Garmin Rino 530

[Amberly7]

Has anyone tried the Garmin Rino 530? Is it any good? Has anyone heard anything bad about it? And will it be good enough for a technological junkie? It's relatively new and I havent found much on it. Any perspectives would be great...ps I'm looking at rinos because my family has them and the 2way radio is a feature I will need

[kb9nvh]

A week or three ago someone on here said they lock up when transmitting...guess theirs a problem with the electronics so close to a transmitter.

 

So a search on here (if it lets you..)

 

Has anyone tried the Garmin Rino 530? Is it any good? Has anyone heard anything bad about it? And will it be good enough for a technological junkie? It's relatively new and I havent found much on it. Any perspectives would be great...ps I'm looking at rinos because my family has them and the 2way radio is a feature I will need

[Amberly7]

ok i searched but couldn't find any post referencing the 530. Thanks though

[kb9nvh]

Hold on, let me see if I can find it....the search on here is 'sucky'

 

I couldn't find it on here but heres some info from the amazon.com site review area

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ASBKL...5?redirect=true

 

From Amazon *******************************************************************************************

This review covers the version 2.20 firmware released Nov 22 2005 and still current as of today (2/27/06).

 

I already owned a RINO 130 which I was mostly happy with, and my wife bought me the 530 as an upgrade. My biggest complaints about the 130 were the serial download and the lack of auto-routing. The 530 was supposed to fix both of those and then some (plus color!), so I was very optimistic. The product, with firmware 2.2, is however a complete disaster.

 

So - the good things first off. The USB interface works great. The original 100 series of RINOs should have never been released with serial interfaces, so it is nice that they finally fixed it. It used to take 1 hour 20 minutes to download a mapset to the 130 (24MB), and I can do 50MB to the 530 in a couple of minutes. Also very nice is that you can overlay maps (MetroGuide and Topo for instance) and select between then. On the older 130 you would have to replace them over the serial port which was a huge nuisance. The color screen is really much nicer than the monochrome LCD. And the Li Battery pack is nice, although for me it means I have to buy the AA pack because I intend to use it for weeklong trips without recharging. The walkie-talkie range is much improved over the original. Still nowhere near the claims, but improved. Also good, and unexpected, is the GPS works much better. The old unit had to be windshielf mounted in a car, this one works in your lap in the front seat.

 

And now - why you shouldn't even consider buying it until a new firmware comes out ....

 

1) Screen redraw problems? Yep. Lockups requiring the battery to be removed? Yep. Crashes requiring a power cycle? You bet. On a 4 hour week last saturday I noticed that approximately 15% of the time I hit the "push-to-talk" button it would cause the screen to blank out completely. The buttons still made proper noises, and the walkie-talkie would still send and receive, but the display showed nothing. That meant ~20 times I had to power cycle the device to get the display back, on a single afternoon hike. This is all kinds of unacceptable. Trying to find addresses or intersections on it would result in the device hanging indefinately with all buttons non-responsive. And often times the GPS screen would just refuse to redraw (everything else would work, and all other screens, just no map).

 

2) Auto-routing. Where to start with this? This is worse than useless, as it actually breaks functionality that worked on the Rino 130 (namely, you could use your PC to calculate a route and download it). There are so many things wrong here. My *belief* is that the 530 unit, regardless of what maps you have downloaded to it, will only routefind with its built in mapset, which only has major highways. So you will never get directions that include specific streets of freeway exits. Even better - the algorithm to routefind appears to be "find nearest freeway and direct person to that freeway as the crow flys". So if you are 5 miles south of your target, and the nearest freeway is 10 miles north of your target, it will advise you to "drive 15 miles north to freeway". You can be 10 feet away from your target and it will still send you to a freeway. Fine, no problem I thought. I will just download a route from my computer onto it. WRONG. As soon as you try to activate a route it immediately attempts to recalculate it, and you end up with either a) no route at all and just an arrow pointing you towards your target or the same horrible highway only routes which have a tendency to take you 2x the distance you need. Not a problem with the "optimize for time or distance" either, I went through every combination of options for routing.

 

Bug reports to garmin over the issues have so far gone unreturned, so garmin's customer service isn't exactly recommended either.

 

I'll post a new review of any furthur firmware revisions.

 

 

ok i searched but couldn't find any post referencing the 530. Thanks though

Edited July 18, 2006 by kb9nvh

[Amberly7]

Thanks for the post. It helps.

[+eaglesfan03]

well i know its late, but incase anyone else is looking for info, i bought a pair of 530s a month ago, and i coundlt be more happy, qucik route downloading, i personally have not had any troub;es with the desined routing which is great, and each time. its got me within 1-3 feet of the cache, just aswome. blows my legend away in every aspect. the 2=way radio is such a bonus, and the real time compass is awsome, no more stopping and letting the gps resend, tells you where to turn as your walking. I recommened em myself, havent a problem yet.

[+Oneyedjack]

I got a Rino 530 for the boy for Christmas and it works great, we have not had a problem one with it. We went on vacation a few weeks ago and I made sure he took his charger for the battery and we didn’t even need it, it ran for 8 days, mostly GPS only but a few days we ran the radio never transmitting much, and still had power to spare when we got home.

 

There is only two, and I hate to even call them complaints, but it is a little bulky, and I think if they would put one of the SirfIII chips in it would be outstanding!!

 

I think it's a great unit!

[ujazzfanzz]

I have a 530 and it is being replaced with the 530hcx because it locks up. I have had it since late June '07 and went on vacation and was doing geocaching. While on vacation it locked up at least 2-3- daily. Since being home it is still locking up. They say that the beta patch works but my brother had a 530 to start with that was replaced with a 520 and it still locked up. He installed the patch and lost his accuracy. I have not heard about the 530 hcx locking up so I hope that when it arrives it doesn't.

Edited September 2, 2007 by ujazzfanzz