handheld gps units

I should begin by saying this is the first GPS I have bought, so in my criticisms, I am not comparing it to other GPS units (which may be worse).

First of all, it seems to be quite a good portable unit. It locates the satellites quite quickly, gives position + estimated error in 1 no-nonsense screen. Also seems quite robust - it went for quite a tumble down a 10m cliff face, ending up in a deep pool of water - and all worked ok afterwards :-) (phew!).
The hardware seems great - however the software has some usability bugs that should be fixed.

Taking it along on a long 4wd trip in Australia in May 2004, here is a list of my gripes/criticisms:

1) The auto route navigation is pretty poor. A few times it came up with some crazy routes to get from A to B ... via Z!!

2) Also with the auto route navigation: When zooming in, the purple route marking doesnt correlate with the road its trying to mark. The more you zoom in, the worse it gets. Zoomed into a city streetmap, its completely unusable as the route marking is not even visible on the screen - or if it is, its impossible to work out what streets it is marking. Until this bug is fixed, I certainly would not buy this for auto navigation.

2) The way that route recalculation grabs focus from *whatever* you happen to be doing at the time is a major pain. You may be in the middle of a tedious "Find" operation only to have all of your effort dashed as it snatches you back to your route map and loses whatever you had typed. Grrr!

There are a number of other usability issues - and being a software developer, they stand out to me. The software needs a bit of work before I would give it 4 stars.

This is one fun GPS. This is my 3rd Garmin GPS, and I've used many others. Except for the slightly larger size, it is significantly better in every way to the eTrex series, which are still fine GPS units.

The boot time is fast, and the aquisition time is fast. You can program just about every thing you could imagine on the GPSMAP 60C, yet in spite of the functionality, this is the easiest to use GPS Garmin has ever made. Several things that really make it easy to use are (a) simple, clear menus, (b) all buttons (except power) are on the front, and have large, clear, high-contrast text labels (no tiny molded icons to squint at). In map mode, the pan and zoom buttons are always available - you don't have to go into a pan mode, and map redraw is much faster than on the eTrex series, which is nice. (c) display is big and clear - in the dark or in the sun, (d) very effective use of color in menus, maps, and status screens. You can even select among different color screens. The Quad helix antenna seems to work very well - at least as well as my old GPS12, and noticably better than my eTrex Vista, which had trouble in the trees. The USB interface makes downloading maps very fast, and 56MB holds more maps than you'll hike in a summer. If Garmin ever comes out with higher-resolution maps, the 56MB will be really nice.

I was able to figure everything out without the manual, but then read the manual cover-to-cover last night. It is well written, well organized, and has good illustrations. The manual is just the right size - small enough to be friendly, but has all the detail you need to get the most out of the unit in easy-to-read fonts.

On the downside, I found the buttons always getting accidently pressed when I had the unit in my daypack - I haven't found a keyboard lock-out mode for when I'm hiking and want the unit on for tracking (cell phones and ham radios often have this lockout feature). I don't use the belt clip, but the unit didn't come with the little plug that goes over the belt clip hole, yet the picture in the manual showed one. I noticed the demo unit at the local store also did not have this button.

The two biggest enhancements Garmin could make at this point are (a) higher resolution topo maps for Mapsource, and (b) a way to have the Mapsource topo and road databases in the unit at the same time.

Garmin GPSMap 60C with Auto Navigation Kit (CitySelect 6.0 Europe)

Good:
- Display well readable in almost all lighting conditions.
- Fast map redraw.
- Good satellite reception.
- Long battery life, even with backlight. Worked more than 11 hours with backlight at 25% on 2100 mAh NiMh.
- Runs on two standard AA batteries, including rechargables.
- Well structured menues, quick and easy operating.
- Fast map data transfer using USB.
- Quickly produces very good follow-road routes.
- Follow-roads routing can be adjusted for different vehicle types and pedestrian.
- Graphic turn instructions.
- Routable basemap.
- Can automatically recalculate when leaving the route, i.e. after missing a turn.
- Maps are detailed and up to date. Even correctly shows the new ways on the parking lots of a recently reconstructed nearby mall.
- Portable dashboard mount (beanbag) works.

Bad:
- Backside is curved, thus unit will wiggle when put down.
- Battery cover lock on backside may scratch surfaces when unit put down.
- Single-handed operation is difficult.
- USB jack is very tight. Be careful when removing plug.
- No tactile button action feedback (except for power button).
- Inserting unit into mount kit is unhandy.
- Car Mount kit does not automatically provide external power or antenna connection.
- External power does not recharge batteries.
- Intermittent problems with USB connection.
- No detour function, will attempt to route you back into a traffic jam.
- Audio alarms too quiet, can easily be overheared in the car.
- Turn-by-turn routes lose quality with route length.
- Automatic route recalculation after leaving the route occurs a bit too late.
- Route color is sometimes hardly distinguishable from road color.
- Detail maps for longer tours don't fit into memory, memory not expandable.
- Basemap has less detail than found on other Garmin units.
- Autozoom will zoom out too much (better turn off).
- Still a few bugs in the firmware (3.0), beta firmware (3.01) not reliable (lock-ups).

Conclusion:
Excellent unit. Most of the drawbacks are tolerable. I wished Garmin would add a detour function and optical alarms (to make up for the quiet audio alarms).