Peter Hawkes

Yes, it is quite possibly the dust (the first 8-day trip with the 62s was in the Namib desert...fairly cool with peaks of no more than 20-25 deg C, but very dry & dusty) that initially abraded the top clear coating on the buttons; not only my hands, but also my clothes against which the unit was swinging, were probably very dusty. With the work I do there is no way of keeping hands clean until after using the GPS - it gets used all the time through the day, in between bouts of digging up specimens, scrambling up mountains etc... As I said, I don't deny that my units get rough treatment - they are for work & are treated as workhorses! - but the point is that the 60CSx went on the same 8-day trip in the Namib (being used by my assistant), getting the same abrasive treatment AFTER an estimated 50 times this amount of similarly harsh (and often much harsher) treatment over close to 4 years, and yet there is no noticeable wear on the buttons to date. The term "rugged" is thus perfectly appropriate to use in advertising the 60CSx but NOT the 62s. I know a lot of people in the same line of work as me (environmental impact assesments) who use the 60CSx - many of them on my recommendation - who are definitely not going to buy a 62s after seeing what's happened to mine, and also many people in mining exploration etc, who likewise cannot afford to have a unit that can't take a bit of dirt & rough use. We simply don't have the time in the field to pamper our equipment! This WAS the reason for buying Garmin, but it seems that this has changed withy the 62s... I agree that there is a design issue with the 62s buttons being much less rounded, but there is also definitely a materials issue as well... I think the idea of collating info on serial numbers to see whether there is a defective batch issue involved is great - mine is 21F005598...it looks as though mine is a very early unit (I ordered it a month prior to product release)...if we can show a trend to Garmin, perhaps they will realise they need to recall a cerain set of these units.

Can you please post some close up photos of this button wear? I have had mine for a couple months and used it a lot (without that stretch case, I hate that thing), and I don't see any wear on my buttons at all. I wonder if they have changed the way they finish those buttons? OK - here are some images via dropbox this time: my 60CSx after 46 months with a lot of hard use, next to the 62s after 8 days light use (no squeezing through dense bushes etc), another double shot showing the 62s at the same time, before & after briefly rubbing the dust off on a soft cotton T-shirt (note the change in the quit button!) and: the 62s at 6 months and 10 months... Note that I haven't simply worn through the black, but even through the next (white) layer, and into the underlying grey layer. I've looked closely at both units under a microscope and it's clear that the 62s buttons are made from a very fragile rubber with an extremely thin protective layer on top...as soon as this is slightly scratched, the underlying layers rub away rapidly (in contrast the 60CSx rubber, while equally soft, simply does not abrade as easily). And my wear is not from my fingers - it's mostly around the edges where the unit rubs against my clothing and the vegetation I'm walking through. I'll admit I'm hard on my GPSs (note how the rubberising around the sides of the 60CSx is worn), and I'm quite happy to accept cosmetic wear & tear...but before long the 62s button wear will no longer be cosmetic, as no-one who isn't very familiar with the unit will be able ti use it once the buttons become illegible... Certainly the 62s is nowhere near as rugged as the 60CSx and given that "rugged" is what it's advertised to be, I reckon we can expect it to be at least as hardwearing as its predecessor.

Oops! - tried that and got an error message: "You are not allowed to use that image extension on this board." Presume I'm doing something wrong, or don't have sufficient member priviledges...any advice?

Can you please post some close up photos of this button wear? I have had mine for a couple months and used it a lot (without that stretch case, I hate that thing), and I don't see any wear on my buttons at all. I wonder if they have changed the way they finish those buttons? I'm new to this group so I'm not sure how to add images - if you let me now how, I'll gladly oblige!

I started getting wear on the buttons of my 62s on about the second day of use...in comparison my (at the time) 4-year-old 60CSx, treated in exactly the same way, showed no sign of button wear at all. I told Garmin about this immediately I returned from my first real trip (2 November 2010) and kept them up to date on the progress of the wear (with photos) over the next few months, so if they are STILL saying several months later that this is "not a known problem" then they are lying. Another major problem I've had with the unit is freezing up - usually at least once on a trip of 2-4 days, with the maximum (immediately after following Garmin support's instructions to upgrade to the latest firmware) being 3 times in one day. I've sent them the tracks, but so far they seem unable to sort the problem out. Then there is the insistence of my unit on splitting tracks into 3000-point segments, with only the last segment of the day running over this limit and up to near 10000 points (it is supposed to split into 10000-point segments). Again, Garmin have not been able to provide a solution and no number of firmware updates have sorted this out. Perhaps most frustrating of all though, are the things that Garmin don't even perceive to BE problems - the utterly bizarre GPX file naming format that makes it impossible to sort tracks by date (yes, I know they will tell you to sort by modified date instead of name, but try this after splicing multiple tracks from one day together!), and the equally dumb waypoint naming (using 12-hour instead of 24-hour time) that means tediously doing manual conversions of date & time of waypoints imported into Excel. To be fair to the 62s, this is something they have sneaked into the 60Csx as well during a firmware update a year or so ago, so I have the same problem there now as well, wheras in the past it was easy to convert waypoints into Excel-compatible format! All in all, I am highly disappointed in my 62s, I always have to take the 60CSx along as a backup in case it freezes and I lose track data, and the only feature it has that I like (even though it has serious limits) is the custom map capabilities.