I agree with Oakleaf so do some research on what the upgrades provide, I had annoying problems with my Edge 500 that were solved with some firmware updates and everything is going swimmingly so far since upgrade. I never really bother updating my forerunner 305 unit as it does everything I want just fine and I probably won't be doing much upgrading of the Edge 500 now unless there is new functionality I want that is provided by upgrade - though can't imagine what.