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Colorado's and Rechargables


Didjerrydo

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I have pretty much given up on trying to use any form, or milliamp hour rating, of rechargables in my Colorado 300. It seems that the only battery type worth using is either lithium or primo grade alkalines (Rabbit batteries or Copper Tops). I know Garmin apparently has a lot of tweaking to do concerning power managment on these units, but is anyone getting more than 4 or 5 hours of use from rechargables in thier Colorados?

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I have had my Colorado for almost one day now and I got at least 12 hours with a pair of 2700mAh NiMh Varta batteries. I used it on my way to the office and it stayed on for all day in the office with poor GPS signals. When I got home I switched batteries and then it still was one bar left in the battery indicator. And the GPS did not complain about discharge batteries.

I used the back light as little as possible but were still playing with settings etc during the day.

 

FYI, I'm still using firmware 2.20.

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I have had my Colorado for almost one day now and I got at least 12 hours with a pair of 2700mAh NiMh Varta batteries. I used it on my way to the office and it stayed on for all day in the office with poor GPS signals. When I got home I switched batteries and then it still was one bar left in the battery indicator. And the GPS did not complain about discharge batteries.

I used the back light as little as possible but were still playing with settings etc during the day.

 

FYI, I'm still using firmware 2.20.

 

You know, I actually think that older software version gave better battery life with rechargables than the current version for some reason!

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Yes, I am. I'm using Sanyo Eneloop 2000mAh NiMH rechargeables and have been doing little informal tests leaving my unit on during the day. I'm running software 2.3/2.6 and have over 1GB of Topo 2008 and City Select v.7 loaded on a 2GB card, along with 1800+ caches, 900 waypoints, and 70K custom POIs internally.

 

I keep my 300 constantly on with GPS lock, WAAS enabled, compass Off, and have ALKALINE selected as battery type. (If I choose the correct NiMH, I do not get good use from my batteries.) I get a full 4 bars indicated for about 4 hrs, 3 bars at about 5 hrs, and right now it's at 2 bars at 8 hrs as I type this. I can still get Full backlighting for my 30 sec duration when I hit any button.

 

I keep backlighting set on Full, but use the "Backlight Timeout 30 Seconds" setting. When I drive to work I navigate (on battery power) to my work location waypoint with tones on. Anytime it "tones" to alert of a turn, the backlighting comes on. I like that feature I must say. The unit is operating near room temperature during these tests.

 

I leave it on keeping GPS lock all day and whenever I think of it, I hit a button to see the backlighting come on and to look at the indicated battery level (which I don't trust to be accurate anyway). I will toggle between screens to simulate a bit of actual usage even though I'm inside. Speaking of that, I'm in a 2-story concrete block building on the ground floor and 25 feet from the nearest window, and I still get 5 SVs w/WAAS corrections and a 35' EPE. Not too shabby. It does as well as my trusty 60Cx this way.

 

At about 9-10 hrs at these settings and usage it will go to one red bar, and backlighting will be reduced to half. Shortly after that it indicates one-half red bar and a tone will alert me saying something like, "backlighting is being reduced and tones turned off" to conserve power. At about 10-11 hrs it shuts down completely.

 

The other day I kept backlight set to FULL, and picked "Stays On", and I got 5 hrs of contstant full backlighting before it dimmed to half level. From there it went downhill quickly, shutting down after about 7 hrs.

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is anyone getting more than 4 or 5 hours of use from rechargables in thier Colorados?

 

My 2000mAh Eneloops are getting me 6-7 hours of field use. I haven't done any measuring of backlight versus non-backlight or anything. I turn it on, go walking, driving, geocaching, whatever. I can get 6 or 7 hours out of a set. I use WAAS but generally don't use the compass.

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