26 June 2024
Garmin has released its public beta of the Edge 1050 features, for the Edge 540/840/1040 units.
This allows those that are eager to start reporting that angry dog down the street as a ‘road hazard’ (or Dairy Queen as an obstruction), you can now do so. All of the non-hardware features of the Edge 1050 were released last night in public beta to the Edge 540, 840, 1040. The Edge Explore 2 public beta hasn’t quite shown up yet.
I do want to briefly acknowledge that I think this is the first time Garmin actually pulled off both new device + beta firmware for existing devices on the *same day*. Historically, that gap of new features coming to older devices has been anywhere from weeks to ‘never’. Back earlier this month when I met with the Edge team, they said their goal was to release it the same day as the Edge 1050. I smiled and said “That’s great!”, while inside my head I said “Uh-huh…sure you will just like my kids will pickup the Legos on the floor”. Thus, kudos to them for actually pulling it off.
I legitimately think it makes a difference, from a brand perception standpoint, when companies do that. It’s become slightly more popular over the last few years, but is still somewhat rare to do concurrent-day stuff like that.
In any case, onto the details!
The New Features:
If you want to see the full release notes, you’ll find the 23.09 public beta details here:
– Garmin Edge 540/840 Public Beta
– Garmin Edge 1040 Public Beta
As a reminder, Garmin switched a long-time ago to WiFi downloads (so you don’t have to manually copy files back and forth), and thus you just need to toggle the beta option for your device on Garmin Connect:
In any case, let’s get to the big ticket features (there’s more listed in the release notes above, which are minor things or fixes). I’ve included screenshots of how it looks on the Edge 1050, though the functionality is the same on the Edge 540/840/1040.
Added GroupRide awards and climb competitions: This includes both the mid-ride Climb Challenges/Competitions, as well as the post-ride awards. Here’s the mid-ride climb award:
And then post-ride, with my wife on the Edge 840 beta the other night, and myself on the Edge 1050:
Added GroupRide Incident Detection: Now, in a GroupRide, if you crash, it’ll notify others in your group, with a very loud and overriding alert. Your friends won’t miss it, even if they miss you.
Added road hazards support: This lets you both report road hazards (dangerous animals, obstructions, potholes, slippery stuff, and general hazards), as well as see them. You can then confirm/deny any hazards that are seen. Here’s how an upcoming hazard looks, first the small red block and then if you tap it, to see more details:
Added surface type support including on the map: This includes upcoming in-ride unpaved road alerts, and road surface types in the post-ride summary. Here’s an example of the upcoming surface alert:
Added Wi-Fi map download support (840/1040 only): This removes the need to connect a computer to download maps for other regions, or to update your existing maps. It’ll now to so over WiFi. The Edge 540 isn’t supported due to memory overhead issues.
Added Garmin Share: This lets you transfer courses, locations, and workouts to other Garmin devices, directly, without needing an internet connection. This is sorta like the transfer capabilities of old days, but entirely revamped and designed to be the new standard for Garmin cycling devices, wearables, and other devices (you’ll see it in the next Garmin Fenix 7/Epix series public betas).
Added revamped Course Creator (840/1040 only): This lets you create multi-point courses directly on the unit, versus the previous round-trip and one-way only courses.
Added wind and stamina adjustments to Power Guide: Essentially, PowerGuide will now account for cases where your Stamina is depleting too quickly, or wind conditions have changed.
Updated grade algorithm to be much more responsive: I outlined this in my review, but in short, this makes the gradient responsiveness, such as when you have a short/steep section that quickly changes from 0% to 10%, be nearly instant. It’s now on-par or better than Hammerhead and Wahoo in my testing.
Final Thoughts:
As always, remember this is a (public) beta. As such, there will probably be quirky things, and things that need fixing. I’ve been riding the Edge 1050 software versions for a while, and that’s been very stable. But I haven’t put much time on the Edge 540/840/1040 public beta versions. Though, my wife has a few rides on the Edge 840 beta, and so far she’s survived. Yet some features like Garmin Share between the Edge 840 beta and Edge 1050 seemed a bit…beta (worked just fine for me Edge 1050 to Edge 1050). But again, that’s the point of beta.
As far as other features go, you won’t see things like the bike bell or completely revamped user interface design styling, because both of those require new hardware found on the Edge 1050. In the case of the bike bell, that requires the new speaker hardware capable of spoken words and more (as opposed to a simple beeper on the Edge 540/840/1040). And then the new UI requires a substantially faster processor, found in the dual-core processor over the new Edge 1050.
But otherwise, virtually every other feature has been pulled over. Garmin says they see the Edge 1040/1040 Solar as a core part of the lineup for those who want longer battery life, and it’ll continue to get feature updates like the Edge 1050. Hopefully, that remains the case for a long time.
With that – thanks for reading!