Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx Handheld GPS Navigator
by Garmin
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx Handheld GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Not a bad gpsr
Summary: 4 Stars
I got this a while ago and put it through ALLOT of use, I used caps to put emphasis on that.
But on to the review.
This gps locks on to a signal normally 3 satellites at a time and maintains it as most people have said and it does not fail there, you'll most likely get a signal almost anywhere, I used it in dense forest, over cliffs and all sorts of places you get signal bounce, but this one always maintained a signal, so I'm happy about that.
The base maps it comes with SUCK, for that you have two options, buy the ones from Garmen that cost over $100 or install free ones manually, which can be done if you Google enough and are savvy, if you're lazy you will get nowhere with it though, it's a learning curve, if you're new it'll take some dedicated time to install free maps, but overall once you learn how you'll be fine.
It locks on roads fine but this will not replace your car gps, this works best for sea and off-road travel, with the maps that come with it "base maps" it told me I was in the water when I was trying to navigate someplace via coordinates... that was my que that I NEEDED TO GET another map, and thus installed free maps "use Google, use your head" you'll figure it out.
By taping the on and off button you can toggle the back light which comes in handy, with the light on you'll eat through batterys in a day of use.
Also this gpsr has a tendency to walk around on you, so if you switch to compass mode or stand still in map mode there are times where it will drift around and add miles to how far you've traveled.
So this is by no means perfect, but it has worked well and done it's job after being tweaked a bit.
It's rugged and can be submerged in water, I've dropped it on some nasty rocks, sat on it by mistake and there's not a scratch on it, salt water, moisture and so forth seem to have no effect on it.
So .. in summery.
It can take a ton of physical abuse, gets a good lock on satellites and does not let go, is water proof, can resist salt water exposure over time, can take freezing weather, --- Has a tendency to WALK around while you're not moving, is not for cars, BASE MAPS SUCK, you'll need to install free maps or pay for Garmens, and there's a software learning curve.
I took one star off because of the Gps walking thing, which can be annoying at times, the installing of the free maps was annoying but now that I know how I don't see it as a problem in the future so that's all on the user and less on the device.
Get it if you're intelligent and have time to dedicate to learning the interface.
It's a reliable solid unit that can take nasty environments and never leave you stranded.
If you doubt your learning ability shy away as it will take some time to learn how it works.
I give it a 4 out of 5.
You'll get out of the unit what you put into it.
You could do allot worse.
To the point and no bs.
F.B.
Customer Review: Best GPS in the entire world!!! And space too!
Summary: 5 Stars
OK, OK, I'm not going to talk about all the incredible features with this GPS. The last 300 or so reviews did that plenty. I am only going to talk about the last week and what I went through trying to find the "Pefect" GPS for me. I have been using a Magelleon Meridium Platnium for 6 years. It has been a wonderful GPS, but it is time to upgrade and get up to date features. Perhaps I can save someone some time and frustration. Over the past six days, I have bought and returned 4 seperate GPS units, a Magelleon 2000 Triton, a Garmin Colorado, a Bushnell Onix 400 and a Delorme PN20. The Magelleon locked-up for good after two minutes, done, kapoot. The Delorme had cool maps and aerial imagry, but the "area calculation" feature that they advertise, (and that I need for work) is not usable on the unit, in the field. It does me no good to require a laptop computer and tons of software to do something a handheld GPS should be able to do alone. Also, the buttons felt a bit cheap on the Delorme. The Garmin Colorado 400T looked and felt cool, and the wheel was a novel idea, but several things cause a return as well. First, the screen was dark, so much so that even on full brightness, I kept trying to turn it up even more. Second, the data entry was a PAIN. The wheel is used for all character entry, it is very time consuming. Next..after doing the area calculation, it initially gave an "acre" reading, but as soon as you log it and put it in memory, it diverts ONLY to square feet after you recal it. Although I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, I still can't convert 176,000 square feet to acres in my head! Why they did this is beyond me. A third and "Nail in the coffin" for the 400T was the fact that I could NEVER get the Garmin site to recognize the GPS while registering. This step is required to download Geocaches. I hit a wall and couldn't get over it. The Bushnell 400 box was cool and intriging, and the discounted price was unbelievable, (I know why now). The price tag said 499, on sale for 199! WOW, well, heck, I'll give it a try. Worthless piece of junk. No maps, and impossible to download. The website was 100% unservicable. I couldn't even get the curser to move on it. NOTHING worked right on this hunk a junk. After coming back to REI again, (thank goodness for the return policy) an astute (and cute) female worker advised me about the Garmin Mapgps 60csx. I had never looked at this model before. Not really sure why, but it had never really caugh my eye. It was marked $399, but to my suprise, today only (Memorial Day sale) it was $299. NICE! (Thanks REI!) So I picked up the unit and the US TOPO DVD ($100). Without going into massive detail, all I will say is that the computer interface and Topo map loading went very well. Very easy to load maps. I bought a 512 MB micro SD card and I can put over a quarter of the US Topos on this card. I love this GPS, it doeas everything I need it to do and even more!!!!!! BEST GPS AROUND!!!Customer Review: Great unit, but do your homework!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is without a doubt the best handheld GPS unit on the market today. The SIRF III chipset is far more sensitive that other receivers. I started with a Garmin eTrex Vista unit that was very good, but it lost its signal lock under almost any forest canopy, and in any deep canyon. That's why I upgraded to the 60 Csx. It gets far better reception in the woods, which is important for hiking and geocaching.
Be aware, though, that the unit does not come with maps! There is a built-in base map, but its usefullness is limited. You will need to buy Garmin maps to use the unit. There are two types of maps; street maps and topo maps. For hiking and geocaching, you will want to use topo maps. I recommend the 1:100K set, which covers the entire US. For National Park hiking, get the 1:24K National Parks set. The 1:24K maps show hiking trails, but the 1:100K sets do not. These are primarily topographical maps, not trail maps.
Keep in mind that only Garmin's map products can be downloaded to the 60 Csx. You can't download other digital maps (such as those from topozone.com or National Geographic)to the unit. That's true of all Garmin units and, as far as I know, all other recreational GPS manufacturers take the same approach--their units take only their maps. That means you are locking yourself into a brand when you purchase a unit.
That's not a problem if you do your homework. So, before you buy, go to the Garmin site and check out their maps to determine whether they have the detail you expect. Then price the sets you want, and add them to the cost of the GPS unit. *That's* the total cost of your GPS. If you don't want to get locked in to proprietary map sets, then don't buy the GPS unit!
As to the street maps, I don't recommend them. The 60 Csx is a great open country navigator, but it's not a very good automobile navigator. For one thing, it doesn't provide voice directions. For another thing, I think the screen is too small. Garmin street maps ave very pricey, and I understand that most (if not all) are 'locked' to a specific GPS unit (that's not true of the topo maps). So, if you upgrade your hardware, you may need to purchase the same set of maps again! If you want automobile navigation, I'd recommend getting a dedicated unit with its own built-in maps.
In short, the Garmin 60 Csx is the best unit available for hiking, off-road biking, and geocaching. You can expect about six meter accuracy under most conditions, which is very good for a recreational GPS unit. Anyone who claims better accuracy than that is pulling your leg--that much error is inherent in the GPS system.
So, if your need is for hiking or geocaching (like me) or off-road biking (like other reviewers), you will be very pleased with the Garmin 60 Csx, so long as you understand what you are buying when you make your purchase. As far as I can tell, the negative reviewers simply failed to do that. Happy hiking and caching!
Customer Review: It's pretty good BUT
Summary: 4 Stars
Receiver sensitivity accuracy and acquisition time are EXCELLENT mainly because this unit unlike most others uses a REAL Quadrifilar Helix Antenna (BIG DEAL) not a little useless internal patch or otherwise. I suspect others would perform similarly with a real antenna too.
Ease of use of the unit is not that great and the learning curve is very steep. Depending on your personal abilities expect at least a couple of days to figure out the basics , you might even need to read the manual thoroughly.
The computer part of garmin software is an abominable maze of cryptic limiting convoluted nonsense just as expected. I've spent many hours pulling my hair and banging my head figuring it out, sheeeesh. Garmin like many many others does not understand how much they lose by not investing more effort into this. It's easy to make great hardware these days and much easier to make it totally useless by skimping on the software to drive the hardware. I know because I also work for a company like that. Garmin is teetering on the edge of usefulness here. Fire the project managers and QA managers and hire more young energetic software writers instead with ability to INNOVATE. Seriously, you can do much much better and your ROI will skyrocket.
The supplied base map is a CRUEL JOKE on whoever purchases the 60CSx. It should not be called "map" by any stretch of imagination even on an 'off' day but don't despair keep reading.
Unit bought beginning of march 2011 came with 1Gb sd card included unlike the advertised 64Mb (!) and firmware 4.2 not even available on garmin website (another cryptic maze of nonsense and useless disinfo)
Supposedly it is now possible to use cards over 2GB but the map that you create and upload to the unit is still limited to 4Gb or so I've read.
If you're a complete idiot you will have to spend at least a couple hundred dollars on marginally semi-decent maps from Garmin . If you're smart you will download them all for free on bittorent or if you're 'ethical' you'll get the free 'open source' ones from gpsfiledepot.com
Garmin is one of those companies that encourages piracy thru their own ignorance and unstoppable GREED
If they were $10 each I would buy all of them, if they're $100 each that is just NOT reasonable at all especially considering convaluted non-logic of the interfaces.
Overall the 60csx is still a very capable unit but you have to do a lot of homework and reading and more reading on how to deal with it cause you're just not likely to ever figure it out by yourself
They could have made it so much easier... so I give it 5 stars for the hardware and ZERO for the software
which averages to 4 overall with many many lost hairs and hours of sleep.
@ $199 still half the price of anything else
enjoy !
Customer Review: Best reception available
Summary: 5 Stars
The SiRF chipset in this unit is amazing. When I first saw the 60csx in person, it was in the middle of a giant warehouse-type store, and it *had reception*. No other unit can get as strong a signal indoors, under trees, inside my backpack, etc., as this one can. (Of course it still won't work in the middle of a windowless room, for example -- it isn't magic!) That alone was what sold me about it. Everything else works as all the other reviewers have described -- the software is very intuitive, and the compass and altimeter work great.
My one complaint is that the SiRF receiver is *so* sensitive that when indoors, it can pick up a poor signal that yields relatively inaccurate position data. That means your track log will "jump" around all over the place. I hope that Garmin will provide better filtering to detect when the unit is not in motion in the future, but for now this is an acceptable compromise since it's better to have slightly inaccurate location info (within 50 meters instead of 5 like you get outdoors) than none at all.
There's one important note I'd like to make about the future expandability of this product. In regard to B. Goodman "Coaster"'s review which stated that you can't save tracks, waypoints, routes, etc., to the microSD card, Garmin has apparently made steps to remedy that problem, at least with regard to tracks. Firmware version 2.71 (which is currently Beta, so I wouldn't recommend installing it just yet -- and please note that Garmin might very well change what I describe here in the future) supports saving tracks to the microSD storage! Presumably this will give you an effectively unlimited track log. I've tested this new feature, and the way it currently works is that it saves a duplicate copy of the "active log" to the microSD card. This lets you periodically erase the "real" active track log, while keeping the backup which you can view later on your computer. This is perfect for long trips when you don't want to carry your laptop. The tracks are saved in standard GPX format, and even include time and elevation data (unlike the normal "saved" tracks that you can save and view on the receiver itself).
The new 2.71 (Beta) firmware also enables a USB Mass Storage interface, so you can view the files on the microSD card directly, which will let you easily upload third-party maps (not very high-quality, but available from sites like mapcenter.cgpsmapper.com). You can also use this to retrieve the saved track logs. And you can do this even from a *Macintosh*! This proves that Garmin is committed to providing OS-X support by the end of this year, and also that they're committed to providing continued support for their current (and older) products, rather than saving all the new features only for new products.