Cycling has become an exotic sport for those high-income folks. You’ll wonder what’s wrong with the world, when some people fork out around one grand just for a bicycle. Just because the manufacturers throw in some words like Shimano, and carbon fibre, and people will go crazy in awe and drool over these bicycles. That’s pretty much enough reason for Garmin to heavily invest products in these bicycles, which will mostly go tarmac and off roads too, in places where your iPhone will quite impossibly get any reception (it can barely get any reception in the lift, what’s more in the jungle).

“Whether you’re on the road, in the mountains or around the city, Garmin’s touchscreen Edge 800 puts the most important information of your ride at your fingertips,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “Thanks to its simple mounting system, improved mapping and route-planning capabilities, and the GPS-based features that make wires and calibration obsolete, we can easily say that one Edge fits all.”

When you’re cycling in the jungle, and can’t get any reception for help when you face a grizzly bear, you can still fool around with this new touchscreen GPS navigator from Garmin. Their latest Edge GPS devices are like iPhone-wannabe, as the Edge-800 is equipped with a 2.6-inch color display, Garmin’s BaseCamp route planning system, and BirdsEye satellite imagery, with the “HotFix” GPS technology to quickly acquire and maintain a signal, and support for a wide range of heart rate monitors, cadence sensors, and other ANT+ devices, to name a few features. Crazy features I’d say, but expected when you’re marketing for a bicycle platform that may cost around a grand.

“At Garmin-Transitions, we’re going to be on the cutting edge of technology, in everything we do,” said Team Garmin sprinting sensation Tyler Farrar. “Edge 800 can track all of our performance data, and it also keeps things interesting on training rides because we can use it anywhere in the world to plan and follow new routes – on and off road – and always find our way back to the start.”

While the device won’t be available until this October (for $449 or $649 depending on the bundle), it’s already received a few early reviews that paint a pretty positive picture — DC Rainmaker has even go so far as to say that the device “rocks,” and that “it’s everything that most cyclists have been asking for.”

SOURCE via Garmin