I had several Garmin Edge and Wahoo bike computers and clearly there are many improvements in this one but after so many years Garmin should really get rid of old issues. The good: the Power Plan screen is really well designed and I like the way the power plan and climb screen are combined when hitting a climb. Well done to the UI person that designed it in Garmin. Less good is the power plan itself, which can’t match the accuracy of BestBikeSplit. But that’s fine, because BBS power plan can be downloaded to the device so you get the best of both worlds. Climb screen and features are also great. There are also so many geeky stats, features and options. you can’t possibly include all that, but Garmin gives you many options. Ok so now to the two lost stars: 1. Sluggish screen. I hated the touch screen on the 1000 so many years ago because sometimes it was sluggish. Unlike the Wahoo that changes screens as you press the button. Which is the reason when I last purchased a Garmin I bought the 530 as it is just buttons operated. This time I took a chance with the 840, considering years have passed, and was disappointed to find that on some courses (not all) the screen is just not responsive. You flick sideways and count the seconds before it decided to move. If you are impatient and try again and again, by the time it does move, you are 3-4 screens further. Not great when you want to consult the map just before a junctions, and generally a disappointment this day and age. 2. You still need the brain of a squirrel to navigate through menus. I bought the 840 for the touch screen because it is so complicated to go through the Garmin menus with just the buttons. But then you get problem 1 above. Garmin should just poach the person that designs the menus for Wahoo. 3. You need to use the buttons sometimes but they are not so easy to find and press especially with full finger gloves. Almost impossible with winter gloves. The buttons are a bit larger than my previous 530 which is an improvement, but why can’t Garmin place the buttons on the face like Wahoo or the old Edge 1000? 4. Auto navigation. If you get off route the device will want to navigate you back to the course. Sounds great in theory but this is no google maps or waze. 90% of the time it will either consistently tell you to do a u-turn or will try to navigate you back to where you departed from the course using a different route instead of finding a shortcut to the course which is not to far on your right, left or ahead. For that 1 in 10 that it does finds the nearest way back to the route, it is not worth the 9 times it makes no sense. The best thing to do is disable this feature. 5. General Garmin quirky surprises. Crashing and restarting for no reason when you load a course or in the middle of the ride. Or just getting stuck on something. Last weekend it couldn’t do the navigation using the course loaded on it. You can see the course but there are no prompts on any of the screens. I just had to keep the map on and make sure I follow the route. Tried to remove the route and reload, nothing worked. Just one constant message Turn left onto Esher Road, B3379 for 155.4km. Today the course works. Go figure what the device was going through two days ago. In in a nutshell, it is still a good bike computer and one of the best in the market. But it is annoying that all of us need to endure with small niggles Garmin can’t be bothered to fix for years through different versions. When my wife said she is getting a bigger head unit and the two options in front of her were the Edge 1040 or the Wahoo Roam v2 she went straight to the Wahoo. She doesn’t have my patience and the Edge would have ended up hitting the nearest wall at velocity after two days in use.

I bought a Garmin 840 from Sigma Sports and unfortunately after just 5 uses the device turned out to be faulty. I contacted Sigma’s customer service and I have to say, the staff were polite and helpful. However, instead of replacing the unit directly, they asked me to go through Garmin. Garmin confirmed it was faulty, but the replacement they sent me was a refurbished unit. While it works fine now, it’s honestly disappointing to spend a few hundred pounds on a new device and end up with a refurbished one. I understand this isn’t really Sigma’s fault, but I would have preferred if they had simply replaced it with a new unit straight away. So overall: • Customer service at Sigma: polite and responsive. • Garmin 840 device: 0/5 for reliability (faulty almost immediately). • Replacement experience: disappointing — refurbished instead of new. I’ll keep using it and hopefully it holds up, but the experience wasn’t what I expected when buying new.