I recently purchased the Garmin 130 Plus to replace my five-year old Edge 25, and to me it is an improvement in just about every way: new features, larger and sharper screen, quicker satellite acquisition, better battery life, and more customizable interface. I'm very pleased, but if you are coming from a higher end Garmin unit, or another brand, your experience may be different.
I would like to comment on a couple of the repeated criticisms of this model, because they nearly dissuaded me from my purchase. I don't have any axe to grind for Garmin, but I think misinformed or misleading negative reviews are a bane for consumers.
Regarding battery life, Garmin has posted a chart on their website, showing the estimated impact of different settings and device pairings. (There should probably be a link to this chart in the product description here on Amazon.) The respected expert reviewer DC Rainmaker has attested that the estimates in the chart are generally accurate, and this has been my experience. I am on track to get 12 hours from my first charge, with standard GPS, no phone or sensor pairings, no backlighting, no alerts, etc. If you need all those features, and take long rides, you should probably look for a model with a larger battery, but it will also be larger in size. The point is, you can estimate the battery life in your use case before you purchase.
Regarding the user interface, I wish fewer button pushes were required to do basic functions, like starting a ride. It is annoying to have to choose the ride type on each ride. But, the significance of this should not be exaggerated. On an iPhone, it takes four steps to delete a batch of emails that are already in the trash, which is just as annoying. And Apple is considered the paragon of interface design. If you can operate a cell phone, you can learn to use the 130 Plus. And if you ride often, using it will quickly become second nature. If you absolutely want to minimize the use of buttons, then you should look for a model with a touch interface, but that brings its own tradeoffs.
So far, my Garmin 130 Plus has performed as advertised, and without issue.
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