Garmin Colorado 400t Handheld GPS Unit with U.S. Topographic Preloaded Maps
by Garmin
|
List Price: Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
|---|
(Click here)
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin Colorado 400t Handheld GPS Unit with U.S. Topographic Preloaded Maps
Customer Review: What to say that hasn't been said...
Summary: 4 Stars
I love this unit, it's my first GPSu I've taken it snowshoeing and hiking, and forest road exploring, and saved some mountain bikers from a purgatory of unmarked forestry roads (they were already about 2 miles off course when we bumped into them and they didn't even know it) and so far I can't find a road in the city or in the hills that it doesn't know about, with trail heads listed, I don't have to say "I hope this is the right road" ever again, I use the word ROAD loosely.
The GPS status display is very informative, tracking on foot with good Sat coverage accuracy tends to hang out around 5-6 yards, In the car it's usually around 10-15 yards, one thing to note is, turn it on before you start driving or while you're at a stop, it doesn't like to lock on while moving, but once it's on and locked it will track at high speed just fine.
Battery life is as advertised! I'm using recargable NiMH and as long as I limit backlight usage I can easily get 12 hours out of one set.
The preloaded topo is fantastic! So much information and so many POI's, parks,little dam's, and peaks I've been past many times before without ever knowing. The city base map however is a tease, it has the streets listed so you can use it like a map and see where you are, but it doesn't lock onto streets, it views them as a background, so without buying the city software, when you set a destination it makes a straight line from you to it, I guess this might work if you commute in a small aircraft though!
I'm very happy with the product, but for the price I think the city nav should have been included, that's why I knocked off a star. On the other hand I can't blame Garmin for their business model as everyone needs to make a living.
Customer Review: Wonderful for the Amateur
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm not one of those extreme high-end geocachers. I just love a walk in the woods. However, I want to find the cache when I go to look for it. Last year I upgraded from a Garmin Explorer to a 60CSX and was in love. Unfortunately that got stolen. I've saved my money and now have the Colorado 400t. It's everything my 60CSX was and more. The new rocker control is a lot easier to use than the controls on the 60CSX or the Explorer. The accuracy is fantastic. With the City maps plugged in the road navigation is wonderful. This really is the best GPS unit I've used for hiking & caching. I'm really impressed with the ability to swap between profiles, using the Automotive until I hit the trail and then switching back to the Geocaching mode. Start up time & satellite acquisition are good. They're now supporting SD instead of the mini-SD cards and that's a good choice on Garmin's part. A lot of the new interfaces are improved over the old ones plus, like the old ones they're customizable.
Like everyone else, the fact that only one cache at a time is visible is a pain, but all the other features quickly wash that away. I haven't found the maps to be inaccurate, but then I mainly use it for off-road hiking and the hills, mountains & streams are pretty solidly in place, even in Massachusetts. It is a little dim in bright sunlight.
Despite these small shortcomings, this is a wonderful GPS unit. I intend to get years of use (and hang on to it more tightly).
UPDATE: Garmin released a software patch that fixed the problem with displaying multiple cache's. That's one less of the few and small negatives to worry about. I'm still loving this GPS unit.
Customer Review: Could be a great GPS if Garmin ever fixes the problems
Summary: 1 Stars
I really had high hopes for this GPS. And it could be a great GPS if Garmin fixes the problems.
The screen is nice and big. The graphics look incredible. You really get a sense of elevation and orientation with the shaded relief. The shortcut menus are customizable. There is an override on the backlight that lets you turn the backlight all the way up on battery power. In daylight the screen seemed plenty bright with no backlight. The unit seemed very accurate in the small amount of testing I did.
All of the positives were outweighed heavily by the negatives. Even after installing Garmin's latest updates the unit still locked up often. I would be trying to move around the map or generate a track and all of a sudden the unit would not respond to anything. This was most frustrating while trying to make a track. If you don't monitor the unit close enough you miss huge sections of trail while the unit looks like it is on, but it is locked up and has stopped tracking. It took removing and reinstalling a battery to get the unit to reset each time. Once reset it might work for a while, but ultimately it would freeze up again.
It also started developing another fault after just a few days of use. With fully charged batteries in the unit it would simply shut down. Sometimes it wouldn't get through booting and just show the splash screen and then shut down.
Having this experience with Garmin's latest and greatest GPS technology has really made me second-guess another Garmin purchase. I would like to have a portable GPS with Topo, but it needs to work.
Customer Review: No battery life, terrible user interface - poor design
Summary: 1 Stars
I tried to like the Colorado 400t, I really did. It has a great display. Unfortunately, everything else is terrible. 2000mAh NiMH rechargeable AA batteries last 6 hours or less. Alkaline AA cells aren't much better.
If you try to hand-enter UTM coordinates with the rock-and-roller input hardware, you'll find yourself ready for a rubber room. You need to enter EVERY number and character in the easting and northing perfectly, or you get to re-do the entire location. And there's no separation between easting and northing - you need to keep track of where the easting entry ends and the northing begins, or start all over again when you mess up. You won't always have a computer to download locations from in the field, so the kludgy entry is a show-stopper. The user interface for entering other information is similar - there's no way to correct errors without re-entering everything.
I bought this unit a long time before I found out its worst shortcomings, but tried to use it anyway. After a wilderness navigation course this summer, I discovered the problem with UTM entry. Fortunately, I bought it at REI, so I could still return it for a full refund after 18 months. I wasn't sure they'd take it back after so long, but they did.
Even if someone gives you one of these, AVOID IT LIKE THE PLAGUE! There's a good reason Garmin discontinued the Colorado series.
If I could give it no stars, I would.
Do yourself a favor - buy a GPSmap 62st instead. It's a much better GPS, with very useable user interface and great battery life.
Customer Review: Mostly good stuff, a few not so good.
Summary: 4 Stars
I got this from Amazon and played with it for a few days. I have 30 to decide whether I want to keep it. First let me say the unit is EASIER to see in the direct sunlight since its a transflective screen. Its hard to see in shadows because the backlight is very dim compared to GARMIN's Nuvi units. I couldn't see it when the light was on unless it was in direct sunlight. Hiking will be fine since I can look at it directly but in a car, forget it. I guess the backlight has to be dim in order to preserve the battery since the Colorado has some serious processing power which will use a lot of batteries up fast. I was able to get 10 hours on a set of enelope rechargeables. As long as you have at least 3-4 sets of rechargeable batteries, this is a non-issue on the trail.
The graphics are very good as this unit has a lot of pixels. I just wish it were brighter.
I haven't taken it on a hike yet but will update this within a few weeks on how that went. So far it seems to be a great device but a bit pricy. I got it for $482 with $18 overnight shipping with NO TAX so a total of $500, not bad considering most places are selling it for the retail of $599 not including tax. Amazon is really good about that and their return policy.
UPDATE JULY 3 2008:
Have done 4 Geocaches in Northern Michigan. The Geocaches worked great. I uploaded the info for each one paperlessly and has worked great. Battery life is ok, just bring along an extra set or two. So I've decided to keep it. Pretty happy with the unit after about a month of use and several geocaches.