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Time to upgrade...need advice


Bonaro

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I have a GPSMAP 60csx and I love it. I have been thinking about upgrading to something even more amazing and have been looking at the Colorado or Oregon. There are a half dozen model in each line to pick from and I need help wading through all of the details.

 

Most of my use is hunting or exploring for old mines in the Pacific NW.

My priorities are:

Topographic detail

Battery life

Signal acquisition

Waterproof

Ease of use when cold or gloved

 

Any suggestion or horror stories?

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I have a GPSMAP 60csx and I love it. I have been thinking about upgrading to something even more amazing and have been looking at the Colorado or Oregon. There are a half dozen model in each line to pick from and I need help wading through all of the details.

 

Most of my use is hunting or exploring for old mines in the Pacific NW.

My priorities are:

Topographic detail

Battery life

Signal acquisition

Waterproof

Ease of use when cold or gloved

 

Any suggestion or horror stories?

After looking at your list I would suggest a GPSMAP 60CSx. Oh, wait a minute, you have one already.

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I have a GPSMAP 60csx and I love it. I have been thinking about upgrading to something even more amazing and have been looking at the Colorado or Oregon. There are a half dozen model in each line to pick from and I need help wading through all of the details.

 

Most of my use is hunting or exploring for old mines in the Pacific NW.

My priorities are:

Topographic detail

Battery life

Signal acquisition

Waterproof

Ease of use when cold or gloved

 

Any suggestion or horror stories?

For me it would be a \Delorme PN-60. Great unit and battery life. A little cheaper is the PN-40 but battery life is not so good. Tha Garmin Dakota is a very nice unit and on sale at GPScity for $199. Gloves might be an issue.

Thanks

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sounds like you could use an Oregon 450T/550T, the "T" being for topographical maps, but i have no idea what the quality of the maps is, you could do some research i guess

has a touchscreen which works fine with gloves, we have the thicker ski gloves, i sometimes just pick a small stick in the woods and use it to navigate the screen, just like a stylus :P, of course i have a screen protector on

battery life is great and i dropped mine face down on a concrete floor in the garage and barely got a tiny little dent on the frame

Edited by t4e
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I have an Oregon 450. I haven't had a chance to actually go out and get caches, will be in a few days, though. But I loaded free topo maps and they look pretty detailed. You can also load free bike trails, which I did. The free topo maps are not routable. I heard there are free routable maps, but I don't think they are topographic? Someone correct me, if I am wrong. You do have to load maps, though, the street maps that are on it already are WAY too sparse to use for geocaching, IMO. And not topographical. The screen brightness can be adjusted from very dim to save batteries, (hard to read) or to nice and bright.

 

I did find the loading of maps and stuff to be very confusing, but there is help to be found here in the forums and now I'm ok with it. (I am not very good with computers, though)

 

I also really liked the Delorme PN40 or PN60. They have maps already loaded on it, and for a small fee you can purchase a map subscription. I think it was $30 or 40. It has buttons, instead of touch screen. You may prefer that with gloves if you don't have a stick or pen or whatever handy. I also heard the battery life is a little worse. The screen is supposed to be a bit brighter, which is why it is supposed to burn more batteries.

 

I had a really hard time narrowing it down to those two. I think they are both great.

 

Right now there should be some great sales. I got my 450 for $229, which was a huge savings.

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I dont know about the DeLornes so cant comment on those, but i have worked my way through the Garmin range

The Colorado is a very robust machine and stands up well to knocks and scrapes, but is cumbersome to use but is a very good unit.

The Oregon is a little more fragile because of the touch screen but is a lot easier to use.

Both machine have a range of models and the higher the number the more bells and whistles you get, Both take micro SD cards for additional maps.

The "T" at the end of the model 450T denotes that it comes with the Garmin Topo map pre installed, although these are relatively basic maps ( at least here in the UK ) but you can add better maps to the machine many of which are free and the units allow switching between the maps in the field, although best not to swap Sd cards outside as they can be very difficult to spot if you drop them!

Generally the higher the number the more internal memory and extra features you get, this could turn out to be worth while but only if you need them.

I have the Oregon 300 with the garmin Discoverer maps for the UK which is a very good set up and i have just added a portion of the Birdseye maps which have even more detail giving a ratio of 1:25,000

This is a very easy set up and probably the best i have ever used and even allows me to use the unit as a sat nav for driving. It holds up to 2000 caches with the cache page info which allows for spontaneous caching trips and holidays.

I Could go on... but i must do some work

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It will be hard to talk me into anything other than a Garmin. I will listen to any advice but in my experience, Garmin sets the standard to which all others strive to copy.

 

The touch screen is a nice touch so I would lean toward the Oregon.

Is it possible to download aerial photos and overlay a topo map? It would be cool if I could interact with google earth in some way.

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The Colorado is not an upgrade. You will be disappointed because it is missing many of the features of the 60CSX.

 

As for the Oregons, I suggest you take one out and use it in the sunlight. The screen is pretty hard to read. I hear the 450 and 550 have improved on that somewhat but if you are used to the visibility of the 60CSX you may be very disappointed by the Oregon's screen.

 

Also the newer units really aren't much of an upgrade. Reception is actually a bit worse than the 60CSX. The only reason I would consider a newer unit if for paperless caching.

Edited by briansnat
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The Colorado is not an upgrade. You will be disappointed because it is missing many of the features of the 60CSX.

 

As for the Oregons, I suggest you take one out and use it in the sunlight. The screen is pretty hard to read. I hear the 450 and 550 have improved on that somewhat but if you are used to the visibility of the 60CSX you may be very disappointed by the Oregon's screen.

 

Also the newer units really aren't much of an upgrade. Reception is actually a bit worse than the 60CSX. The only reason I would consider a newer unit if for paperless caching.

 

the screen is fine to read in sunlight, i don't know what people complain about, in fact i have my backlight always at half and its fine

 

also the reception is perfect, i wonder who spread that rumour and based on what :(

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The Colorado is not an upgrade. You will be disappointed because it is missing many of the features of the 60CSX.

 

Back in the day, I switched from the 60csx to the Colorado and loved the unit. I quickly got used to the rock n' roll wheel, loved its display, appreciated the extra geocaches it held when I was traveling and wanted to cover wide areas, and did not notice any loss of features (at least after a firmware upgrade or two). It got me to the caches, was easy to use, and the Wherigo support and paperless features were handy. In short, it gave me more features that I often used.

 

BUT, I also had to replace the unit more than one time due to hardware problems with the USB port. The last time this happened, it was out of the Garmin warranty. After the third party warranty gave me my money back, I switched over to the 62s, which I am having a lot of fun using.

 

If I could combine the display and Wherigo features of the Colorado with the 62s, I would be even more happy. But if you like the touchscreen on the Oregon, then that may be the unit for you.

Edited by mulvaney
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I really like the features of my 60Csx but the small screen is a hinderance. The Oregon seems to be the answer.

 

Will it display aerial photos?

The screen size on Oregons are only slightly larger, roughly 1.5x2.5 inches versus the 1.5x2.2 inches of the 60csx. The Oregons will display the subscription birdseyes maps. There is a way of putting aerial maps on a 60csx, but I have not tried it.

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The screen size on Oregons are only slightly larger, roughly 1.5x2.5 inches versus the 1.5x2.2 inches of the 60csx. The Oregons will display the subscription birdseyes maps. There is a way of putting aerial maps on a 60csx, but I have not tried it.

 

Well...that sucks. If it doesnt have a bigger screen then one of my main reasons for upgrade will not be met.

Maybe i will wait for the next generation. Anyone hear what is on the horizon?

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The screen size on Oregons are only slightly larger, roughly 1.5x2.5 inches versus the 1.5x2.2 inches of the 60csx. The Oregons will display the subscription birdseyes maps. There is a way of putting aerial maps on a 60csx, but I have not tried it.

 

Well...that sucks. If it doesnt have a bigger screen then one of my main reasons for upgrade will not be met.

Maybe i will wait for the next generation. Anyone hear what is on the horizon?

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Its not just the screen size. On my Colorado the screen size was a bit larger than the 60csx, but the resolution was much better (the increase from 160×240 to 240×400 pixels made it able to show the same detail covering a larger area - and made the display better looking as well). I think the Oregon has a higher resolution as well - the resolution is one of the things I miss when using the 62s.

 

There are a number of web sites showing comparisons between the 60csx, the Colorado, and the Oregon. The Colorado wiki has some, although firmware updates affect some of those details.

Edited by mulvaney
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The screen size on Oregons are only slightly larger, roughly 1.5x2.5 inches versus the 1.5x2.2 inches of the 60csx. The Oregons will display the subscription birdseyes maps. There is a way of putting aerial maps on a 60csx, but I have not tried it.

 

Well...that sucks. If it doesnt have a bigger screen then one of my main reasons for upgrade will not be met.

Maybe i will wait for the next generation. Anyone hear what is on the horizon?

 

the screen size on Oregon 450 is : 1.53'' W x 2.55'' H; 3'' diag. compared to the 60csx size of 1.5" W x 2.2" H, 2.6"-diagonal

also take into account the overall smaller size of the Oregon, which makes it lighter in weight and less bulky, it easily fits in a small pocket, and add the touch screen interface, my favorite feature

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