This is a question I get asked all the time, and like so many things in life, the answer is “it depends”. Here’s some options to help you work out which one will suit you best.
Garmin Edge maps for road cycling
If you’ll be riding mostly on road, then you want a map which displays an appropriate level of detail, but not too much extraneous stuff that will distract your attention and make it slower to use. Quick and clean.
My map of choice for road use, for many years now, is the City Navigator map. You can buy a map for your part of the world.
The City Navigator maps have a perfectly balanced level of detail so that it has everything you need, and no more. It loads fast and looks clear on screen, and the maps are of course, fully routable on all of the appropriate roads.
See the range of City Navigator maps at Amazon
As I said, it’s what I use most of the time.
Garmin Edge maps for off-road
Off-road cyclists will need more visual detail in their maps. Whenever I’ve gone off road, or indeed just using my Garmin Edge 800 when walking in the hills, I tend to use the Ordnance Survey Discoverer maps.
These are the maps that are most similar to the printed paper maps you will have bought in the past, so it will feel familiar and useful.
Again, you can buy maps for distinct areas.
See the range of Garmin Discoverer Maps at Amazon
But what if, I hear you say, you don’t want to spend any money? This is the internet, after all. Isn’t everything supposed to be free these days?
Thanks to the rather amazing Open Source mapping projects, the answer is yes. You can download totally free maps for your Garmin, for any part of the world, and they are ok to use. I’ve used them, for the purposes of testing and so on, but as I’ve already mentioned, my personal choice is the City Navigator map.
Read my tutorial – How to download free OSM maps for your Garmin, for almost any country.
Why do I favour the paid City Navigator Map over the free OSM map?
Good question. Have you ever been in a meeting where you need to achieve something rather simple, but there are quite a few people involved, and everyone wants their say? Everyone is very polite, and nods approvingly at every suggestion being made, regardless of going off on tangents and coming up with ideas that don’t add value to the core thing that needed to be sorted out? It’s the classic “designed by committee” syndrome, and I feel that compared to the planned, rationalised commercial products, sometimes the OSM maps suffer from having too much pointless detail.
Sometimes it’s better to have a product that’s been well designed, with clear intention, rather than something that’s evolved rather wildly and almost randomly, with little consistency. You wouldn’t buy a bike that had been designed by committee, would you?
Don’t get me wrong though, I do love the concept of Open Source :-)
This was another “Reader’s Questions” post.
If you’d like to ask a question, you can either ask me a question via my contact form, or if you’re feeling really bold, try my latest gizmo and leave me a voice message!
Hi
A quick question on the City Navigator Maps you recommend. I currently use whatever come with the Garmin 1000, and I do have issues. I ride a load of country roads and these maps don’t even show the Road! Will these paid for maps show more Detail?
Hi Keith, can you give me a specific place to look for, and I’ll send you a screenshot!
I have an Edge 820 and would really like to understand what sort of improvement (if any) I could get by upgrading to City Navigator. I’ve tried to find a side-by-side comparison video but have drawn a blank.
Hello A
I bought a Garmin 1000 and the recommended Garmin City maps.
Question: having downloaded a series of routes from my laptop to use in Italy I found that the Garmin gave me no help if I started off route (it would not direct me back to the route) or veered off it en route. It would possibly show me a faint pink line somewhere on the screen but gave me no help re how to get back there.
Whilst off route it never recalculated the Remaining Distance ( my car Garmin does this all the time) but only did this when I touched the planned route again.
When on route it does not warn me of turnings coming up but happily does it if I use the Where To facility to make the route on the go.
Finally – when typing in a (long – they often are!!) Italian address it often crashes and has to be switched off and restarted. Maybe due to Italian gremlins?
Any advice would bd appreciated!
Thanks
Soren
I have the same issue as Soren. Any suggestions?
Also, I have just used whatever came pre-installed on the Garmin 1000. Is this the OSM you refer to in your blog or something different again? In which case, as per Dave’s question, how does this differ?
I believe the OSM version you get with the Edge 1000 is a custom OSM version made by Garmin, so it is different from the freebie OSM versions available on the internet. I’ve not used it, so I can’t compare it with a “regular” OSM. It is however, probably infinitely more useful than the original “basemap” that came with the Edge 800, for example.