Five Garmin Products Every Cyclist Needs
Whether you’ve just recently picked up cycling or you’ve been riding for years, achieving the ultimate riding experience requires more than just a bike. Let’s dive into the Garmin cycling ecosystem and what you might need for your next ride.
1. GPS Bike Computers
The Edge® family of GPS bike computers have evolved into the most popular head units for cyclists. These advanced devices are jam-packed with features created for riders of all levels. It comes with a large touchscreen, detailed maps, preloaded Garmin Cycle Map — an on-device course creator that will help you to easily navigate and explore new routes — and more. Plus, you can leave your phone in your pocket or bag, because you’ll get a notification on the device when you receive a message or phone call. Even better? All Edge units are compatible with Varia cycling awareness devices, which help you see and be seen by approaching vehicles.
If you’re looking for a simple, easy-to-use computer to help you dive into your stats, start with Edge® 130 Plus, a light and compact head unit with all the basic features that tells you how far, how fast and where you rode. It has cool features like built-in GPS, advanced workouts that enable you to start a training plan from Garmin Connect™ or TrainingPeaks®, performance monitoring, mountain (MTB) dynamics with jump count and distance, ClimbPro that helps you gauge your effort on a climb and more.
If you’re a more serious rider, then the Edge® 530 bike computer with color display might be what you’re looking for. It combines the best of both worlds from the Edge Explore and Edge 130 Plus and has up to 20 hours of battery life. In addition to the preloaded Garmin Cycle Map, built-in GPS and cycling metrics, it offers dynamic performance monitoring and insights into how your performance changes, tells how your body responds to your training, how effective your training was and more. If you prefer a touchscreen and also an on-device course creator, opt for Edge® 830.
Finally, Edge 1030 Plus is the ultimate GPS bike computer for performance riders. It has the largest display of the Edge product range, all the features of the other Edge devices, comes with Daily Suggested Workouts and has an extended battery life of 24 hours during demanding use (and even up to 48 hours in energy saving mode). Simply put: This Edge is created to be ready for every ride.
Good to know: All Edge devices have safety and tracking features like LiveTrack, Incident Detection, Assistance and Weather alerts, plus they can be paired with Varia radars and external sensors, such as a heart rate monitor like the HRM-Pro™ or a cadence sensor (both sold separately).
2. Power Meter Pedals
If you want to up your game during your workouts and races, you need reliable and instant power data. This will help you to get the most out of your time and effort by ensuring you train and race in the correct power zone. Besides, it’s a reliable way to track your improvements over time. The Garmin Rally™ power meters are your perfect companion for this and, except for Edge Explore, all Rally pedals are compatible with the Edge devices mentioned above. To make it easy for cyclists to ride year-round, both on- and off-road, these power meters are uniquely designed with sensors housed in the pedals. This makes the spindle transferable between different Rally pedal bodies, so you don’t have to buy separate power meters for every bike you own. Simply choose either the single-sensing (power only) or dual-sensing (power plus cycling dynamics) power meter that’s compatible with your cleat type, and you’ll be ready to ride.
For roadies using Shimano SPD-SL cleats, there is the Rally™ RS100 series with a single-sensing power meter and cadence sensor. Looking for more data? Then Rally™ RS200 is the perfect fit for you. This duel-sensing power meter shows advanced cycling dynamics like your left/right balance, seated versus standing position, your power phase and platform center offset. How much data can you handle? Using the LOOK KEO cleats on your bike instead of Shimano SPD-SL? No worries, we’ve got you covered with the Rally™ RK100 and Rally™ RK200 power meters.
3. Headlights and Tail Lights
Safety is of paramount importance for us at Garmin. We love to see you ride your bike with our products, but we love to see you return safe at home even more. So it’s critical to make sure you are visible in traffic. With the Varia™ RTL510 radar tail light, one of our most beloved products among cyclists, you get visual and audible alerts for vehicles approaching from behind up to 153 yards (140 meters) away. This small and easily mountable light pairs with your Edge bike computer, select Garmin wearables, a compatible smartphone using the Varia™ mobile app or the optional radar display unit. It allows other traffic participants —think people driving cars who aren’t necessarily looking for cyclists — to see you from up to a mile away. It will even shine a bit brighter when it detects traffic.
4. Indoor Trainers
During the winter or when the weather keeps you inside, a range of Tacx® indoor trainers offer something for everyone. Refine your coordination and technique with basic rollers like the Antares or Galaxia, or make it more fun with a smart trainer and popular indoor training apps like the Tacx® Training app, Zwift, TrainerRoad and more.
Our smart trainers are available in both wheel-on trainers and direct-drive trainers. Wheel-on is the most accessible of these two; simply click your bike on the trainer and off you go. The easy, affordable and semi-smart Boost can handle a maximum power of 1,050 watts. Looking for a more powerful, accurate and quiet bike trainer? Then a direct-drive trainer is what you need. Simply remove your rear wheel from your bike and mount your bike on the trainer. Both the FLUX S (10% max incline and max 1500 watts) and the more advanced FLUX 2 (16% max incline and max 2000 watts) offer everything you need for hours of enjoyable and efficient indoor training sessions.
The most realistic indoor experience is offered by the NEO 2T smart trainer. It’s hard to find an indoor trainer that’s more quiet, accurate and powerful than this one. It can simulate inclines up to 25%, handle sprints up to 2200 watts, is completely silent, and offers immersive features like downhill simulation, road feel and more. If you’re not familiar with the road feel feature yet, it lets the trainer vibrate and simulates the feeling of riding on different road surfaces, such as cobblestone and gravel in the Tacx app and Zwift. Who said indoor training isn’t fun?
All Tacx smart trainers are compatible with the Tacx® Training app. From phone to tablet to desktop, this app gets you the best virtual cycling experience. Explore the world with a large collection of training films, including everything from famous spring classics to the Alps (a premium subscription is required for this). Or structure your own workouts based on target slope, power or FTP. These custom plans sync between all your devices and will be available to all your friends. Because this app is now part of the Garmin ecosystem, your data automatically loads to the Garmin Connect™ app. Now you’ve got all your indoor and outdoor training data available in one place.
5. The Garmin Connect App
Garmin Connect is the overall umbrella for tracking, analyzing and sharing health and fitness activities recorded by your paired Garmin devices. Here You can use your app to review your automatically uploaded activities, track more performance metrics than ever, train your way with free training plans that help you reach your goals and download courses with turn-by-turn guidance for your next ride.
It even transfers your data into digital insights that give helpful hints tailored to you. It knows what you’ve done based on your training effect and training load, it knows the impact on your fitness with training status, recovery and training load focus, and it can guide you on what to do next with Daily Suggested Workouts. And if you have a Garmin smartwatch, it factors in outside stresses and sleep to make that guidance even more accurate.
Ready to get started? Make the most of your ride with these cycling products from Garmin.
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