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Oregon 450 Possible Upgrade


DBV2

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Was considering upgrading from my Oregon 450.  I use it mostly for marking spots and routing for fishing.   Anything worth of upgrading and would I get even more precise locations?   Looked at an Oregon 750 and see they are also releasing a 66 soon too.  Any advice would be appreciated, even if it is just keeping what I have.

 

It is funny how old looking my screen looks.  Hoping the new ones look better, but hard to tell my looking at specs.  Thanks!

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I am sure you will get various opinions on this, but my opinion is that you will not significantly improve waypoint accuracy. So if your 450 is still working well and does what you need, it is probably not worth investing in a new device.

 

The newer units do have Glonass as well as GPS, so under difficult signal conditions (heavy canopy, urban canyons, next to a cliff, etc) you may get improved accuracy on the newer units because you will be able to get signal from more satellites. In open areas, it probably won't make much difference.

Edited by alandb
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If your 450 is still working, there's no real need to replace it. Especially if you're not geocaching with it and just using it to mark waypoints and collect track data.

The 600/700 do have a nicer screen. The resolution and size are the same, but it's brighter and the glass on top is nicer than the plastic over the screen on the 450.

There are a few other differences and newer features in the 600/700 that are useful and since upgrading to a 600, I've found myself enjoying the 450 less and less when I have to use it. The one feature I use the most is the user customizable buttons. Essentially, the power button and the second user button can be assigned 3 functions each at your own discretion - one for a single press, one for a double press, and one for a long press (though the power button reserves the long press for the power off function). One of the functions you can assign is track start/stop so you're not still recording those little birdsnests when stopped. Access to five features, which can be different for each profile, without having to find them in screens is by far the deal maker. You can also make as many custom shortcuts as you want and put them on the home screen, at least with the Oregon 600. The 700 has some new and optimized activity profiles which I hear are useful, and of course the addition of wifi in the 700 lets you access weather data and connect directly to Garmin Connect and Geocaching.com without the need to connect to a computer, though you will need to tether to your phone when out and about either through a wifi hotspot or bluetooth.

Those features on the 700 are both cosmetic (unnecessary) and a major improvement in convenience. Whether they are worth it is up to you, but at the very least, an upgrade to the Oregon 600, if you can find one at a decent price, is worth it.

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Go look at them yourself, in person.  Don't be swayed by anyone's opinion.

 

- You won't get any better accuracy.  GLONASS does not improve things and sometimes makes it worse.  The 60 series is still better than anything that has come since for stable, accurate location determination....  All the new ones lose their minds and wander off randomly.

- There are some newer software bits that are nice that you may like.  Probably the biggest is the wifi/BT support to allow live data and wireless data transfer and the second is the ability to hold unlimited caches.  The rest is just fluff.  As you do not appear to be a cacher, none of this probably matters to you.

- Screens are not really much different, but you should look at them and decide for yourself.

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Thanks everyone for the help and honest opinions.  I did have a just to check some out in person yesterday at Cabela's.  Next time I will take my unit too, to do some comparisons.  Displays might be a little brighter and probably faster, but I was also looking to see it they had better accuracy, which sounds like they don't.  

 

Seems like I might be better off to stick with the 450 until it dies or somehow technology really changes.   Suprised they have not made the GPS units more phone like with better, brighter, larger and thinner screens.    But, then I guess they would not be as indestructable.  

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21 minutes ago, DBV2 said:

Thanks everyone for the help and honest opinions.  I did have a just to check some out in person yesterday at Cabela's.  Next time I will take my unit too, to do some comparisons.  Displays might be a little brighter and probably faster, but I was also looking to see it they had better accuracy, which sounds like they don't.  

 

Seems like I might be better off to stick with the 450 until it dies or somehow technology really changes.   Suprised they have not made the GPS units more phone like with better, brighter, larger and thinner screens.    But, then I guess they would not be as indestructable.  

A couple thoughts on that.

The screen itself is probably as thin as a phone's screen. But you're probably thinking of the whole body thickness which includes the battery, motherboard, processor, and everything else attached to it. One reason is that GPS units take AA batteries, so at minimum, the width has to accomodate the size of the batteries. This has been one of the strength of the GPS over a smartphone - batteries are cheap to replace, cheap to buy for rechargeables, and can be simply replaced in the field when run down as opposed to having to be recharged.

Screen sizes haven't increased much because these units are meant to be useable with one hand. The Garmin Montana has a 4 inch screen which represents the largest of the handheld GPS. Any larger and you'd have to hold in one hand and operate with the other. Durability also factors in. Larger screens are more prone to breaking when dropped. Finally, screen size and resolution are the biggest factors when it comes to power draw and battery life. Larger screens need larger backlights, and more pixels and brighter backlights require more power to operate.

The screens have become more phone-like in that the touch screen of the Oregon 600 and 700 are capacitive touch screens, responding to electrical signals rather than pressure. They can be used with multi-touch gestures, though, like your smart phone, require special gloves (or no gloves) in winter and can misread water drops as a touch.

Everything about the handheld GPS units is designed for use in the outdoors whereas your phone (with few exceptions) is designed with outdoor use as an afterthought.


Accuracy is about as good as it's going to get for any GPS. If you need accuracy down to the centimeter, then you need survey grade equipment.

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On ‎9‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 6:31 AM, Red90 said:

The 60 series is still better than anything that has come since for stable, accurate location determination....  All the new ones lose their minds and wander off randomly.

Yep, the newer ones don't seem as good for determining a stable location. I still use my old 450 for my OpenStreetMap mapping thanks to its stability and track recording (which was improved in one of the later updates). The 600 seems to extrapolate too much rather than actively determine its position from the satellites. I often found myself overshooting caches until I realized there was some lag and learned to adjust.

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2 hours ago, The A-Team said:

Yep, the newer ones don't seem as good for determining a stable location. I still use my old 450 for my OpenStreetMap mapping thanks to its stability and track recording (which was improved in one of the later updates). The 600 seems to extrapolate too much rather than actively determine its position from the satellites. I often found myself overshooting caches until I realized there was some lag and learned to adjust.

 

Thanks - that is good to know.  It sounds like for my use marking fishing spots and then returning to them, I am better of just keeping the 450, especially if it is more stable.    Appreciate the help.

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