Garmin 530 and Trailforks

[weaponsgrade]

Looking for any thoughts on the Garmin 530 and specifically the preloaded Trailforks maps. DC Rainmaker gave it a great review, but I'm finding some not so great reviews too. My sole reason for upgrading to the 530 would be for those Trailfork maps. How useful are they? I've never used Trailforks, but I've downloaded new routes from mtbproject. I'd love having everything preloaded.

What I'd like to be able to do is find a new place, start a route, switch things up part way through, and still be able to find my way back to my start. For example, I might come to a trail junction and decide that one path looks more interesting than the one I'm on and I'd like to be able to deviate from the planned route. Or maybe I'd like to bail early or extend the ride onto a new trail. How well does the 530 handle changes like that?

[JAGI410]

Trailforks is a great service. As a trail manager, I use Trailforks to announce openings/closures/issues and update for any route changes. This is where the preloaded part might not always work on the 530. I'm genuinely curious to see how it plays out, and how often updates are handled.

As for the phone app, it's fantastic for the scenario you mentioned. You can pull it up and it'll say left is this trail and right is that trail, etc and decide if that's the route you want to take.

[C40_guy]

I just purchased an 830 without Trailforks. With a Trailforks/Pinkbike account I was able to download and install the Trailforks maps pretty easily.

I don't know if there is any difference between the preloaded maps and those that can be downloaded...

I haven't used it on the trails yet.

[trener1]

I am very interested in this as well for exactly the reasons that the OP mentions.