Garmin Connect Mobile app is designed to help you track your fitness and health via the measurements made by Garmin devices that you use.
Calendar
Most people will probably find that the app’s most useful feature is its calendar. If you own a Garmin Edge cycling computer – a 520 or an 820, for example – the calendar allows you to review rides you’ve done in the past, using the app as a detailed training diary.
Click on any activity and you can see a map of your ride along with the distance you rode, duration, average speed, elevation gain and so on, plus any other data you’ve measured on your Garmin through connected sensors, such as heart rate and power. You can see lap data and view the measurements as charts for a picture of how your performance has varied over time.
Read our review of the Garmin Edge 820 here.
You can also see how you performed on any Garmin Segments (portions of the ride, similar to Strava Segments) against other users. People certainly compete for Garmin Segments but they haven’t caught the cycling public’s imagination to the same extent as Strava Segments which appeared on the scene first.
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Check out our buyer’s guide to cycling GPS units.
LiveTrack
If your Garmin supports LiveTrack – and most current Edge computers do – you can set that through the Garmin Connect Mobile app. LiveTrack allows people of your choosing to see your ride on a GPS map in real time, perhaps to reassure them that you’re safe or just to check your progress.
When you start a LiveTrack session, you’re asked to give permission to track your mobile device. People you invite via email, Facebook or Twitter receive a link to a webpage that includes the position of your phone or connected Edge.
These followers can also see elapsed time, distance, speed and elevation, plus any data from ANT+ sensors you have connected.
Other features
You can use Garmin Connect Mobile to send stored workouts via Bluetooth to most current Garmin Edges (not the Edge 20, nor older models such as the Edge 500) although you need to visit Garmin Connect online to create more workouts. The same applies to courses: you can transfer them from the app to a Garmin Edge if they already exist, but you have to create them via a computer.
The lack of tools for planning and scheduling is one of the Garmin Connect Mobile app’s biggest weaknesses for users who want to get the most from their training. It’s a reason for many Garmin Edge users to switch to third party training apps.
Other features include the ability to compare certain aspects of your cycling performance, such as your average speed, with that of other users, although that’s of limited value. You don’t know how the terrain you ride compares to average, for example.
Check out our review of the Garmin Edge 520 here.
Where can I get it?
The Garmin Connect Mobile app is free. Download the iOS app or the Android app.
Mat has worked for loads of bike magazines over 20+ years, and been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. He's been road.cc technical editor for eight years, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. We send him off around the world to get all the news from launches and shows too. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a past winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer.
5 comments
I've got to say, this has always struck me as an almost entirely useless app. As far as I can tell, the only things it does well are taking the data off my Garmin and uploading it to Garmin Connect and Strava. Garmin Connect is also fairly worthless, although you can plot courses with it. Very difficult to import courses, however. I can't think of one other useful thing that the phone app does.
I find LiveTrack on my 520 handy for her at home with the kids. At least she knows how far away from home I am at the time when I said I'd be back
I think if you buy into the Garmin ecosystem of activity trackers etc it becomes more useful but as a stand alone bike or run app then it's not too hot
Also I find Connect fairly satisfactory, I've never really got the Strava thing so I'm happy to have my 910xt load all my swim, bike, run activities. If I wanted more then it would be training peaks.
The two main uses I find for this app are as a portal for other wifi/bluetooth enabled Garmin devices, Vivoactive HR and Smart scales, both to simply review their data and to connect to Garmin Connect combining this data with that from my Edge 800 as it's too old hat to connect to this app.
I also connected My FitnessPal's diet diary to link diet to weight which requires the Smart scales routed through the app rather than direct to Garmin via wifi due to data sharing restrictions in the API agreement imposed by Garmin on third party apps.
All in all I find it useful to give a general 24/7 health overview rather than an app to provide detailed analysis specific to my cycling interests. The website does offer a greater number of dashboards, which I wish the app could match, but for greater analysis I'd turn to Golden Cheetah.
Also available for Windows & Windows mobile, it you're one of the 1%...
I'm one of those 1% and it's only up untill very recently that the live track became stable, worth the wait though.