Does anyone know if this is at all accurate? I’m guessing not as it reckons I burnt 3000+ calories today over a 65km ride. Does it take into account things like uphill/downhill, cadence, bike/rider weight etc when calculating this number? Or is it just a ‘8 calories per minute’ type measurement?

cheers 😀

it’s total poo – ignore it 🙁

mine always shows about 2000 cals regardless of what ride

Surely they could make it relatively accurate? it’s just an algorithm isn’t it?

SFB, seeing as you have one: does your’s ever just freeze whilst in use? Had mine lock up twice today, had to switch it off (by holding the power button down) and on again, it took ages to boot up to the ‘searching for satellites’ screen as well… I wonder if there’s a problem with it? 🙁

mines never frozen and i’ve had it > 1 year. There was some talk of this on the montion based forums, i think they agreed it was when the map screen was showing. Are you using the latest software.

oh yeah, calorie counter over-estimates!

Yep, it happens on the map screen. Is it a fault do you think?

I think I need to update the software, I guess I do this of Garmin’s site?

cheers 😀

I think the 705 calculates calories by the Basel Metabolic rate and is known to be pretty inaccurate – they can be as much as 100% out. The whole concept of being able to measure calories burnt without taking into consideration HR, fitness, base calories used, route, altitude etc is onto a loser from the start.

If you do a google search you can find plenty of links that show a better way of calculating calories expended…

SFB, seeing as you have one: does your’s ever just freeze whilst in use?

I actually have a 205 but I’m expecting the calorie algorithm will be the same, and no, mine never freezes.

I’ve read that Polar have a pretty good calorie algorithm but Garmin won’t pay the licence fee so we have to put up with second best, my calorie readings are usually around 50% down on what they were when I was using my Polar.

They should be accurate. They take into account rider weight, distance, height climbed and HR if you use the HR strap.
As the amount of work done (energy used) is based on how far, how high, and how heavy, they should be pretty accurate.
They should certainly be more accurate than the Polar ones which rely on HR alone.
Looking at Dibbs’ post, it looks as though the best combination would be Polar’s algorithm with the distance and height climbed information from the Garmin.

Apart from a few failures to switch on, which can be fixed with a fancy key press combo, my 305 hasn’t missed a beat!

>I actually have a 205 but I’m expecting the calorie algorithm will be the same, and no, mine never freezes.

The 705 includes a heart rate monitor so should be able to make a much better guesstimate as to calorie expenditure over the non-HRM 205.

hi – never took any notice of the calorie counter (if I did I would never eat that pie, crisps and flapjack after the ride!!) anyway mine kept freezing last week so went onto the garmin website and downloaded an automatic software update tool which upgraded mine from 2.2 to 206 – no probs on the sat ride.