionality of a Garmin navigation device built in–plus all the advantages of an Android-based smartphone. In other words, it’s as good as any dedicated GPS device on the market, and it’s a better value than, say, buying a comparably priced Android phone and then paying another $100 for navigation software (which will lack the integration that Garmin has put into this phone).” 

PC World was also impressed with the navigation features, “side-by-side with Google’s free navigation service…the Garminfone was quicker and more accurate in showing the position of my vehicle. In comparison with other phone/navigation-software models, the Garminfone is better at picking up the GPS signal, something that Garmin’s designers say they worked hard to achieve.”

Want to learn more about the Garminfone? Visit our minisite, Twitter, Facebook, or you can get your own from T-Mobile in the US for $99.99 for existing customers and $129.99 for future customers.