Garmin Oregon 400t Handheld GPS

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Amazon.com customer

2008-09-14

Best Garmin GPS Yet !!

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I have owned several Garmin GPS units both for road use and outdoor use and this is the best unit yet.

It is very compact. Fits well in my Timbuk2 small digital camera case.

IPhone like touch screen is a joy to use and looks great. So easy to enter addresses and labels. I owned a Garmin Colorado prior to this and it went up for sale on eBay. The Oregon is far superior due to the wonderful touchscreen.

This unit acquires the satellite signal very fast and holds it well. Very sensitive.

Very easy to use. Wonderful software and user interface.

The built-in Topo map is great.

I put in my City Navigator North America NT 2009 micro-SD card and it works great for street navigation in the car or on my bicycle. I bought the windshield mount, bicycle mount, and car lighter adapter. I used it on a recent trip to Quebec Canada and street navigation was wonderful. Held a solid signal even in the dense skyscrapers of Montreal.

So it serves me well for car use, hiking, biking, geocaching, walking. Perfect for travel.

Uses 2 standard AA batteries which you can find worldwide. Nice !!

I highly, highly recommend it.

Satisfaction	Score
Overall satisfaction	10

Amazon.com customer

2008-09-11

Several issues keep this from being worth the cost

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I received a Garmin Oregon 400t for my birthday last night. I played with it for several hours and I'm returning it today for a refund. For the price you expect this to be an outstanding unit. As the most expensive and most recent offering you should expect no flaws. Unfortunately I found several fatal flaws. First the good, the dispay resolution is very good, color is fine, and reception and accuracy are as good as it gets. Now the fatal flaws. First off, using the touch screen to zoom in and find points-of-interest (POI) is useless. There is a really stupid red pin you have to try to manuever the POI under. But the display wobbles while you try to precisely move the map, and the PIN MOVES out of the way as you get close. You can't grab the pin to move it where you want it or move the map under the pin. So the feature I needed the most, accurately find and mark points on the map doesn't work. Next, you have to back out of the map and several menues deep into the settings menu to be able to change the map details. And there's only 4 levels of detail you can choose. There is absolutely no user settable filtering on the types of information you want on the map. For instance I wanted to see just the roads and campsites in the Boise National Forest - no can do. Zooming in and out on the maps is very slow. Street names don't show up until you're zoomed in so far you can't see any context. My other, much cheaper, gps can do all of this with ease. So basically all of the mapping functionality is useless. Next there are some nice utility capabilities but .... the alarm clock works but the alarm tone is so quiet and wimpy it would never wake you up. You'd never hear it unless it was near your ear. And there's no volume control - making this another useless feature. The carabiner clip was so hard to slide on I was afraid I'd break the case. Nice idea but poor execution. So Garmin, nice product concept but poor execution. This should be a deluxe unit but has many failings. Too bad, it looked so good on paper.

Satisfaction	Score
Overall satisfaction	2

Amazon.com customer

2008-09-10

Great hardware - not so great base topo map

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Have only had product a few hours but WOW! - what a piece of hardware. It is iPhone-like in its touch interface. Very intuitive, very easy to navigate. Very easy to set waypoints, navigate to waypoints, and so on. Fits well in the hand but feels like carrying a small rock-a lot of weight in a small volume.

Unfortunately, at least in my area of San Antonio, TX, Garmin must be using an old topo map base like Tiger. Similar to a 2001-era Magellan, the 400t map shows me about 450 FEET!!! to the west of my true position. I have a Garmin Nuvi660 and love it with its City Navigator maps. It uses NavTeq street maps and it is spot on to my true location. Trying City Navigator on the Oregon will test whether it's the base topo map (I bet) or the GPS unit in Oregon causing the inaccuracy.

The screen is pretty dim. I'll probably want to use it with the backlight turned up most of the time. Good side is no problem making screen suitably dim at night! I'll update my review after more experience.

Edit 9/11/08: Official Garmin reply is that streets are not to be taken as 100% accurate on topo map, get City Navigator if street accuracy is desired, device out of box is for topo use. I find in San Antonio, TX most of problem is that streets are just not up-to-date. Unit is very accurate on older streets. 450 ft mispositioning I reported above is probably due to map source never getting street locations right in my gated community (can't they use satellite info or check other maps?!!). Tracks seem very reproducible and steady. Can trace over same track with high reproducibility and stability (not much tree cover or canyons in SA, TX).

Edit 9/14/08: Footnote on 400t topo maps at gpsnow.com site - "* Based on United States Geological Survey topographic maps. USGS topographic maps are primarily intended to show topography which rarely changes. The government does not update them very often to show man made changes such as buildings, streets, roads and trails - many USGS map sheets are over 20 years old."

Find in bright direct sunlight, don't need backlight, sun lights screen, easy to see. Bright diffuse light a different story-really need backlight then.

Disagree with other reviewer about pushpin. Pushpin very useful to get information about any part of map. Tap screen, easy to move map under pin, easy to rapidly change zoom fairly rapidly (zoom speed increases with tap and hold). Tap pushpin heading, easy to set way point. In Demo mode (turn GPS off in System > Setup > GPS) Easy to set waypoint anywhere in U.S. and make that your map location to examine map in 2D and 3D.

3D View is not so great. Can move and rotate map but cannot zoom in and out(!)-just have close-in view. Lack of resolution in 3D. Map shading interferes with 3D view. Screen can be very dark and muddy in high elevation areas. 3D view best at highest map detail level (Setup > Map > Advanced Map Setup > Detail-Most), which usually gives too much detail for 2D views (too busy). Garmin definitely needs to improve 3D display a bunch!!

Edit 9/12/08: Suggestion to Garmin: besides shading control and zoom in 3D view, ability to enhance/reduce Z-axis (elevation) and remove or reduce streets would help. The hills of San Franciso look ~puny in 3D compared to 2D map and the streets, so crowded, wipe out the topo info.

No problem adding or removing carabiner clip following instructions. Slides on easily for me. Battery compartment easy to open, too. Device has nice fit and finish.

Overall very happy except for 3D view. Would gladly buy again. Plan to get City Navigator for accurate, up-to-date streets and routing on city hikes and for segue back to car where I will use Nuvi for driving.

Satisfaction	Score
Overall satisfaction	8

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