Garmin Edge 380 Calorie Counter.

[Two Tone]

Does anybody know if the calorie counter on a Garmin Edge is reasonably accurate ?

 

[MrSimmo]

For me on my 830, it isnt at all. It was way off, the smart nutrition doesnt work well either - if I’d followed the recommendations I would have burnt 1200 cals and needed to drink 2000ml of water for a 12 mile ride, 7 of those were a virtually flat road...

I’ve disabled all of the nutritional/cal settings now ?

 

[p3eps]

I can only compare to my Apple Watch and BLEvo. They’re all slightly different, but all within the same ball park figure.
Same with distances, elevation etc. The only thing the same is the time ?

 

[Mcharza]

Does anybody know if the calorie counter on a Garmin Edge is reasonably accurate ?

As I have the Garmin Fenix 6 Plus, it's calorie counter is not accurate

 

[Funkeydunk]

My garmin is pants when it comes to calories, after 3:20 rinding and 3500 feet of clines and it says I burned 670 cals. My buddies are over 2k.

 

[Shifty]

My garmin is pants when it comes to calories, after 3:20 rinding and 3500 feet of clines and it says I burned 670 cals. My buddies are over 2k.

I remember that some apps count total calories including resting and some just active calories. When these got uploaded to my old Apple health it used to adjust for the resting calories and remove the resting calories the watch had already accounted for. My Fenix 5 is pretty similar on calories burned than my Apple Watch was overall.
It also depends on your other metrics you have loaded in.

 

[mark1a]

I think with any eMTB that does not broadcast rider input power over ANT+ or Bluetooth to the device, the calories will be out by a factor of around 3x. I base this on seeing eBike rides where Garmin and/or Strava is estimating the power and therefore the calories based on speed over distance and terrain, on the assumption that it’s a non-assisted bike, therefore it must be the rider generating the performance hence the way over optimistic number of calories. On my Levo, I have it sending the input power in watts to the Garmin Edge, riders on the same route without this appear to burn 3x the calories with 3x the power. So to summarise the only way you will get accurate power & calories on a bike computer or app is to either have a bike that has rider power on a broadcast channel, or a separate crank or pedal based power meter.

 

[mark1a]

My garmin is pants when it comes to calories, after 3:20 rinding and 3500 feet of clines and it says I burned 670 cals. My buddies are over 2k.

If that’s a Levo in your profile picture and you have it paired as a power meter to a Garmin, your 670 will be correct and their (assuming they are also ebikes) 2k+ will be wrong.

 

[p3eps]

If I ride my Stumpjumper, my Garmin and Apple Watch are close to each other in terms of calories burned.

When on my Levo SL, Blevo and the Garmin match up (almost), but my Apple Watch doesn’t.

The Garmin is definitely taking the fact I’m on an ebike into consideration when calculating the calories burned.
Blevo knows exactly how many Watts I (the rider) am putting in vs how much the bike is. They both also know my HR and how hard I’m working!