fail: Garmin or mobile phone GPS?

Dustin bought a new Garmin mountain bike GPS for the tour in the Fichtel Mountains. Great for him! Daniel wanted to stick to his Android app for tracking and guidance and definitely did not want to purchase another device for a couple of hundred Euros.

We saw our chance to settle the fight and to test the Garmin Oregon against the Android app “Locus Pro” to see how far apart the tracking results would be. Trying to be smart we downloaded the latest and FREE Openstreet maps for mountain biking on the Garmin. Of course only the maps for the region of the Fichtel Mountains. So far so good! For a fair comparison we loaded the same maps on Daniel´s Android phone.

Day of the mountain bike GPS comparison

Three days later and about 500 km away from home we were ready to start the tour and the comparison: Both, phone and Garmin mounted got mounted on the handlebars. Alll batteries fully loaded. Devices switched on. Ready to start…wait…what? Damn!…during our attempt of being smart we downloaded the maps of all Germany EXCEPT for the region of the Fichtel Mountains on the Garmin. A clear victory for the Android app. To be fair we decided to shifted the comparison of Garmin against mobile app to one of our next trips.

Let us know if you prefer a GPS device or your mobile phone in the comments and if you want u to repeat the comparison.