Garmin® Edge® 850, Compact GPS Cycling Computer, Vivid Color Touchscreen Display, Bike-Specific Mapping, Advanced Training and Performance Insights

Easy setup and easily read screen
Quick and easy setup. Screen is bright with sharp contrast.

Edge Garmin 850
Amazing the new Edge 850, I liked

Battery sucks.
Better sucks, but others are fine.

Brilliant display, great touchscreen, battery life less than before but still enough for me
I recently upgraded from a Edge 530 to this Edge 850. I’ll add more details after i’ve used it for a month or two, but wanted to address some key points that might impact your purchase decision, including points made by other reviewers.1. DisplayThe recently released Edge 850 and 550 get the much brighter, more vivid display that the 1050 got last year when it was upgraded from the 1040. It really does look fantastic. Easier to read in all lighting conditions.2. Battery lifeThe bright, vivid display comes at a cost: less battery life. The 1040/840/540 and earlier Edge models could be used for 200+ miles between charges. With the 1050/850/550 series, it’s closer to 100+ miles between charges in my experience.I have no problem with this. I rarely bike more than 100 miles in a week, so I’m charging my Edge 850 once a week.Garmin gives us the option to double the battery life by turning the brightness down to a level that matches the previous gen devices. I tried this and it works well. On reduced brightness, the display is very readable on a cloudy day and a bit hard to read on a bright sunny day – just like the previous-gen devices.3. Benefits of faster processor and double the RAMCompared to the previous generation, maps render and pan quicker and more smoothly.The Edge 850 has 64GB of storage, twice that of the previous gen devices. I never maxxed out the RAM on my older Edge units, but this will be a great feature for those of you who pre-load a lot of maps.4. TouchscreenMy Edge 850 is my first bike computer with a touch screen. I love it. It’s easier to navigate menus and commands while riding. The touch screen works extremely well in dry conditions but just so-so in rain. But the Edge 850 also has physical buttons you can use when it’s raining heavy–or anytime you might prefer using physical buttons to the touch screen. Interestingly, the larger and more expensive Edge 1050 doesn’t have physical buttons.5. The bellThe Edge 850 has a real speaker and can play a very realistic sounding bike bell sound. (So does the pricier Edge 1050 but not the cheaper Edge 550 or the previous generation Edge 840). I learned this reading reviews prior to my purchase, and didn’t give it a second thought. But now that I have the device, I love it. I use it all the time. Quicker and easier than saying “passing on your left”.6. RobustnessGarmin outdoor electronics sometimes have bugs that get resolved with firmwware updates. I’ve experienced some and they can be annoying.But this is generally much less a problem with the 800 and 500 level Edge bike computers, because they use the same firmware as the Edge 1000 series but come out a year later. So, the folks who bought the more expensive Edge 1050 last year basically were beta testers and found and reported bugs, which Garmin has fixed in subsequent firmware updates. By the time the Edge 550 and 850 were released, the firmware is operating pretty smoothly. There still may be glitches in the future, but at this point it’s fairly refined and works well.7. WeightAnother reviewer here gave a mostly positive review of the Edge 850 but said it weighed a lot more than the 840, which could be annoying. I pulled up the technical specs on both devices. The 850 weighs 33% more than the 840. Which sounds like a lot. But the 850 weighs 4 ounces while the 840 weighs 3 ounces. That’s one extra ounce. To me, that’s not a significant weight increase. But to others it might be.