Garmin Edge 705 - First Impression

So I rode with my new Garmin Edge 705 for the first time today. I really like it. There is one thing that bugs me, and that is the calories that it states that I burned.

The bike shop where I bought my bike set up the unit and mounted it for me, and they entered my profile information correctly. I weigh 176 lbs, and my bike weighs 22 lbs. For the first leg of this morning’s bike commute to work, I wore my Polar F5 HRM in addition to the Garmin. Granted, I know the Polar does not account for the weight of the bike, and maybe other things the Garmin does.

But typically for my morning commute (about 11 miles, 45 minutes total), the Polar tells me that I burn about 375-450 calories. The Garmin, on the other hand, says that I burned 948 calories, which is a little more than double what the Polar indicates.

I know that I probably do burn a little more with the additional weight of the bike factored in, but it seems unlikely to burn double the amount.

I’m tracking calories because I’m manage my weight with a calorie/food/exercise database called MyFoodDiary.com. (I’d like to lose four more pounds.)

I’m going to use the Garmin measurements for a few days and see if my weight management is significantly affected. With more calories burned, I have a larger allowancce for meals, etc. so I imagine that if I tend to eat a couple of hundred more calories than normal, it may retard my weight loss.

Any thoughts about the Garmin HRM feature? I had a similar experience with the Garmin Forerunner 405, and ended up returning it for a refund.

I’ll probably keep the Garmin regardless because I like the other cycling computer features, but I think the HRM feature is probably one of the weakest features this unit offers.

Gerry

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 8:32 am and is filed under Cycling and Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.