Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx Handheld GPS Navigator
by Garmin
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx Handheld GPS Navigator
Customer Review: I'm a Very Happy Owner of the Map 60Cx
Summary: 5 Stars
Finally a GPS unit that simply works the way it's supposed to! Ok... I admit I am still on my honeymoon with the Garmin Map 60Cx, but so far it has worked like a dream and has exceeded my expectations.
This unit was very easy to use intuitively right out of the box. My greatest surprise was when I turned on the unit for the first time and, literally within a minute, I had locked 6 satellites! (with another 4 on the way). I just have to mention that with my previous 3 GPS units, I would have to wait 10 to 20 minutes for a lock on the minimum 3 satellites. Also, this Map 60Cx seems to keep lock well even with buildings, trees, and obstructions (whereas my previous GPS units would frustratingly lose lock when I entered a forest or even stood next to a building). This really makes the Map 60Cx a great pleasure to use. It initiates right away and keeps lock, just like it should. The displays are easy to read and interpret and it easily navigates through the different pages with simple intuitive controls (with Windows-like menus). Oh! and the colour display is great, very easy to see even without the backlight.
The difference between the Garmin GPS Map 60Cx and the Garmin GPS Map 60CSx is that the 60CSx has an electronic compass and a barometric altimeter built in and it usually costs about $30 more than the 60Cx. I opted for the 60Cx (minus the compass and altimeter) because I already had these instruments on my wrist watch, they were redundant with the GPS compass and GPS altimeter already included with the unit, and I noticed that compared to the 60CSx with an 18 hour battery life, the Map 60Cx sips power with up to a 30 hour battery life. Since the only difference between the two are these two additional instruments (compass and altimeter), I can only surmise that the exta power drain must be related to them.
As for battery life, I have not encountered any problems yet. One of my reasons for choosing this product is because it did NOT use an internal or proprietary rechargeable battery. I needed a unit that used plain, readily available, easily replaceable alkaline batteries. Rechargeable batteries do gradually lose their effectiveness over time (as another reviewer noted and attributed to the GPS unit). For me, it is easier and more reliable to just pop in 2 fresh Duracells than to wonder what the current max charge is on my rechargeables (or to pay $20-$30 for some exotic hard to find "EL-1078-4a" battery when it finally dies). This principle holds true for most consumer electronics. I try to avoid anything that uses some special battery (even a CR123 at $5 each) or worse, some specific proprietary battery made just for the device.
Another key feature that I required was waterproofness. I use my GPS unit on, in and over the water (not to mention inclement weather).
The base map is sufficient for my needs so far (hiking and geocaching), but eventually I will pick up the City Navigator software for road directions when I travel. I have seen this software in use on my friend's GPS Map 60CSx (the sister unit to the 60Cx) and despite the seemingly high additional cost, I think that for what you get, it is a good deal. Not only does it upgrade the unit into a highly effective turn by turn road navigator, but it also adds a nice city guide feature that allows you to find restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and Starbucks.
Also, having had some previous experience in law enforcement and familiarity with the California Vehicle Code, I would like to mention that the suction-cup mount accessory for the windshield is illegal in the State of California. It's CVC 26708(a).
UPDATE TO REVIEW 5/20/08:
Ok, I've used this product for a year now, the honeymoon's over... LOL... ...and I still love this product. It has performed superbly way beyond my expectations. First of all, it is indeed very rugged. I've dropped this unit many times, abraded the casing against rocks, accidentally given it impromptu dunkings in rivers and streams (not sea water yet!), and have taken it into extremes of temperature from freezing 20 below, to 120 degree desert. All I can say is, it has endured all of this abuse admirably.
Secondly, the unit when hooked up with the North America Map Pack and the car power cord (which illuminates the display constantly) serves as an excellent turn-by-turn driving GPS. Sure a bigger screen might be nice, but the GPS and directions work (with audible alerts), so I have no complaints. The big advantage is that you can easily unhook it and take the unit with you since it was designed to be handheld, thus avoiding the biggest new temptation for auto burglars.
Thirdly, much to my delight, the base maps pre-installed with the unit include INTERNATIONAL locations also! I was able to use my GPS extensively while traveling abroad 1) ensuring that I could not get "lost" and 2) keeping an automatic, constantly updating travel track log for me. This has turned out to be a wonderful extra benefit of traveling with a good GPS unit. Everywhere I went, every interesting site, every store, every restaurant, every beautiful vista, was accurately and duly recorded, and when I got home and uploaded this track log to my computer, I have a perfect travel diary of my journey. Also, marking waypoints and actually labeling them is quite easy with this GPS unit, and I've been able to do it with gloved hands. If I'm in a hurry, I'd just set a "marker" and then come back and label it later.
I burn through batteries at a consistent rate of 2 AAs every 3 or 4 days (as I power down at night), which is fine with me, to avoid all the hassles of recharging or degrading performance of rechargeables.
Any negatives??
Well, I wish that instead of suspending all functions and wasting power to give me multiple and redundant audible and lit up "pop-up" warnings that my "BATTERY IS LOW", that it would just go ahead and try to function with what little power is left until I run out of power. This is an annoying idiosyncracy of many small electronics including cell phones and iPods. I mean, I can't help but wonder how much longer these units might have functioned if they didn't expend their last gasp of power on these incessant low power warnings.
I think I would have extended the grippy rubber covering to the sides of the unit also. The times that I've dropped it were usually because it simply slipped out of my hand while holding it along the sides.
Alas, the nifty plastic belt clip did not last long under field use. Replacement clips are hard to get (and pricey too). I finally had to upgrade to a rugged military grade nylon web pouch (designed to hold a single smoke or flash-bang grenade).
Customer Review: Remarkable
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a member of our county's Search and Rescue team, and I teach land navigation (compass and map skills) and the use of GPS receivers to our members.
For my needs, this unit is the best available.
1. No GPS is worth its weight unless it can track enough satellites (at least 4) to give you a 3D position fix. (A 2D fix on any GPS is unreliable -- be forewarned -- a GPS must calculate its elevation before it can reliably place you on a topo map, electronic or paper).
The 60Cx has an extremely sensitive antenna and I can lock up 4+ satellites from within my home and under dense foliage while in a deep and narrow valley. To me, this is the single most important metric by which a GPS unit is judged. (As a bonus, it locks up quickly.)
Give me reliable numbers (UTM or Lat/Long) and I'll find myself on a paper map (which I carry at all times when I'm in the wilderness).
(I also like the fact that you can increase the sensitivity of this unit even more with an optional car antenna -- which could be used without the car, of course.)
2. It uses two AA batteries, which I far prefer to AAA batteries or some costly, exotic battery pack that will degrade over time. The AA batteries have a long life in this unit, and when they run out you slap in replacements and continue on. (My old Magellan eXplorest 500 used 3 AAAs, which were too short-lived.)
3. It's water-resistant and meets the IPX7 standard. What this means is that it will work after being submerged in 1 meter of water for 30 minutes. In other words, it's rain-proof. This is another essential feature for me.
4. You can purchase and install (Mac friendly) 1:24,000 Topo maps on an optional 4 GB Micro HC card (or buy the card with the map already installed). Expensive, yes, but the maps are very good. I installed all of Oregon, most of California and some of Nevada on my card.
I thought such maps would be pure fluff until we did a mock search a few weeks ago and were given directions to our starting point that made no sense. We didn't know for sure where to start, though we had a rough idea of what our area (a trail hand-drawn on a xeroxed copy of a paper map) should look like relative to a stretch of road.
By tracking our movement and projecting that track onto the GPS's topo map, we were able to confirm that we'd searched the correct trail, and we further discovered what the nature of the errors made by our map-makers were. Mistakes of this sort won't happen in the future, which was the whole point of the exercise.
(The down side of getting the CD version of these maps and loading the Micro SD HC cards yourself is that it takes hours to do -- I believe it took me 6 hours or more. But it was worth it.)
5. The tracking feature is easy to use and very useful (see 4. above for one use). You can download your track to National Geographic's TOPO! map series (for Mac and Windows users) and MapTech (for Windows people). For SAR people, this is very useful since it can verify that we've searched the correct area. (You can download your track to the Incident Command's computer, which allows them to verify that you accomplished your mission while providing an electronic record of your search.)
6. You can customize your pages, which I like. While we use UTM for pounding ground, air and water assets use Lat/Long. If you can display both systems on the same page, it makes communicating with them a lot more secure than trying to enter your set-up menu and making the format change from UTM to Lat/Long on that page and then returning to your position page to read the coordinates, which is too much error-inviting screwing around when you're under pressure. I display both UTM and Lat/Long on my map page as a default.
(I just noticed [6/02/2010] that my comment [6.] is partially incorrect. While it is entirely true that you can display both Lat/Long and UTM on the same page, the datum for both will be whatever the datum for the primary format was selected to be.
This is a problem: Lat/Long generally uses NAD 83/WGS 84, while UTM generally uses NAD 27. To use the incorrect datum is to place a waypoint (or yourself or a track) up to 200 meters from where it (you) really is (are). My point is that only one of these formats at a time (either UTM OR Lat/Long) can have the correct datum.
You can work around this, but to do so you must enter the setup -->units menu and change the datum from one to the other. I'm pretty familiar with this unit and its controls, so that's not a big deal at all. But for someone who isn't thoroughly familiar with the controls, it could be disconcerting.
FWIW -- cell phone towers can locate a cell phone's coordinates, but that location is in decimal degrees/NAD 83 format. That's fine, but our topos [USGS 1:24000] are in UTM/NAD 27 format, so we have to convert.
Since our primary format is always UTM with NAD27, we have to enter the setup menu, change both the format (to decimal degrees) and the datum (to NAD83) to view our present position in decimal degrees, edit it to the cell phone coordinates, save it, return to setup, change the format back from decimal degrees to UTM and the datum back from NAD83 to NAD27, then view the converted waypoint.)
7. Why not spring for the additional $40 -- $60 dollars and get the 60CSx, which has a barometric altimeter (rather than a less-accurate satellite-generated one) and an electronic compass? For us, the ± 70 foot accuracy of the barometric altimeter still isn't good enough (that's almost two 40 foot contour lines), and the electronic compass might be a success from an engineering point of view, but SAR people need the kind of accuracy only a good traditional magnetic compass provides (I use a Type 15, and strongly recommend one, irrespective of manufacturer, to anyone venturing into the wilderness). (Your compass and paper map: don't venture into the backcountry without them . . .)
8. The unit comes with a little plastic belt clip that fastens to a disc-like projection on the back of the GPS unit. You slide the disc into the clip and feel it "click" as it locks in. The GPS will pivot around the disc easily, so it will accommodate you sitting down or moving in strange ways better than a case will. To remove the unit, simply press a button at the top of the clip to unlock it. This arrangement has been thought out very well.
Like I said -- this unit is a jewell.
Customer Review: Pricey, but Great GPS unit
Summary: 5 Stars
After alot of research into all of the GPS units out there, I decided on this handheld unit. My choice was based on my need to cover both automotive and marine needs. I've been using GPS since the late-80's on a sailboat that converted from Loran. I'm quite accustomed to navigation, and the terminology and concept of GPS. Others who are new to navigation may be confused by the terminology. Since I race sailboats (and I drive), Bearing/Heading/Velocity Made Good, etc., all made sense to me. This unit is one of the few that is useful for my land and marine requirements. The internal memory and expandable MicroSD slot allow for conversion to either mapset.
The base map that comes with this unit is limited. Aside from showing major highways, it isn't much useful beyond that. I took it on a road trip in the first few days after my purchase, and the base map it came with was very limited. Aside from telling you what state and major highways you're on, it won't tell you much more than that. But I was surprised that it new the approaching highway exit name, even with just the base map. Shortly after my purchase, I invested in the City Navigator software, and wow!, what a difference. Suddenly it is smart enough to plot my route to specific addresses, although it doesn't pick the best route...it just picks a route that works (would've had me going on some small roads unnecessarily).
I've also begun geocaching with this unit because it is set up nicely for that purpose. This unit allows you to enter waypoints easily, and it comes with various icons to depict most waypoint types.
This unit is bulkier than some of the automotive units on the market. But I've found that many of those "card deck" size units don't work well for marine use. They are limited mostly to automotive needs. But it's amazing that they can pack so many features into this small device.
I decided on the GPS Map60Cx rather than the Map60CSx. The Cx simply doesn't have an electronic compass or altimeter function. Interestingly, the unit does plot heading and bearing (both directional and degrees), but you have to enter a waypoint so it knows where you want to go. You just can't stand still and get a compass heading. Also, the unit will tell you your altitude above sealevel, so I'm not clear on what the CSx altimeter could improve on. Since I don't fly or climb mountains, I didn't see the need for an altimeter. I also don't mind taking a step or two to determine my compass heading. These two functions seemed irrelevant for my needs.
I had difficulty getting my PC to recognize the GPS unit. But after exchanging a couple of emails with Garmin, my problem was solved (it seemed to be a missing Registry command which Garmin Tech Support helped me work through. I thought that was nice considering the problem appeared to be my PC, not the driver or unit itself. I have to say that Garmin Tech Support was very good with me. My only comment would be that live tech support is only available during daytime hours which might make it difficult to handle if you work all day (and who doesn't?). But even so, I corresponded with Garmin through email and they responded quickly and accurately. I'm pleased.
I intend to purchase the Bluechart map software (marine use), but even with the base map, the unit recognized the Freighter Channel, Range Lights, and International Border found in Lake St. Clair (Michigan).
One note when trying to decide whether to purchase the maps on MicroSD card versus DVD software, I understand the MicroSD card can't be viewed on the PC, while the DVD software is viewable on the PC and you select which "areas" you want to download to the GPS unit. The download speed is relatively slow, but not rediculous. I loaded up the 64 meg card in about 10 minutes. I've read that a 2 gig card may take an hour or more. I've also read that if you intend to load a 2 gig card, you're better off with a card reader rather than the USB interface.
I can't think of a single "Con" for this unit except that the maps are too expensive, considering you can get the same detail on a $3.00 paper map (but then you couldn't enter an address I suppose). Still, the maps aren't cheap. It isn't as pretty as the automotve GPS's on the market, but then, you can't trek through the woods or sail a race course on the automotive units either. The screen size also isn't as big as the automotive units, but this size is perfectly functional too.
Customer Review: great in the woods, even in a snowstorm
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently purchased a Garmin 60Cx for use while hiking. I have previously used a Magellan Sportrak with a helical antenna which is very good but, under tree cover, it would lose the satellite lock and the gps tracks for different hikes over the same trail would often differ by 30 to 120 feet in the woods. The integrated path length (odometer readings) were also off by 5% to 25% with the Magellan, depending on the tree cover. The SiRF III tuner in the Garmin 60Cx is so sensitive that it maintains a good satellite lock under heavy tree cover, even when it is snowing. On a recent snowshoe trip, my inbound and outbound tracks differed by less than 10 feet about 80% of the time under tree cover; a track separation of 15 feet appeared in some places, and track separations as large as 37 feet were seen when there was a lot of snow on the trees and the snowfall was approaching blizzard conditions. Tracks differed by 3 feet or less in the open, even during blizzard conditions. The gps was in a padded case (which I bought from REI) attached to my pack strap; a bit of snow did accumulate on top of the case but did not seem to cause a loss of signal; I also had to keep brushing snow off the gps when I would stop and take it out of the case to read it (its nice that its waterproof).
To measure odometer accuracy, I walked back and forth between the 0 yard markers on the football field at a local high school. I wrote down the actual distance walked when the odometer indicated 0.25 mi, 0.5 mi, 0.75 mi and 1.0 miles. The distances walked were 440 yds, 897 yds, 1315 yds and 1750 yds. This gives a cumulative error of 10 yards in 1 mile, or 0.57%. For these measurements there was always a clear view of the sky; I dont know what the accuracy would be under tree cover.
This unit ships with the Garmin MapSource software which is used to transfer maps, waypoints, tracks, etc between a PC and the gps unit. This software also displays your maps, tracks, waypoints, etc on a PC; right clicking on a track displays the date, time of day, altitude, speed, course and position for each data point on the track. With this software you can make a graphical plot of altitude versus distance for a track, measure distance along various track segments, cut and paste track segments, etc. This software is really fun to play with on the PC. Mapsource will transfer information equally well between a PC and the gps (via USB cable) or between a PC and a microSD card which fits into the gps. The USB transfer is very slow, but its good enough for transferring tracks between gps and PC; to transfer larger files, like a map, it is a lot quicker to use a card reader and transfer between the PC and the microSD card, and then plug the card into the gps. I am using a 2GB microSD card which I bought from Amazon.
As noted by many users, Mapsource comes with a road map which is so basic as to be useless. I purchased a really nice topo map for the state of Colorado from AboveTheTimber.com. Although this is not a Garmin product, the MapSource software displays it on a PC, it overlays my tracks and waypoints on the Colorado topo beautifully, and it has transferred the topo map back and forth between PC and microSD card several times with no problems. Unlike the Garmin maps, the Mapsource software installs directly from the CD and does not have to be unlocked. I did go to the Garmin website to upgrade to the latest version and, for this, I had to enter the serial number for my gps (which was hidden behind the gps batteries), but this was not a problem. I really like the Mapsource software a lot.
My Colorado topo also has a pretty good Colorado street map, so I tried using it in my car. The new gps tuner is so sensitive that it maintains a good satellite lock even when the gps is sitting in the space between the front seats in my car (i.e. it does not have to sit on the dashboard to get a direct line of sight to the satellites). This means that you do not need a windshield mount. Since batteries last 30 hours, you do not need a cigarette lighter adaptor either. I already have a small, portable NiMH battery charger which we carry on trips for our digital camera. The manual tells you how to go into the set up menu to tell it that you are using using NiMH rechargeables, rather than Alkaline batteries, so that it will display battery life correctly. The 60Cx works so well in my car that I may buy Garmins City Navigator map for car trips.
Customer Review: Great for local / regional travel - not enough memory for long trips
Summary: 4 Stars
I just returned from a trip to Europe. For our trip we flew in to Rome, drove to a rural area an hour outside Florence, spent a week there and drove to Florence, then on to Parma, the Loire valley and finally on to Paris. I purchased this unit and the Garmin MapSource European City Navigator v8 [CD-ROM] and offer the following comments.
1 - The unit it extremely fast and accurate in identifying location. Often I had coordinates in 20-30 seconds. I believe that this unit was more accurate than the GPS unit in my 2005 Accord. The Garmin unit knows exactly when I am at a turning point, even in Italian cities with narrow streets and 3-4 story buildings on all sides.
2 - The ability to load in regional European maps as needed was a big selling point.
3 - The download / upload process was relatively pain free and reasonably fast. There is no need to delete the existing maps in the unit before loading a new map in - your upload simply writes over the current maps.
4 - The battery life seems to be as advertised. I could run the unit for anywhere from 12 to 20 hours on two standard AA batteries. My rechargable batteries ran 8-12 hours. I will probably purchase the car power cord before my next trip.
5 - The turn-by-turn directions were mostly spot on. However there were some places in Italy where I ran in to areas that were recently / currently under construction and in these areas, some wrong turns were indicated. The most useful feature in these circumstances was the automatic recalculation for directions.
6 - A couple of small cool items. Heading through the alps we drove through some multi-kilometer tunnels. Even though we lost satellite reception going through the tunnels, the system kept accurate track of actual mileage driven. Also, when you zoom in to a quarter mile radius, the location of restaurants, local attractions, etc show up with useful symbols, sometimes with amusing results. Outside the door of our hotel in Florence I turned on the unit and saw no fewer than 15 pizza symbols (pizzerias) within 2 blocks of our hotel.
7 - I deduct one star because of the 64MB limit for downloadable maps. This is room for perhaps 5-8 regional maps. A regional map may cover only a relatively small area - for example you need 4-5 maps to cover Paris. This is not a problem for a person sightseeing around a limited area. However in my case, I needed directions for Parma to Paris. This 640 mile trip required 16-20 regional maps. This meant that I had to reload maps to the unit from my laptop a few times during the trip. More annoyingly, the unit could not plot out a direct trip between Parma and paris with only a subset of the maps, even when I downloaded the 'Route' plotted by my laptop. This meant that I had to tell the unit to pick an intermediary spot along the route, reach that spot and then load in the new maps.
This means that a person not traveling with their laptop would be out of luck. It seems to me that they could have used a standard SD or CF card instead of a non-standard 64 MB memory card. Extrapolating from what I was able to do with 64MB, 2 GB would allow you to load in to memory the majority of Europe at one time - Certainly enough for a backpacker on a summer long trip or a group of people on tour with a car. This would be an AMAZING improvement and would make this device practical to a much wider market.
Alternatively, it might be useful to change the way that the maps are segmented in the software package. For example, I was forced to load an 8MB map of a small portion of Paris even though I was only in this section for perhaps 2 miles while on a major highway. If I did not load this map, the device could not render a route to the airport.
One alternative would be to consolidate some areas together in to fewer maps - the center of Paris can be 2 maps instead of 4 while outlying suburbs can be treated as separate maps. The other option would be to break up some large maps in to smaller sets so that you can be more selective in downloading. For example, I was in the northeast corner of Burgundy for a few miles but I had to load in the entire map segment, comprising 6MB.
Hopefully version 9 of the software will offer some option to help solve this problem.