Garmin Edge 130 Plus Review

Overview

I recently got a Garmin Edge 130 Plus, a small bike computer with quite a few features! Here are some details.

The Garmin Edge 130 Plus retails for $199.99 USD, which is the cheapest Garmin cycling computer. This is currently one of the best deals for a cycling computer that you can get, and during black Friday, Amazon prime day, and other sales, you can find this cycling computer for under $150.

In the box

Inside the box you will find the usual things you would expect: The Garmin Edge 130 Plus, two quarter turn mounts(standard mounts), a tether, intruction manuals, and a charging cable.

Features

This device uses buttons unlike some higher end bike computers(the Garmin touchscreens I find are not the best). There are three buttons on the Edge 130 plus: The button on the left is used to power on/brighten the screen, the button on the bottom right is used for start/stop, the button on the bottom left is used for going back or lap, the buttons on the right side are used to go up and down(top button for going up, bottom for going down). If you hold down on the top right button it will take you to the menu screen.

The menu screen is where you can find the settings that you can change(ride settings, sensors, system, phone connection, and more). Some of the main features of the Garmin Edge 130 Plus are: Turn by turn navigation, Strava live segments, Climb Pro, Incident detection and livetrack, MTB dynamics, workouts(including an indoor trainer setting where you can pair a trainer and control via your Edge). Unlike the higher end Garmin computers, the Garmin Edge 130 Plus does not have full connect IQ support. The Edge 130 Plus does support data pages but not connect IQ apps.

When you have a route selected, if there are any major climbs on that route you will see a screen that comes up(shown in image below) with a gradient map, distance to go, average grade of the remaining portion of the climb, how much you have climbed, your elevation, and your amount to climb remaining.

The Garmin Edge 130 Plus offers 8 fully customizable data fields, and you can add extra pages with a custom amount of fields if you would like. These include power fields, cadence fields, elevation, speed, distance, time, battery, and more.

When starting a ride, you will have a few different choices: Road, Commuting, Mountain, Gravel, E-bike, Indoor, Cyclocross, E-mountain. All of these profiles will have the same pages, so if you want different data for each, I would recommend making a page for each discipline you do and switch to whichever page you want when doing that discipline. In mountain bike mode you will see additional data such as Grit, Flow, and other MTB dynamics. When you do a jump, the Edge 130 Plus will tell you your hang time, distance, and height.

The Garmin Edge 130 Plus is 1.6 inches by 2.5 inches by 0.5 inches with a 1.8 inch screen. The Edge 130 Plus is very light, weighing in at 33 g. The computer has an advertised battery life of 12 hours, which is three hours less than the Edge 130(There were a lot of complaints about the battery life not living up to expectation for the Edge 130). The unit, like many computers these days is equipped with Bluetooth and Ant +, it is compatible with iOS and Android phones. When paired with a smart phone the Edge 130 Plus can receive smart notifications from your phone and share live-track with friends and family(The Edge 130 Plus also offers weather notifications). In the case of a crash the Edge 130 Plus is also ready with incident detection.

Conclusion

Overall this is an extremely good bike computer, and even better for the price. The device essentially has all the features of the higher end devices(- the navigational features). This device does everything that I need it to do, and it is a perfect size for me.

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