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Cycling Weekly
Cycling Weekly
Sport
Joe Baker

The humble Garmin Edge 530 is still the most used cycling computer on Strava - here's why

Male rider training using Critical Power.

Strava has lifted the lid on statistics from over 100 million users this month with its 'Year In Sport'. Similar to Spotify Wrapped, Year In Sport allows users to see a satisfactory summary of the kilometers they've covered over the previous 12 months. 

But alongside individual statistics, Strava has also released 'The Trend Report', giving away the stats on some more general trends from its army of users, including the most used cycling computer on the platform. Enter: the humble Garmin Edge 530.

(Image credit: Future)

The Garmin Edge series has been a dominant force for the last decade, developing a reputation for great functionality and solid build quality, and the Garmin Edge 530 was no exception.

The 530 was first released back in April 2019, and on its release we thought it was "quite possibly the best Garmin cycle computer ever produced", offering all the functionality you really need, with no nonsense.

The Edge 530 foregoes a touchscreen, instead opting for simple button controls, which in my opinion, tend to be much less finicky. You'll find capabilities for GPS navigation, ANT+ and Bluetooth connectivity, and various metrics for analysing climbs and even trail riding inside the Garmin Edge 530, all housed inside an IPX7 body with a 2.6" colour screen.

(Image credit: Garmin)

And it's this happy medium on the cost/feature spectrum that we think has led to the popularity of the device. It's worth noting too, that in our most recent cycling computer grouptest, the Edge 530 was still hailed as the best value cycling computer of the older generation units we included in our test.

Unfortunately, Strava has only listed the most used devices for both running and cycling - so the other top-rated cycling computers remain a mystery. Nevertheless, it's clear Garmin's hold on both the cycling computer and smartwatch sector is still substantial.

Alongside the most popular upload devices, Strava also unveiled the top bike brands on the platform. The bike data does rely on users manually updating the current bike of choice in their profile (something which I can say with confidence that I haven't done in well over a year), and provides perhaps some less surprising reading. 

(Image credit: Strava)

In ascending order, the list reads Giant in third place, Specialized in second, and Trek in first  - no prizes for guessing those correctly!

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