I’ve had my Garmin Edge 800 and Garmin heart-rate monitor for about 8 months now, have logged over 1400 bike miles this year and I still love this bike computer and use my heart-rate monitor on just about every ride now.

It’s funny, I never had a heart-rate monitor until this year and was not really all that interested in having one before. Now, I feel like I am totally missing something when I ride without it. I am constantly checking my HR and my HR zone as I ride for an efficient ride and also to stay within a safe range for myself.

Anyway, here’s the story on the problems that I’ve had with my HR monitor. About a month ago the HR readings on my Edge 800 started to drop out occasionally or give me readings that were obviously too low. I wet the sensors on the strap, as Garmin suggests,  for a better connection and the HR readings would usually come back but they still kept dropping off occasionally.

After a few weeks, it became difficult to get the heart-rate readings on my GPS unit at all and when I did they were usually wrong.

So the most obvious thing to try was to replace the battery in the transmitter so I did that. ~ One note on changing the battery is that you need to remove 4 tiny screws that I found extremely difficult to remove. You have to get the perfect sized miniature screw driver to get them out without stripping them. When I changed the battery on my old Vetta bike computer, I could use a quarter and a half turn opened it up easily. I mentioned this to Garmin when I talked to one of their support people.

So after changing the battery, I had the same problems. Next, I did some searches on the internet for a resolution. I found that a few websites (including the Garmin site) that says that you need to reset the transmitter by waiting a minute after removing the old battery and putting the new one in. Well, I didn’t do that the first time so I opened it up again and did the reset procedure. Still no luck ~ Same problems.

My next step was to call Gamin support. I have actually found Garmin support to be very helpful in the past and with this issue. You need to wait a short time for support but it is not all that bad and I have found their support to be very good (and friendly people too).

When I talked to the support rep I explained the problem and the steps that I had already taken which was good because I would have had to do those things first anyway. I also mentioned that I cleaned the sensors on the strap after each use as they suggest.

The support rep told me that my HR unit would still be under warranty but suggested one other procedure to try which was to wash the sensors on the strap with a mild soap (like Dawn dish soap) and to soak it over night. OK, so I did that and once again no luck.

I called Garmin support once more and explained the situation. This time they just went ahead and sent me a replacement HR monitor (strap and transmitter) since it was still under warranty.

So a few days ago I received my new HR monitor from Garmin and have already used it on a couple of rides. It is so nice to have my HR monitor back again!

I am disappointed that the old one only lasted about 7 months and am a little skeptical  about how long the replacement will last. Only time will tell on that. I am very happy with Garmin support though. BTW: I tested the new strap with my old transmitter and it worked so the problem was with the sensors in the strap itself.

Well that got a little longer than I expected.

I did also want to mention though that I still really love my Edge 800 bike computer and will probably never go back to the old wheel/magnet based bike computers again.

I was going to write a little more about the Edge 800 features that I have gotten to like so much but since this post has gotten so long, I guess I’ll just have to save that for another post.

I did put quite a bit of information out on the Garmin Edge 800 Bike GPS Review page on this site for those who may be interested in the Edge 800 (or the other Edge models).