List Price: $449.99
Sale Price: $249.99
Today's Bonus: 44% Off
Last night I posted a scathing 1 star review of this unit. Today after spending more time with the unit I deleted that review and am posting a 5 star rating. I would prefer a 4.5 star rating as it does have one flaw I will talk about later.
The purpose in my opening paragraph and review title is to let prospective purchasers know this unit has so many features related to outdoor use that it's going to have a learning curve, possibly a steep one for those who may be purchasing their first GPS. I have owned 3 or 4 handhelds and a couple auto GPSes so I am not unfamiliar with how to use these things.
If you want a GPS for auto routing this is NOT it. It doesn't do auto routing at all (the 710 does). This unit is also massive overkill for geocaching. It has many nice features that are geocaching related, but there are much less expensive units that work wonderfully for geocaching.
In my opinion this is a GPS unit for the avid outdoor person. It's a unit so capable and feature rich you will have to spend hours (and probably read the online manual) to figure out not just how to use some of them, but even find them within the layers upon layers of menus. (part of my initial, 1 star review stated this GPS lacks the common compass screen. It has one, I just wasn't able to find it last night ;)
If you hike, bike, kayak, etc. and you want a GPS that will keep up with you then this is the GPS for you. The GPS chip in this unit is second to none. Out of the box it found my location almost instantly. I have not previously owned a handheld GPS that locked onto satellites instantly. My car GPS usually does, but not any previous handheld. It even maintains a satellite lock when I am in my garage with the door closed. Phenomenal.
Depending where you look battery life is claimed to be 15 or 16 or 18 hours under 'normal conditions'. I have found this to be somewhat true, but only when having the unit in suspend mode the majority of the time, dimming screen brightness to 40% (fine at night and most of the time during the day), setting the backlight to turn off after 1 minute and using lithium non rechargeable batteries. With Eneloop rechargeables I have found that even setting the battery type to rechargeable on the unit, the battery meter doesn't track the battery discharge properly. I think this setting is for the standard rechargeable that self discharge quickly, but have a different power curve. With the low discharge type the unit shows full power for around an hour, then half power for a couple hours then yellow (one step from red and then dead). It will remain powered for many more hours on yellow. It's disconcerting to see the batt meter turn yellow, but in this case it doesn't mean the battery is close to dead, more like 70% of the life is remaining. I have had my unit on with eneloops for 10 hours now and the meter remains yellow. Bottom line is lithium batteries are the best bet when you need max run time and don't want to carry extra batteries, but eneloops work fine for a full day outing assuming the unit is in suspend mode most of the time, otherwise carry an extra set.
The one flaw I find with this unit is that while the touchscreen is responsive and accurate navigating in the menus, it's finicky when it comes to scrolling around in the map. It's very easy to have it think I wanted to hit one of the 4 menus in the corners. It's possible to scroll fairly efficiently, but requires keeping the finger near dead center of the screen.
0 comments:
Post a Comment