In the end, the Garmin 1040 mentioned in last week’s ride wrap-up didn’t have support for multibyte characters, which meant all the place names (once I’d loaded the map of Japan) looked like this: ����. So back it went, and today a spiffy Garmin 1050 arrived, with the Japan map loaded out of the box.

Initial impressions

First of all, the weather is really good today, just a bit on the cold side, and I’m just being a slug for not being out on the bike.

That aside, the new Garmin. Of course the first thing I did on opening the box was making sure I could have English menus and a Japan map that properly displays Japanese text. Check on both points.

The initial set-up and sync went much more quickly than the 1040 had. Both have USB-C charging ports, so that’s a big improvement over the 1030’s Micro-B. The 1040 had a much more graphical interface than the 1030, and with the 1050 that’s taken even further (as seen in the photos above). The screen is also noticeably brighter, at least in my den. I’m eager to see how it will look in bright sunshine through my shades.

But for that to happen, I’ll have to give up being a lazy slug.

Screenshots

I’ve done a bit more set-up and got a couple of screenshots while I was at it.