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Recently I've bought a garmin solar 1040, everything works fine but when I use the navigation and I miss a bend it freezes and becomes sluggish and to turn a page it takes at least 10-15 seconds, in practice when you most need it the unit does not work. My question is there someone else that is experiencing the same issue, or do you have some idea to solve the problem? The unit is always updated.

Giovanni
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  • How long is your route, and in what format do you upload it? While I don't use a garmin myself, my friend's seems to get unhappy with 600km routes loaded as GPX with lots of points, especially if you go off route (or lose signal under a bridge for example). Shorter routes seem better, and we think that converting to garmin's own file formats helps – Chris H Aug 25 '23 at 10:12
  • I’ve had a few complete freezes and crashes while navigating with my new Garmin Edge 840 (stock maps). Something I’ve never experienced with the old 820. – Michael Aug 25 '23 at 12:06
  • it happens also with 20km courses and i use gpx files with nothing else that the coordinates, sometimes I open the file and I separate them manually (if you are wondering I do this is because I am a nerd) – Giovanni Aug 25 '23 at 12:38

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I have am Edge 540 and can at least confirm that it becomes a bit sluggish in UI when you miss a bend or turn and it says "Recalculating" but I haven't tried actively using the device because I usually wait and see where it sends me.

My guess would be that this is a calculation-intensive routine and thus the overall performance of the device will be impacted but it shouldn't to a degree that it is unusable in my opinion.

Does it make a difference if you are in an urban area with lots of routing options vs. missing the bend and just having to u-turn back as your only choice of routing?

More complex routing takes longer, just like your car's navigation takes longer to calculate a route of 300 kilometers than to the store next town.

Have you checked if any of the power-saving options on the device are enabled, that could play a role because the processor's speed is throttled for better battery life (at least I would guess they are doing this), such settings definitely exist on the Edge x40 generation of devices. If that isn't the case, a routine factory reset never hurts and contacting Garmin about it - if there isn't a fix, this at least increases visibility of the problem to them and might lead to a future bugfix/firmware update.

DoNuT
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    I've checked and the device it is at its full potential. Previously I owned a garmin 530 and it were perfect, if I miss a bend actually wasn't freaking out and the recalculation was fast and obviously the device do not freezed. I do not find acceptable that the new flagship device becomes sluggish while the old middle level was perfect. I used the 530 even with 400km course and was perfect, the 1040 freezes even with a 20km course. I also contacted garmin but I wanted to know if someone else are experiencing the same problem. – Giovanni Aug 25 '23 at 09:21
  • I just did a quick search and some say Climb Pro is a "battery and processor sink", so if you are not using it or are happy with the normal elevation page, might give a try disabling it? – DoNuT Aug 25 '23 at 09:31
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    @Giovanni I suspect that top models often try to be too clever, giving a slightly better route but having to think much harder to do so – Chris H Aug 25 '23 at 10:14
  • I would even assume that the 1040 uses the same routing algorithm as the 840/540 (unless Garmin marketed it explicitely), why would they implement it for every device? The current lineup probably shares lots of hardware/software components but the 1040 just packs additional features on top, so it is a bit like an old laptop with too much software installed. Sluggishness might be a straight firmware bug but might be mitigate by deactivating features that are not needed, less software modules to run, more resource.If that makes sense. – DoNuT Aug 25 '23 at 11:27
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    I understand your point @DoNuT but in my opinion it should not be like this, you cannot sell a device pretending to do things that cannot sustain especially if you sell at that price tag, for me is a fraud – Giovanni Aug 25 '23 at 12:41
  • Absolutely. I'm a software engineer, not in the consumer business but I doubt that this is an issue on 100% of 1040s, it is often a specific user configuration, much more software packed onto the device just increases the risk of things jamming up and that's why top-of-the range devices can be a nightmare. If you haven't already, I'd check for updates once more and reset it to factory settings if you don't mind effort of setting it up again (thankfully, Garmin in 2023 stores paired sensors and stuff in the cloud). – DoNuT Aug 25 '23 at 12:50
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    The devices is always updated and now I’ve done a master reset and let’s see if the problem goes away. ps. I am a mathematicians that turned on programming so i see your point – Giovanni Aug 26 '23 at 04:35