First look: new Garmin Connect

Garmin Connect looks like it should deliver lots, but in practice its a nightmare...clunky, extremely slow and prone to glitches...im currently stuffed trying to edit a course that's saved under our clubs "group"...at the moment it just wont work at all...a few weeks ago, it wouldn't save a course to a Garmin unit..

Additionally, it always seems a dark art and a near impossible task in trying to upload a gpx file from someone else and turn it into a course...surely this ought to be a fundamental function of these pieces of software

Garmin should have a fantastic tool at their disposal, but currently its nothing but a pig....hopefully continued development will iron out the Everest sized creases...

still shows the old layout when I log in

Yep still see the old website here! And I don't have a switch to modern option

OK, not just me then

what's the point of Garmin connect when you have Strava?

I'm calling it StraMin.

In the past few days they've added the weight widget, but then they've removed ANT+ weight scale support from their recent products, and it simply errors on uploading the weight (and %fat etc.) from my FR210.

I've been using it for the last two months, and the 'work-in-progress' is everywhere. It's nowhere near sorted and huge glaring errors just are not fixed.

To me it seems a little late to the party with regard to segments, Strava has too much of a hold on this.

To use it you need a garmin, and whilst they are popular its still exclusive, and hence uptake will be lower than strava, so the 'competition' on segments will also be lower.

If you have a garmin you will upload to both but the amount of data available through Strava and Veloviewer already makes this out of date.

It doesnt do anything Strava hasn't done for years so needs something far more innovative to draw people away although I have no idea what that could be.

Good work at the LBL on screen grab 1 there.

It's slightly off topic, but does anyone know why I "use" about twice as many calories on any given cycle according to Garmin than according to Strava?

I haven't tried the new site yet. Though this does (maybe!) explain why the server was continuously unavailable on Friday and Saturday!

I switched over to the new look and found it slow and clunky.

It looks like it will have some good features, but seems to have been released before all testing and bug fixing was completed.

@Jimbonic: the calorie count is off because both sites are guessing, and use different algorithms to make those guesses.

This new Garmin is so awful I've stopped using it. It's slow, buggy and I don't give a shit about any of the panels except 'activities', which doesn't actually display any of my activites. It doesn't even manage the updates for my Edge properly. Great job Garmin!

No new view here either, must be on a slow roll out if some of you have had it for over a week.

Argh... it's been completely metro-ified and non-intuitivised, though to be honest I didn't use it much in the first place.

I think they are way too late to game to try with segments although the local search shows zero so I may set some just to be lone KOGM for a short while.

Maybe they should just concentrate on the hardware and do more 'partnering' with services like Strava.

Keep seeing this, infact I saw it several months ago, possibly last year.

STILL NOT LIVE.
Please stop writing about this until its actually live or at least they've given a friggin date for everyone.
Its wasting my time.

Given Garmin's complete lack of interest in resolving issues with the Edge 500 software, I shall not be holding my breath for improvements on Connect. As such, I will continue to use Strava.

A (very) small instance of Garmin reaping what they sow.

Regards,
Gordon

If you're using an older Garmin 305, 205 (705?) the whizzy new Garmin Express won't work and you have to switch back to old school Connect using the Communicator plugin. Looks like they're doing an Apple.

The new look Garmin Connect has finally pushed me to sign up to Strava.

I like it.

Another annoyance with Garmin's segments - you can only set end/start points on your recorded GPS points - which could be tens of metres apart. So if you want have a segment start or end at some recognisable point on the road - tough luck pretty much all the time.

Garmin should buy Strava before Nike or Facebook does.

Garmin is a dead company walking. As soon as Apple/Google sort their battery life out, that is Garmin's only current USP gone. Lack of other decent competitors also makes them lazy in terms of customer service, usability etc.

while Garmins cycling GPS hardware seems to be head and shoulders above all others, you definitely get the feeling that their developers are either absolutely terrible, or just don't care.

if I had to guess, I would say that Garmin has outsourced their development to a company that only cares about fulfilling a contract, instead of caring about the actual finished product. this is reflected in the extraordinarily poor execution of their firmware for various of their devices, and especially this "modern" Carmin Connect, which is just riddled with problems.

Costrast this with Endomondo or Strava, where (my understanding is that) the people who starting programming the sites actually own them, and care about the finished product.

I would also hazard a guess that Strava and Endomondo programmers use their own sites, but not many Garmin developers use GC or the various Garmin sports devices.

just speculating...