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Posts Tagged ‘Elevation’

Garmin Colorado 400t Handheld GPS Unit with U S Topographic Preloaded Maps

June 25th, 2009 GPS Reviews No comments

Garmin Colorado 400t Handheld GPS Unit with U S Topographic Preloaded Maps




This rugged, advanced handheld is packed with detailed topographic maps for all your hiking adventures not to mention 3-D map view, a high-sensitivity receiver, barometric altimeter, electronic compass, SD card slot, picture viewer and color display. Exchange tracks, waypoints, routes and geocaches wirelessly between similar units. Slim, lightweight and waterproof, Colorado is the perfect companion for all your outdoor pursuits.

Watch an interactive demo.

Share Wirelessly
With Colorado 300 you can share your waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches wirelessly with other Colorado users. Now you can send your favorite hike to your buddy to enjoy or the location of a cache to find. Sharing data is easy. Just select “send” to transfer your information to other Colorado units.

Keep Your Fix
With its high-sensitivity, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver, Colorado 300 locates your position quickly and precisely and maintains its GPS location even in heavy cover and deep canyons. The advantage is clear — whether you’re in deep woods or just near tall buildings and trees, you can count on Colorado to help you find your way when you need it the most.


Explore More
basemap 3D Colorado’s preloaded U.S. topographic maps, 3-D map view and a built-in worldwide basemap with shaded relief give you all the tools for serious climbing or hiking. Map detail includes national, state and local parks and forests, along with terrain contours, elevation information, trails, rivers, lakes and points of interest.

Just in case you’re wondering how steep that hill really is, Colorado’s 3-D map view helps you visualize your surroundings — giving you a better perspective of the elevation.



Expand Your Horizons
streets topo coastal The Colorado also accepts SD cards, so you can use Garmin preprogrammed SD cards to add maps that serve any and all of your outdoor activities on land or water. Just take your pick from a wide selection, including street maps, topographic maps, coastal charts or inland lake data. The card slot is located inside the waterproof battery compartment, so you don’t have to worry about getting it wet.


Rock on. Find Fun
rocker wheel waypoints Colorado’s innovative Rock `n Roller input wheel for easy one-handed operation and intuitive screen interface make it as easy to navigate the device as the outdoors.

Customize Colorado’s interface based on your favorite activity.

Even show off photos of your excursions with its picture viewer.


Experience Paperless Geocaching
notes Colorado supports Geocaching.com GPX files for downloading geocaches and detail straight to your unit. You’ll have at-a-glance cache descriptions and details to aid in your search.


Get Your Bearings
compass altimeter Colorado has a built-in electronic compass that provides bearing information even while you’re standing still.

Its barometric altimeter tracks changes in pressure to pinpoint your precise altitude. View elevation data before you begin your ascent or descent. You can even use the altimeter to plot barometric pressure over time, which can help you keep an eye on changing weather conditions.

Interactive Demo

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars Topo map trails.
The pre loaded topo map trails are not accurate, spicifically the Pacific Crest Trail in the southern Sierra Wilderness in southern California, in the Sierra Navada Mountains. Otherwise I love the unit.

3 Stars Great unit, bad battery situation.
I have a Garmin Vista. It goes 24 hours per battery set. This thing needs a set of batteries per day in the field. As you still need a paper map, I returned it.

4 Stars What to say that hasn’t been said…
I love this unit, it’s my first GPSu I’ve taken it snowshoeing and hiking, and forest road exploring, and saved some mountain bikers from a purgatory of unmarked forestry roads (they were already about 2 miles off course when we bumped into them and they didn’t even know it) and so far I can’t find a road in the city or in the hills that it doesn’t know about, with trail heads listed, I don’t have to say “I hope this is the right road” ever again, I use the word ROAD loosely.

The GPS status display is very informative, tracking on foot with good Sat coverage accuracy tends to hang out around 5-6 yards, In the car it’s usually around 10-15 yards, one thing to note is, turn it on before you start driving or while you’re at a stop, it doesn’t like to lock on while moving, but once it’s on and locked it will track at high speed just fine.

Battery life is as advertised! I’m using recargable NiMH and as long as I limit backlight usage I can easily get 12 hours out of one set.

The preloaded topo is fantastic! So much information and so many POI’s, parks,little dam’s, and peaks I’ve been past many times before without ever knowing. The city base map however is a tease, it has the streets listed so you can use it like a map and see where you are, but it doesn’t lock onto streets, it views them as a background, so without buying the city software, when you set a destination it makes a straight line from you to it, I guess this might work if you commute in a small aircraft though!

I’m very happy with the product, but for the price I think the city nav should have been included, that’s why I knocked off a star. On the other hand I can’t blame Garmin for their business model as everyone needs to make a living.

4 Stars Great performer but battery hungry
This is a great unit; very accurate and easy to use. Be prepared to spend a little while getting used to the menu layout as some items you might expect to appear under one menu appear under another menu entry. But apart from the small “learning curve” this is a very nice GPS unit. The roller-style control is very easy to use and the “tracks” feature is particularly well developed in this unit. The only real issue is that the battery life can be quite short. However, there are three tips which will help you get a good 14 to 15 hours of continuous use. First, don’t use the back-light unless absolutely necessary (fairly obvious, really). Second, select the auto record setting in the “tracks” function to “update least frequently”. This second expedient seems to double the battery life and the unit still seems to update every 5 seconds or so (how far can you walk in 5 seconds anyway??). Third, if you use nickel metal hydride batteries make sure they are REALLY fully charged. Don’t use a rapid charge cycle (charge instead over night using a standard charger) as this gets the batteries hot and the total charge is dramatically reduced. Without these measures, I could only get an hour or two of operation when I first received the unit. Not using the back light added another hour of use and minimizing the “tracks” update frequency added another 4 hours of use. Finally figuring out what was going on with my battery charger resulted in a good 14+ hours of continuous use.

5 Stars First One
This is my first handheld GPS device. I bought it to GeoCache. It works well and has many features I like. The only knock is that the learning curve (expecially how to use it with my computer) was longer that it needed to be if there was a better manual.

Buy/More Info

Garmin Edge 305 GPS Bundle

June 20th, 2009 GPS Reviews No comments

Garmin Edge 305 GPS Bundle




Rugged, lightweight Edge attaches easily to the stem or handlebars of your bike with the included bike mount. Just turn it on, acquire GPS satellites and go. Edge 305 automatically measures your speed, distance, time, calories burned, altitude, climb and descent, and records this data for your review. For extra-precise climb and descent data, Edge 305 also incorporates a barometric altimeter to pinpoint changes in elevation

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars New to Cycling Computers
I took this out of the box and mounted it to my bicycle using the easy to follow directions. I did not know what to expect at the time but now don’t go anywhere without it! The information it provides is great and has helped me to improve my rides and hikes. It easily connects to the computer and downloads automatically into Garmin Training Center. I also upload the files to Motionbased.com where it is automatically plotted on Google maps that you can email to friends. I haven’t had problems with the battery yet but know that charging shortens the life of any battery. The longest hike I’ve taken using this is 5.5 hours. I have only had one problem with this unit and it happened when I loaded a course from Garmin Training Center to be used with virtual trainer. When I went to upload my information to the computer it would not work. Garmin support was not very helpful. I had to search Google for a solution, the problem was a corrupt course download, once removed everything worked fine.

4 Stars Works like a champ
I’ve been using the Edge 305 for nearly a month now and its great! I’ve found the speedometer and the heart monitor are more accurate than my old computer (cat’s eye) and the polar watch (forgot the model) I usually mount to my handlebar.

Installing the software was super simple and transferring data is as simple as pulling in the USB cable and watching the data transfer. The charts and information layout is pretty straight forward and easy to read.

My only complaint is that the recording of my position can sometimes float away or it cuts corners (literally). The Smart Record mode seems to work fine but regardless, either recording mode still has minor position recording issues.

Note about the handlebar mount: I’ve read many many bad reviews about the mount breaking and to date it hasn’t happened. Then again, its mounted on a road bike that never goes off-roading. I would expect it to break if you’re doing some serious devil-may-care rides in the back country.

Do I miss a color screen? No. Would I pay a few extra hundred dollars for a color screen and the same features as the 305? No.

Would I recommend the Edge 305? Yes! Who would I recommend this to? Anyone road cyclist who wants to track your basic stats and train yourself to be a better rider. My old computer didn’t have a cadence monitor and now that I do with this unit, I can see where I’m spinning too hard to too fast.

1 Star Unusable before setup was complete
After fully charging the Edge 305, I set out to configure the unit and ended up with 2 significant problems. First, the unit was not recognized via the USB connector by either my XP or Vista PC. I had the latest Garmin drivers and software installed and this was confirmed by Garmin Support. Both PCs said the USB device was an unrecognized USB device. This problem ended up being a bad USB cable shipped with the EDGE.

Then after 15 minutes of setting up the unit, the LCD is now distorted and unreadable. The LCD is on and every once in awhile you can recognize a menu within the disortion but its useless in its current state. Running the Webupdater from Garmin and overwritting the Edge 305 firmware seems to bring it back to life, but only for seconds, then the display distorts.

Amazon Customer Service was great in dealing with the issue and I am now waiting for my replacement. If it wasn’t for Amazon’s efficient return policy, I think I would have given up on this unit. 2 defects in one box is a little hard to accept. Garmin support was very helpful but in the end they couldn’t do much about the defective LCD screen. Will update when the replacement units comes in.

5 Stars Garmin Edge 305 is the shiz nit!
This thing is great! I’ve used heart rate monitors before but I was limited to using them on one bike if I wanted to get my speed as well. With this unit having GPS, I can use it on all my bikes, in the car, on my motorcycles, anywhere. I even use this as a lap timer for my street motorcycles when I go to the track. The interface is simple and the fitness software is a no-brainer, even for me.

5 Stars Great Product
The Garmin Edge 305 provides excellent value at today’s Amazon prices. Software installation on MAC was quick and easy. It sometimes times out after connecting to USB not transferring the new ride data, but a manual Data Transfer achieves the same result. The Training software could feature better Garmin maps and longterm ride statistic features. I am sure online platforms provide this but I had no time to look into it. Adjusting the cadence sensor was a bit of a problem and required some improvised shims on my crankset to meet the <5mm spec for the sensor to work, but it was not a real obstacle. A 2nd flexible arm for the cadence sensor would allow for more adjustability. All in all a stabile product with no cinks.

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Death Valley Marathon and the GARMIN Forerunner GPS Sports Watch

February 12th, 2009 GPS Reviews No comments
A conventional stopwatch calculates running time and splits, and may include newer features such as heart rate monitors and distance traveled by means of a pedometer. But what happens when you have a GPS enabled watch that can accurately calculate distance, and well as elevation drops? This would come in handy when you don’t have accurate mile markers along the course with a built in “lap counter every mile”. And what happens when you start a race below sea level, and run to the lowest part