Edge® Explore 2, Easy-to-Use GPS Cycling Navigator, eBike Compatibility, Maps and Navigation, with Safety Features

The Edge Explore 2 is exactly the right system for someone who wants a simple package that will take in data from all your sensors. Mine is linked to my heart rate strap, my indoor trainer, the cadence/speed sensor on one bike, and the cadence-only sensor on another. The display is a good and useable size without being ridiculously big. Setup and use is simple for a tech-challenged guy like myself. And with the ability to link through the Garmin Connect app on my iPhone, it's easy to transfer the data to iHealth and Strava. I'm able to set it up to track and display exactly what I need develop my workouts. Essentially, it's everything I need without extraneous stuff. The longest ride I've done with it so far is about 30 miles on hilly terrain at 8,500+ feet MSL, and the ride barely made a dent in the battery life. By the way, the interface is a blend of touch-screen and three buttons. It's intuitive and easy to learn.

Have used for about two months now - over 500 miles. Easy to use - big plus is the Garmin tracking features so wife doesn't worry where I am 2.5 hours into a 75 mile ride. I def. recommend. Good battery life - easy to navigate while riding, numerous data display options.

Works great for navigation and pairs perfectly with my Garmin connect app on my cellphone. Other great features as a well. Also pairs with my Garmin rtl 515 radar light. Nice touch screen and screen size.

Despite my initial disappointment with this item (see below), I decided to try it for a few more days before returning it and ended up keeping it. Here's why. I tried to use it in a dense city and was expecting Google maps-like navigation. That isn't what this is for and if that's what you need, use Google maps. This device needs a relatively good view of the sky, and doesn't update your position as much as a phone does (it seems). I decided to trust it to navigate a ~35 mile ride outside of the city. I designed the route on gpx.studio and uploaded it to the device through the garmin connect website. It's a little buggy but I got it to work. From there it becomes available on my phone, then syncs to the unit. On this ride, navigation was much better. Still took some getting used to, but it was functional. My recommendation is to spend some time learning how to use this thing, and learning how it gives instructions. Updating from 2 to 4 stars; I like it, and don't ride without it now. ---Original Review--- I've been serious about cycling for about a year now and after riding with some friends who had bike computers and seeing how much easier it was to do long, complex rides, decided it was time to get one. I compared options from wahoo, hammerhead, and garmin, and ultimately settled on this one. I mostly wanted a computer to help me navigate, don't really care about advanced fitness tracking. The reviews I found said this was great for navigation. With a large screen and plenty of ways to search for desitnations, it seemed good. Upon receiving the unit I took it out for a quick 5 mile ride. The fitness tracking features worked well; it was neat to see my (GPS-estimated) speed, total distance, time, and a trace of my route. The issues started when I tried to do some navigation. There are a few ways to configure the device in terms of routing. You can choose short routes, easy routes, and routes based on popularity (from data garmin collects). I live in a large bike friendly city on the east coast in the US, and the edge explore 2 had a lot of problems even picking a route to get me where I wanted to go. In one instance, it told me to cross a river using a bridge, cross the street, the take the bridge back over to where I started, albeit on the other side of the road. I could have just crossed the road. In general, the navigation lags behind my actual position significantly enough that I missed turns. This especially matters when riding in a city where turns come up fast and cars are not patient. It also gave me a few directions to go the wrong way down one-way streets and to ride in very pedestrian-heavy areas. I kept missing turns because of the lag and got so frustrated with it that I gave up trying to navigate with it and found my own way home. Though I was able to tune the route planning algorithm to give me more desirable routes, its abysmal live navigation renders them ineffective. When you inevitably miss a turn, it will try to reroute you back onto the course it already has, rather than adjust the entire route accordingly as google maps would. I understand that this is more appropriate for the computational abilities of the device, but its still annoying. The final straw for me came when I tried to update the maps using my computer. I thought that this might solve some of the navigation issues I was having. I downloaded the software from the garmin website, plugged in the edge explore 2, and found a 6GB map update ready for installation. Perfect. Except...I made numerous attempts to install the update and all of them failed with a non-descriptive error message. At this point I had no interest in coddling this device any more and decided to return it. ------ I do want to speak briefly about the ecosystem around this device for those that are still considering it. You can install an app on your phone, which your rides sync to over bluetooth. The app will then estimate how many calories you burn per day and stuff. Neat if you're into it. I was mostly interested in the ability to create a route on the app (or garmin connect website) and load it onto the computer. The route designer worked just okay, both on mobile and web. What surprised me, though, was the inability to export routes from garmin connect. This includes both routes ridden and routes planned. As someone who likes to play with data myself, I was disappointed that I could not export a .gpx file or something. One last comment, because I had this question and could not find the answer anywhere. Yes this unit has a compass screen, but it only displays heading. There is no magnetometer. So if you get confused by "ride to trail" instructions and don't know which way to head when starting your ride, you might get frustrated with this unit as I did. If you want a true digital compass, go for the edge 530 or edge 830.

The Garmin Explore 2 has been a difficult navigating device to use. The three big negatives. 1) Very complicated interface for a navigation GPS. 2) Terrible routes, always generating routes on high speed roads when they're are many low speed side streets available. 3) Very slow Bluetooth interface. Updates are very slow, need several hours to complete an update. This unit only supports Bluetooth connections. Which means it is slow to communicate. Downloading a firmware update takes a very long time. It took me 3 days to get the update on this year. It takes several hours but the problem is I get interrupted with a call or I need to run. It does save where you left off. But it still takes a lot of time. Wifi is much quicker but this unit does not support wifi. As a navigation device it lacks in a few areas. For starters, getting to the map screen on the Garmin app makes it look like navigation was an afterthought. Garmin Explore 2 Steps to get to the Map: Open app, there is a home page with 5 links on the bottom. 1) Home 2) Challenges 3) Calendar 4) News Feed 5) More Oddly to get to the Map you need to choose More. Why more on a GPS ?? Seems like Calendar or News Feed would be a More… After choosing More, then there are around 15 items to choose from. Need to choose Training & Planning down into the menu Then another menu is displayed with 6 items to choose from. Choose Courses and that takes you to a listing of courses you have created. Need to click on Create Course. Then choose a Course type among 7. I chose Gravel/Unpaved Cycling. That takes you to another menu of 2 choices. Choosing Custom will finally bring up a Map. My question, why so menus to get to a map on a navigation GPS? That is crazy. At that point you need to choose a starting point. On the Garmin, you need to pick it. There is no address entry so you need to zoom out and move around to find your final location. The garmin unit has an overcomplicated menu/screen system. Screens scroll up, down, left, and right. Some screens have menus with multi screens and some do not. Some screens scroll up and some do not. So you scroll right one screen then try scroll up and then down. Then you can scroll right again then try scroll up/down. It's a complex web of screens that drive you crazy. To find a screen is not easy. Getting to the home page is a challenge. The screen size is 3" but the map screen has a graphic block on top and the bottom . Which makes the viewable map smaller. But it's still viewable but certainly not a 3" map. Overall the screen size is small. Comparing to a phone screen this will seem very small. It's usable but the map you have on your phone is way easier to read and to navigate around. The routing is a big letdown. It's chooses 45MPH streets often. And it routes you down fast roads with no shoulder for miles. Even when there are side streets available it chooses the high speed road. It appears to avoid bike paths unless they are the shortest possible route. This can be tested from the app, I believe you can download the app and test the routing before buying this device. Some locations may do better routing. The best routes are what others have shared. The Garmin routes are really bad. It looks like it uses routes made for cars rather than bikes. The default settings require users to restart the timer after each stop. That drives me crazy, this is a GPS. My simple bike odometer/timer does all that automatically. I think Garmin is overthinking the timer. I say keep it simple, the speed goes to zero, stop the timer. The speed increases above zero then start the timer. Why do I need to keep pressing the large timer start button on the screen after every stop at an intersection. While the screen has street names, only some street names are displayed, not all the streets. Since I try to mostly ride bike pathes, the road/path names are unnamed on the device. The display screen is easy to read. Just wish the routing was better and the interface could be simplified. I own several Garmin type GPS devices and they are great and easy to use. This device however is nothing like them and has an overly complicated interface. This is a difficult device to use as a GPS navigator. I say pass on this device if navigation is your need.

Once it's configured, it starts up easily and works well. Pleased with the better-designed on/off button that shouldn't break down like the old softer-rubber button on older Garmin devices

This little computer worked very well on a recent 450-mile unsupported road bike trip. I had pre-loaded a route and broken it into sections before I left, but was able to modify the segments to comport with our progress (or lack of it) on the trip. But please note: I edited the route in Ride With GPS on my phone, and then sent it back to the Garmin. I think it would be difficult to do on the Garmin device. In addition to the navigation, i found myself using the climb-tracking feature and grade features the most on our hilly ride. NOTE: the learning curve was steep for me on this device, but once I figured out, I was very pleased with its performance, especially once I realized that it's helpful to supplement it with the phone to look at finer details of a route, overviews, or editing a route. I used only about 40% of the battery capacity for an entire day of riding, much much better than a phone.

I've had Garmin devices since the '90s so when my Lezyne Mega XL started misbehaving, I tried the Edge Explorer 2. I didn't need the extensive fitness stuff in the more expensive Garmin devices. I wanted it to track and log my rides and do some navigation when I was exploring a new area so the Explorer 2 seemed to fit the need. The first thing I ran into was that there are only 3 available profiles - Road, Off Road and indoor. It turns out you can't add more profiles. You are limited to 3. I ride a tandem with my wife and have road, gravel and mountain bikes. You can rename them and you can tweak the "Indoor" profile to show the screens you want, but if you have more than three riding scenarios you have to get creative with your ride notes. The second problem is that when the unit Auto Sleeps, the altimeter quits working. Several users on the Garmin forums have complained about this, but as of September 18, 2024 Garmin hasn't fixed this. I was really frustrated because I would be 5 - 10 miles into a ride and realize the elevation wasn't changing and I had 0 for Ascent and Descent. Now that I know that is a problem, I won't turn the unit on until I am read to roll plus I went into the profiles and turn Auto Sleep OFF, but I have several rides with elevation profiles like Holland even though I live in Colorado ;)