Those of you planning to purchase a new Garmin marine chartplotter or GPS/Sounder, listen up! Garmin has totally changed it's cartography file format for many Marine GPS models. If you own Garmin cartography purchased prior to 2007, including "Blue Chart", "TOPO US", "Inland Lakes", and others using the MapSource program on your PC to transfer the charts to the GPS, THESE CHARTING PRODUCTS WILL NO LONGER WORK ON GARMIN'S NEW PRODUCT LINE!. The "old" cartography used a proprietary Garmin file format called "IMG" (the compiled maps had a file name ending in .IMG). IMG maps are compatible with a huge range of Garmin receivers, including handhelds like the ETREX, Legend, 60/76 series, and marine chartplotters with model numbers in the 100, 200, 300, and 400 series, up to the now-discontinued 498 GPS/Sounder. The "new" Garmin GPS/Sounders in the 300, 400, and 500 series use a new map file format that is not compatible with IMG. In addition, these new receivers have neither RS-232 Serial or USB connectivity, so you can't connect them to a desktop or laptop PC - the only way to get data in or out is via an SD card. While this may sound like an advantage in some ways - there's no optional data cable you have to buy - the "advantage" is really only to Garmin. If you buy one of these new GPS's, and later want to upgrade or supplement the built-in maps, you will have to buy Garmin's "Vision" series SD Cards. If you already own Blue Charts that you purchased for an older Garmin receiver, they won't work. Even worse, "Vision" cartography is only available on Garmin proprietary SD cards that can not be backed up to either a PC or another card (get the card wet, especially with salt water, and kiss your purchase price goodbye). None of the "Vision" series cartography is available on DVD or CD. Why is this bad for the end user? First off, it's very expensive. For example, the old Inland Lakes DVD had the whole country on it, about 3800 lakes, for about $120. With the "Vision" cartography, you have to buy five pre-programmed SD cards, at $120 each , to get the same coverage. Even more annoying is the fact that these new "Vision" cards work ONLY in your GPS receiver. You can't look at the cartography on your PC in MapSource. That means you can't pre-plan routes or waypoints on your nice large PC computer screen , using the cartography you just paid a bundle for. Have you ever plotted out a route with 30 or 40 waypoints on a tiny GPS screen with only a four way rocker to spell out the names of all the waypoints? I have, a few times, and it's a horribly slow and tedious process. As far as I can tell, that's the only way you can work with "Vision" cartography since the Garmin SD cards are designed specifically to not be readable on a PC (I'm sure this is fundamentally a copy-protection scheme, therefore it benefits only Garmin). The only "good" news about these new receivers is that the internal storage format of Routes, Tracks, and Waypoints appears to be compatible with MapSource, so you can import/export your user data (via MapSource to your own SD card), you just can't transfer maps or use your "Vision" cartography in MapSource for route planning. Another irritation with the 440S is that Garmin has completely changed the user interface and menu system that was common to most of the Marine GPS chartplotter/sounders from the Model 125 (mid '90's) through the 498 (2006). Owners of these older units will find the new user interface very confusing, and lacking many features of the older units. Some specific niggles: There appears to be no way to display battery voltage in any of the Chart windows (the Sonar windows can display voltage). There are no Compass and Highway windows as in most other Garmin products (even the Handhelds). Older Garmin Marine units had one or two specific windows for displaying Textual data, and these windows were highly configurable. The only User Data window on the 440s isn't nearly as versatile, and there seems to be no way to make it display Depth in BIG numbers. In fact I can't find any window on the 440s that can be programmed to show depth in characters more than about 3/8" tall. Bottom line: the 440s seems much more heavily slanted to Graphics, whereas the older Marine units like the 168 GPS/Sounder had a lot more Text/Numerical display capability, which I think is more useful and easier to interpret quickly in an emergency situation. I have a few good words about the 440s. The processor is a lot faster than in the older units (my Garmin 168 was glacially slow at updating maps as the boat moved along, even at only 5 knots). The display screen is bright and easy to read. The unit starts up and acquires satellites fairly quickly, and can function (usually) even inside my boat's cabin with only it's internal antenna. CAVEAT: as far as I can tell, the 440s does NOT seem to have a SIRF-Star III receiver chip, like the 60CX does, so the performance of the internal antenna is noticeably degraded if anything, even a bimini top, is blocking the unit's view of the sky. If you are planning to mount a 440s anywhere on your boat that there will be more than a single layer cabin roof over it, you will probably need an (extra cost) external antenna. The 440s includes the usual marine GPS features like Tide and Current diagramming, and enough internal memory for 10,000 track points, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to have the unit copy it's active track log to the SD card in real time - the 60CX can do this and it's a great feature. SUMMARY: If you have never owned any previous Garmin Marine Chartplotters, and therefore have no pre-conceived expectations, you will probably find this to be a pretty feature-rich unit. On the other hand, if you are upgrading from something like a Garmin 125 or 168, you will likely find the new user interface annoying, confusing, and the loss of the text-data display features a big disappointment. The biggest issue for me is that the new 400/500 series marine chart plotters have switched to a new map file format (Blue Chart Vision) that is not compatible with MapSource, meaning that I can no longer do route planning on my PC, at least not with Vision cartography. This is a HUGE disadvantage and I can't imagine what Garmin's engineer's were thinking when they designed out the PC connectivity that most other Garmin GPS's have. Perhaps in the future, Blue Chart Vision cartography will become available on DVD so that you can use it on your PC with MapSource, but for the time being, it's only on proprietary Garmin SD cards. Due to this lack of PC connectivity, incompatibility with existing Garmin cartography, and the annoying and unnecessary changes to the user interface, I am only rating the 440s at 2 stars, otherwise I'd give it 4 stars. If it had the user interface and I/O capabilities of my 60CX, and compatibility with Garmin's own IMG map files, I'd give it 5 stars. If you have already invested a significant amount of money in Garmin IMG (Blue Chart & Inland Lakes) cartography, you might want to steer clear of these new units that require "Vision" cards and try to find a Garmin 398 or 498 if there are still any available. | Satisfaction | Score |
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| Overall satisfaction | 4 |
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