Garmin has just announced the Garmin Varia Vue, which combines a 600 lumen front light with a safety camera capable of recording in 4K. This essentially becomes the logical pairing to the Garmin Varia RCT-715 rear camera/radar combo. Of course, given it’s Garmin the price isn’t cheap: $549. And of course, there’s also a secondary subscription option as well, to store your footage in the Garmin Vault cloud platform (a service that’s been on their vehicular dash cams for years.
I’ve ben putting the Varia Vue through its pace over the last few weeks across a variety of riding scenarios. From paved roads to dirt roads, daylight to sunset to nighttime, all to see how well it works, and how it compares.
Finally, note that Garmin sent over media loaner unit to test out. As usual, this review is not sponsored (nor does any company get to preview anything I review), and I don’t take any advertiser money from any companies I review. Once this unit goes back, I’ll go out and buy my own for any future testing needs. If you found this review useful, you can use the links at the bottom, or consider becoming a DCR Supporter, which makes the site ad-free. And, of course, it makes you awesome.
In the Box:
The Varia Vue includes everything you’d need to mount and use the camera/light, as well as to hold a Garmin Edge series device (or actually, a COROS Dura, Hammerhead Karoo with adapter, Sigma devices, Wahoo with adapter, and others, since they all use the quarter-turn mount).
In total that’s:
– USB-C charging cable
– Garmin Varia Vue unit
– Out-front mount for round handlebars
– Handlebar adapters (for smaller bars)
– Varia Vue to handelbar mount quick release
– Tether
– Screw for Varia Vue into GoPro adapter quick release
Here’s a closer look at the camera bits:
And then the mount bits:
Here’s the adapter that snaps to the underside of the Garmin mount, with a GoPro style mount on the one side to attach to the Varia Vue Camera. This is great, because it also means that A) You can use the Varia Vue with any out-front mount that has a GoPro adapter, and B) You can use your GoPro with the Garmin out-front mount.
Ok, with that, let’s get it mounted up.
Mounting & Setup:
First up, is the handlebar mount. The Varia Vue comes with an out-front Garmin mount, as well as an underslung adapter kit to snap it in place. Basically you’re getting a mount for your Garmin Edge computer, as well as a piece that connects to the bottom:
To connect the Varia Vue, you’ll connect the adapter plate to the GoPro mount first, like so:
And then snap that to the bottom of the Garmin out-front mount:
The good thing here is that you don’t need to use the Garmin out-front mount. In fact, in my case, I used my Canyon Bike’s out-front mount for most of my rides, and then the GoPro adapter on the bottom of it:
The GoPro adapter on the underside of most out-front bike mounts is super common, and effectively a universal standard.
Next, you’ll want to pair the Varia Vue to your bike computer. If you’re on an Edge x40 or x50 series device (e.g. Edge 540/840/1040, or Edge 1050), then you’ll get both light control and extended camera control options. Whereas on other bike computers, from Garmin or otherwise, you’ll get the standard ANT+ light controls (for adjusting brightness). But not camera controls. That’s actually not a huge thing, since the camera automatically records as soon as it powers on. The camera controls allow you to manually save clips/photos on the fly while riding (making it easier to find those clips later).
Going into the pairing screen, you’ll search for ANT+ Bike Lights. This is an industry standard and is supported on Garmin, Wahoo, Hammerhead, COROS, and numerous other bike computer brands. The key benefit of the ANT+ Bike Light standard is that it will automatically turn on/off the bike light when you start/end most rides, as well as allows control of the light brightness and flash settings.
The first time you pair it up, it’ll walk through the basics of the headlight.
Now I’ll get into the camera controls in a bit, but that piece will only work on the Garmin Edge series devices, and not other platforms, as there is no standard for camera controls (Ok, nitpickers corner: There is a standard, but none of the other companies have implemented it).
Still, all other companies have implemented the light controls piece, which is called a ‘Bike Light Network’, enabling you to add front or rear bike lights from any number of different companies (be it a Garmin, Trek, Wahoo, etc….). In most cases, cycling radars are also considered ANT+ Bike Lights as well (technically they have both the ANT+ Radar and ANT+ Bike Light profiles). Point being, it acts as one cohesive light system when paired on most bike computers. Here you can see the Hammerhead Karoo, COROS Dura, Garmin Edge 1050, and Wahoo ACE, all connected and showing the light controls:
Ok, with that all set, let’s get into some of the light control pieces, which are more universal, and then we’ll dive into the camera control pieces.
Light Control & Brightness:
First up, we’ll start with one of the easier things, which is the light control pieces. Like all aspects of the Garmin Varia Vue, you can control it either from your phone or a Garmin device. However, with light control also leveraging the ANT+ standard, you can further control it on virtually all bike computers from Wahoo, Hammerhead, COROS, and a number of others. See, standards are neat, ehh?
Within the light control options, there’s five light options:
High (steady on) – 550 lumens
Medium (steady on)- 300 lumens
Low (steady on) – 140 lumens
Night Flash – 400 lumens
Day Flash – 600 lumens
However, note that if you buy the StVZO version, sold in Germany, it has a lower light rating:
High (steady on) – 165 lumens
Medium (steady on)- 120 lumens
Here’s the control panel on the Garmin Edge:
When it comes to visibility at night, I used the high steady-on (550 lumens), which was frankly too bright in some cases. For example, as you’ll see later in the camera footage section, it actually blows out the licenses plates with too much light for Garmin’s not-so-awesome-camera-sensor, so that you can’t read the plates in front of you, though, you can read the ones on parked cars, as the light isn’t directly hitting it.
Out of all the night footage I have, I was only able to get a single license plate with the driver went astoundingly slow past me, and there was a secondary car a bit behind them to illuminate the plate, but not yet in my headlight to blow out the plate.
But otherwise, it all looked like this, with unreadable plates. That said, in terms of capturing the general arc of an incident, this would do it just fine (if the car stopped or someone otherwise could capture the plate).
Off-road, the light was actually perfectly fine for totally dark dirt roads (on high). While Garmin’s camera isn’t awesome at capturing that, and makes it appear far darker than it was, to our eyes, it was totally fine:
Heck, I even did some night trail work with it:
Meanwhile, in terms of visibility of the cyclist, first note that there are lights on the two sides:
At night, in a low setting, here’s what I looked like some 170m away:
Meanwhile, at day, also in low setting, some 250m away:
In general though, for on-road usage that the Varia Vue would be targeted at, the high steady 550 lumens is probably overkill, both in terms of the light you need to see the road, as well as the light needed to see you. But hey, it’s nice to have the option if you want it. Further note that by default your Garmin (and most other bike computers), will automatically control the brightness based on the available light/sensors.
For daytime use, on virtually all my rides, I went with the ‘Low’ steady on setting. Here in Europe, blinking lights are mostly frowned upon, whereas in the US, blinking lights are the norm. The light setting is the biggest factor in terms of battery life. Here’s Garmin’s official chart:
Do note that in Germany, with the StVZO version that limits the light, it has different specs for the battery times. You can find those exact battery specs on Garmin’s site here.
Because testing every possible combination is tricky, both myself and Des of DesFit have been trying different light/camera combinations for battery burn. Here’s the rough consolidation of our testing:
High Solid, with 4K/EIS: 2hr 10mins (but was just sitting still, so less accelerometer usage probably overestimates)
Medium Solid, with 4K/EIS: Lasted 90 minutes
Low Solid, with 4K/EIS: Did a 3hr 15 min ride, had 60%+ battery remaining (3 out of 5 battery blocks)
No light, just 4K/EIS: Did 3hr ride, had 50%+ remaining
*Plus a bunch of sub-90-minute tests I didn’t do battery testing on*
In other words, for some settings, like Low-Solid with 4K/EIS, I actually got well beyond spec (double it). I will note though that due to a bug around Garmin Vault, I did run into an issue in the last few days where basically the battery life was halved, as it was apparently failing to charge during the Vault uploads, yet reported as actually being fully charged. Garmin says the next firmware update will fix this. In the meantime, not enabling Vault uploads is an option (or…ya know…not paying for Garmin Vault), or, clearing out any saved/locked clips off the card.
Camera Control (Garmin Edge):
The first part of this section I’ll cover the Garmin-specific camera control options (for Edge x40 and x50 series devices), whereas the second section after this I’ll talk about controlling the camera from your phone instead. You can also press buttons on the side of the unit, cross-referencing it to the decoder ring of light colors in the manual. But, nobody is going to willingly do that.
Now when it comes to the Garmin Edge UI for this, it does seem overly complicated. At least in terms of initial usability. There’s numerous ways to get to the different UI elements, but each way presents itself slightly differently (for example you can see/check the light level when you go via Sensors > Light network, but not via Camera controls > Headlight Camera). But I’ll save my rants for other topics.
To see the quick-access camera controls, you just tap anywhere on the Edge screen, which brings up these big buttons below the battery/hours/weather metrics:
These buttons do three core things: Take a photo, Save a quick clip, Mark the entire ride to be saved. If however, you tap that little arrow at the right, you’ll get this screen:
Here you can see the current battery level, the mode you’re in, and whether or not it’s actively recording (for both front and rear camera). You’ll also see the total time recording in ride-filmed mode. One of the things that’s overly confusing here is that Garmin separates out ‘Recorded’ from ‘Saved’. To be clear, in plain English, every ride is saved. But in Garmin-parlance, ‘Saved’ has an explicit meaning also known as ‘Locked’, which means it won’t be overridden if you run low on space. Further ‘Saved’ clips/rides also will upload to Garmin Varia Vault.
If you were to tap either of the two camera options above, then you’ll see more camera-specific settings for the Varia Vue, but not the light settings. Also, if you were to tap those four lines nexts to the timer, then you’ll get the ability to customize the big three buttons displayed on the home page. I know, this makes your head hurt. Mine too.
The good news here, is that once you realize you just need to simply tap that YouTube-looking icon (for ‘Film Ride’) at the start of every ride to ‘Save’ the whole thing, including uploading to Garmin Varia Vault, then life is grand. I’m sure Garmin would you prefer you didn’t do that because it’ll take up a lot more storage on their service, but I’d also prefer Garmin offer a reasonably-priced and logically designed cycling-focused pricing plan for Garmin Vault. Perhaps they’ll find a compromise, but more on that in the Garmin Vault section.
Now, you’ll also have noticed back on the ride screen there’s a little recording icon in the upper right corner. This actually displays in one of two ways:
The first way, with ‘REC’, means that the Varia is recording in the background, but not marked as protected/saved/locked. The second method with timer means & rear-camera RCT-715 are recording. And finally, the half-red-dot means that only one camera (e.g. rear Varia camera) is recording. Versus a full dot means two cameras (front and back) are on/enabled. The half/full time dot applies to both REC and timer displayed. The timer shows how long I’ve been recording that saved clip for.
Finally, in the event you get into a crash, it’ll trigger automatic saving/locking of the footage. Thankfully, I haven’t had a car hit me in a while, so, I wasn’t able to test that this product release.
Garmin Varia App Options:
The Garmin Varia Vue uses the same Garmin Varia app as the Garmin Varia RCT-715 rear camera-radar, as well as their base radar units. It’s now been updated to pair to the Varia Vue front camera-light, as well as adding support for the Garmin Vault pieces within it.
You’ll start by pairing top the camera to the app, which happens via Bluetooth, but also for some functions via direct WiFi connection to the unit (such as using the camera preview function, as well viewing footage). Once paired up, you’ve got a few options. First, is the main page for the Varia Vue:
Within that, you can tap to open the camera configuration, gallery, or software updates page. Once in the camera configuration page, you can specify the recording mode, the video quality, incident recording options, and data overlays.
Note that for data overlays, when any of them are enabled, the Garmin logo is also enabled automatically. You can do a clean (non-overlay) option, but all options with date/time, GPS, or speed, will also add the Garmin logo. I don’t personally care about that, but I know some people do.
Here’s how an overlay looks with everything enabled. I’ve placed an arrow pointing at the speed, with the GPS coordinates to the left of that.
You can use the Live Camera Preview option to see what your camera is seeing. While this is functional, for reasons beyond explanation, Garmin has added a vignetting effect in this preview window (basically, a black vignette on the upper edges, only in the preview, not the recorded footage). Why on earth would you add this? It makes it impossible to tell whether or not the upper portion of the image may be blocked by the front of a mount/etc… Below, against a perfectly white wall:
The other slightly disappointing thing is there’s no option to flip the camera orientation. That might sound funny, but the reality is many e-bikes don’t actually use standard round handlebars, and more specifically, don’t have great GoPro mounting options either. For example, on the Canyon commuter eBike I have, there’s no way to mount the Garmin mount, or any other round-handlebar mount. Fine, instead, I’ll use a simple GoPro clamp mount. But when I do that in a straight/level way, it requires the camera be upside-down. All other cameras I know of, allow you to simply flip the image in software, but this doesn’t. It’s a minor nit, but one that would show a bit more maturity in the product.
Next, within the gallery you can look at footage on the unit. The unit has basically two core buckets of footage: Locked, and Unlocked. Locked footage is footage that you’ve either manually saved, or triggered by an incident. Whereas unlocked footage is that which can be deleted to make space. There’s also the ‘Downloaded’ option in the app, which is for footage you’ve downloaded to the app.
When you choose to download footage, it’ll download footage snippets in 10-minute increments, as seen on the disk:
Once downloaded you can then see the full quality, versus the lower preview quality option. Downloading clips does seem to take quite a while, especially given the relatively low bitrate the camera is. Once downloaded, you can save it to your camera roll, upload it to TikTok, or print off a screenshot to your dot matrix printer. Your choice.
You can also select to upload it to the Garmin Vault, but more on that in a second.
Note that the Garmin Varia Vue doesn’t seem to have a specific MicroSD card size limit. In my case, I used a 256GB card, and my friend DesFit used a 512GB card. Garmin did note though that with a much larger card (like the 512GB one), the app will be slower as it tries to enumerate all the footage each time. This is sorta the same issue that you’ll see on a jam-packed 512GB card in a GoPro/Insta360/DJI action cam. Still, I’m a fan of just going big on microSD card size, given how cheap they are.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning, if you have a Garmin Varia RCT-715, you’ll want to update the firmware on that unit to new firmware that just came out yesterday. It doesn’t give you new features per se, but it doesn’t essentially sync the RCT-715 with the Varia Vue, keeping those two units connected and synced together from a footage timecode perspective.
Garmin Vault:
Garmin Vault is Garmin’s online cloud platform for storing footage from their various vehicle dashboard cameras, and now also the Varia Vue camera. I’d presume at some point their update their rear-facing Garmin Varia RCT715 camera with a model that uploads to Garmin Vault as well (I confirmed with Garmin that the current version will not be getting an update to sync to Varia Vault).
When I first heard about this, I was pretty excited about it. The concept being when you charge/plugin your camera, it uploads your footage to the Garmin Vault cloud automatically. In my mind, it’d be very similar to GoPro’s cloud subscription service, which operates the same way: You plug in your camera, and boom, it syncs every bit of footage & photo in full resolution up to GoPro’s cloud, kept there forever, for just $49/year.
Except, that’s not how Garmin’s Vault operates.
To begin, Garmin’s platform cost $99/year. Worse yet, it doesn’t sync all your footage.
Instead, it will *only* sync those bits of footage that you’ve specifically set to be saved, or, were triggered during an incident. Saves can be triggered either during a ride, through your Edge computer, or afterwards with your phone. Once you’ve done that, then it’ll upload when plugged in, on WiFi (showing alternating blue & green lights):
At that point, you can open up the Varia Vue app, and within that the Vault to select a clip. By selecting a clip you can preview it live, or save a full res copy.
Further, you can send a link to someone, which will then download it from the Garmin Varia full (or, play it in an online player):
Like most things that seem to originate from the Dashcam world at Garmin, the site feels horrifically dated (after all, they haven’t updated the Copyright date in 5 years, seen above).
Nonetheless, my issue here isn’t how dated this feels. Rather, it’s the price just doesn’t make sense. Paying $99/year to save *MAYBE* a few minutes of saved clip footage just isn’t logical. Especially when you compare to GoPro’s $49/year for everything I record automatically, in full 5.3K resolution at 10-bit, with all the high fidelity trimmings. Again, I note that Garmin doesn’t upload all your footage, just the bits you selected to save. So if you simply went out and rode each day without pressing anything, nothing would get uploaded to Garmin Vault.
In other words, Garmin cycling needs to sit down and make the Garmin Vault appealing to cyclists. As right now, it’s a hard non-starter. Which is a shame, cause I was really excited about the concept until I started using it.
I will note though that in the event you already have a Garmin Dashcam device, your subscription will cover all your footage. You can have multiple devices linked to that Garmin Vault subscription, including both cycling and vehicular devices.
Daytime Footage & Readability:
Now, the first thing I wanted to note here is that all of my footage is shot in supposed 4K, with Garmin’s EIS stabilization turned on. EIS is what every action camera on the market does to make things stable. It’s just that they’re all way better at it.
But what’s left unsaid until you read the manual, is that Garmin actually drops the resolution a ton when you select EIS on. Here’s the chart:
I’d really struggle to see how we still call this 4K when it’s at 2,688 pixels. I mean, that’s a pretty massive stretch, and a huge bit lower in resolution. Typically, for most (all?) action cameras, you oversample, so you basically start off with a 5K or 6K potential image size, and then do your stabilization within that, bringing you down to 4K. Whereas Garmin apparently started at ~4K, and then cropped into that.
In any case, let’s look at footage. Note that I have all this in my video review at the top too, which is obvioussly…well..video, as opposed to stills.
Nonetheless, in every scenario during daytime, I could easily make out the plates.
Again here:
However, the stability of that footage was pretty rough. An action camera this is not, and more notably, it seems clear that Garmin is once again just trying to rehash some of their older dash cam sensors, as it’s just not stable at all, especially for having EIS enabled. This is like 2015-era EIS, and even that still probably beats it. A $179 GoPro Hero 4K also easily beats this in terms of stability and clarity during daytime usage.
Now, I already looked at night footage up above, so I won’t rehash that again in this section.
Garmin Varia Vue vs Cycliq Fly 12 Sport:
Now, Garmin isn’t the only game in town here. In fact, Cycliq has been in this realm for over a decade, with their Fly12 front-facing camera and light. Of course, that’s a company that has had some wobbles and substantial resets, but has more recently seemed to stabilize a bit. Back in the early days, the original models had actually many of the same ANT+ Light Control features, but during one of those management resets, they actually (bafflingly) got rid of all connectivity on their models. Thus, you can’t actually download your footage on the Fly12 Sport to your phone wirelessly, you have to remove the card. I’m not kidding.
Still, despite the lack of ANT+ and WiFi the most current edition (Fly12 Sport) is much cheaper than Garmin’s $549 offering, coming in at $319USD. Historically speaking the Fly12 footage has always kinda been so-so, in the same way that Garmin’s Varia Vue footage is so-so. I bought one a few days back, and it shipped out yesterday. It appears to be headed (as usual) for being stuck in Spanish customs. So…once I untangle that, I’ll get a proper comparison together.
For now though, here’s some of the key spec differences:
– Garmin has longer battery life than Cycliq: In the case of Garmin battery charts, they basically beat Cycliq in every light/camera setting combination. Cycliq only lists battery time in 1440p (slightly above 1080p), and even in that, Garmin beats it. Of course again, Garmin is far more expensive.
– Garmin has 4K, Cycliq tops out at ~2.5K: That said, in stabilized footage, both companies are at the same ~2.5K. So I’d consider this a wash in terms of specs. Both companies try and claim 4K specs, but realistically both companies fall short of the specific resolutions action cam companies would call 4K.
– Garmin has ANT+ Lighting control, Cycliq doesn’t: This is compatible with Garmin/Wahoo/COROS/Hammerhead, and other bike computers, for automatically turning on/off the the camera/light.
– Garmin has camera controls on some Edge units, Cycliq doesn’t: This is for the Garmin Edge x40 and x50 series units.
– Cycliq can overlay data from Strava on footage, Garmin can’t: This is *FAR* better than what Garmin can do, and the kicker is, Garmin actually had this functionality in their now defunct Garmin VIRB app. Note that in Cycliq’s case though, you do need to manually pull the card and download footage instead…which makes this a lot more clumsy.
– Cycliq is $230 cheaper than Garmin: This is pretty self-explanatory.
– Cycliq weighs quite a bit less 148g, whereas Garmin weighs 199g: Again, self-explanatory.
– Garmin’s light goes to 600 lumens, Cycliq goes to 400 lumens: This isn’t really an issue during daylight riding, since you’d use a lower light setting, but is notable at night, depending on your road lighting.
– Both companies allow date/time/GPS overlays on the footage automatically: This is pretty straightforward and similar.
– Both companies include an out-front mount: And both companies leverage the GoPro adapter/mount systems:
So in short, Garmin is basically uncharging in a relatively logical way for all the extra features, most notably the ability to wirelessly download footage, the ability to control the lights and camera from a bike computer, the 50% brighter light, and the far longer battery life. Whether any of those things actually matter to you, especially in daytime riding conditions, is probably the more valid question.
For me, I think the wireless download bits is actually probably the most notable/practical difference. I fail to understand why any sports/action/etc camera company in 2025 (let alone years ago), would remove WiFi from their product. This isn’t 2010. And likewise, this isn’t a $100 product. On that principle alone it was hard clicking purchase on the $319 Fly12 Sport. Still, if you plan to use it purely for post-crash type bits, then I suppose it’s only gonna be an issue once.
Again, more in the future once I untangle customs on the Fly12 Sport.
Wrap-Up:
The Garmin Varia Vue is good device that does what you need it to do, but it’d be hard to call it an amazing device. In many ways, it’s a prime example of what happens when there’s limited competition in a given category. The closest competition is the Cycliq Fly12 Sport, but there’s many gaps in that comparison. Instead, I see that more as the budget option here (as crazy as it is to say $319USD is the budget option).
Starting off with the good bits on the Varia Vue, the light is insanely bright, with a very large illumination area. It’ll easily illuminate the road ahead of you at night, while providing very clear rider visibility during the day (even on the low setting). The different light modes should cover pretty much any configuration you want (either solid or flashing). Next, the hardware case is solid. I’m reasonably sure that in a crash, this would actually hold up really well. Obviously, nothing is guaranteed, but this feels far better built than most action cams. Likewise, the GoPro mounting clip design works well, and is replaceable in case you somehow break it.
So then, moving towards lesser things. The camera footage in faux-4K is perfectly acceptable to pick out license plates in daylight conditions. In my many hours of footage, every single license-plate that went by in either direction (oncoming or overtaking) was readable. Easily readable – something that wasn’t always the case with the Garmin Varia RCT715. However, stabilization remains pretty crap. While Garmin is doing some electronic stabilization, it’s horrific even by 2015 standards, let alone 2025 standards. Still, the key thing – the license plates – are perfectly fine. As for night footage, the license plates are unreadable in all of my tests. Half of the time this is because the light is so bright that the cameras poor dynamic range can’t deal with the bright spot (in all those scenarios, it was readable with a 3-year old iPhone 13 Pro shooting concurrently). The other half the time, the car was simply moving too fast for the low frame rates and faux-4K quality level this has (30FPS in 4K mode).
Finally, we get to the bad bits. Somehow, I thought after the the RCT-715 debacle years ago, that Garmin would substantially improve the Varia app and overall usability. And unfortunately, that didn’t happen. It remains clumsy, at least compared to 2020-2025 norms on software UI design. Meanwhile, the Varia Vault integration that I thought would be amazing, is laughably overpriced at $99/year to save a few minutes worth of clips per year. Somehow, this makes Garmin Connect+ look good. At least, in both cases, you don’t need to use it.
Ultimately, despite the Varia Vue’s user interface design and cloud service shortcomings, as a safety device it works exceptionally well – namely, the hardware. The light itself is brilliantly bright, the unit isn’t all that heavy, the battery life exceeded specs (substantially), and the license plates during daytime are easily readable. I just wish Garmin would take the rest of the software experience from ‘passable’ to awesome.
With that, thanks for reading!
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