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Friday, April 1, 2011
Garmin Oregon 300 Portable GPS System (Electronics)
This review is from: Garmin Oregon 300 Portable GPS System (Electronics)
I purchased the Garmin Oregon 300 primarily for hiking and for mountain biking. Recently, I used the hand held in Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park, CO. Reading several reviews, I decided to purchase what I felt was "current" technology rather than spending less money on a unit that has been on the market several years. Here are my observations:
- In most reviews you'll see complaints about mapping software. It is true that the Maps are very expensive, I ended up purchasing two City Navigator and US Topo. I considered the National Parks West mapsource, however as each of these additions are $100 or so it starts to get more expensive than I'd like.
- I felt the US Topo map was "good enough" for my hiking in the National Park. Many of the trails were visible but not much detail on them, but for what I was doing it was OK. I marked each trail head that I was traveling, and used the device to track my travel time, rest time, gain in elevation, and captured my "tracks" for future reference. As I returned from the trail end to the trail head, this gave me a good estimate on ETA, and sunset times.
- The touch screen is a great feature (i do have an iPod Touch and like this interaction).
- The battery life is OK. I purchased the auto charger and be careful that it has an "L" shaped connector that doesn't fit well into the Oregon (It's made for other units). After the fact, I saw reviews that recommend getting a third party charger.
- The size of the device is very good, feels comfortable in the hand. Built very well, seems sturdy.
- The 300 built in base map is not very useful, I'd recommend looking at the others that may include maps that you'd need to purchase built in.
- The menu's are OK, but I've found that the City Navigator is challenging me to route using Freeways, continually wants to route me as the "crow flys".
Overall this is a quality product, however, expensive when you consider the cost of the additional maps. I'm hoping that we can use the US Topo for biking. Our local trail system would be nice to be able to overlay onto the US Topo as well as the snowmobile trails in the eastern Upper Penn.
Garmin Oregon 300 Portable GPS System (Electronics) at amazon.com
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