The Garmin Edge 1030 and thick winter gloves…

As you may have seen, I’m on a holiday in The Netherlands and I brought my winter cycling kits with me. During a ride I got a message on my Edge 1030, telling me that the Virb battery was low. Because this message was blocking the entire screen, I tried to click it away with my Castelli Estremo glove, but alas, nothing happened. Clicking or swiping didn’t do a thing. Instead of taking off the glove I came up with a pro tip:

Pro tip: thick gloves and @Garmin Edge 1030 are not a good match. You can swipe or press all you want, but nothing will happen. Stop this madness, use your tongue instead (probably not a good idea when the Edge is still on your handlebar mount…)! pic.twitter.com/sURraeIjaK

— Don Bici (@Don_Bici) October 31, 2018

The guys at Garmin got back to me and told me to try and changing the touch sensitivity of the screen.

Hi Don! Love the pro tip, but there could be a better way. Changing the Touch Sensitivity may also help, as explained here: https://t.co/aht28Rdm98

Please let us know if you have any questions. Thank you! (KS)

— Garmin (@Garmin) November 5, 2018

Mine was already set to “high”, so I tested swiping the screen with three different pairs of Castelli gloves and came up with this:

Using the Garmin Edge 1030 with winter gloves

I recently went for another bike ride and wore the same thick Castelli Estremo gloves. Now when I got the Virb battery low message, I was able to click it away. I found out that indeed I can use the Edge 1030 with these thick gloves, but only if I touch the screen with the silicone texture on the inside:

Castelli Estremo gloves

I also tried swiping the screen and that works sometimes but only with a lot of pressure. With the thinner winter gloves both clicking and swiping is no problem whatsoever. I have most info I need on one screen and my Virb cameras automatically start filming as soon as I click start, so for me, not being able to swipe the screen is not really a problem. If it is a problem for you, then the Estremo gloves are not for you (too bad, because they are brilliant winter gloves!).

Conclusion: With the Estremo gloves you can use the Edge 1030 by clicking on the screen, but swiping just doesn’t work (well enough). I’m pretty sure that if you have thick winter gloves that don’t have silicone texture or something similar on the inside, you can’t use the Edge 1030 at all.

If you have thick winter gloves with which you can actually swipe the screen of your Edge 1030, let me know what gloves (band and model) you have!