Garmin Colorado 400t Review
Garmin Colorado 400t
Garmin Colorado 400t Product Description:
This rugged, advanced handheld is packed with detailed topographic maps for all your hiking adventures not to mention 3-D map view, a high-sensitivity receiver, barometric altimeter, electronic compass, SD card slot, picture viewer and color display. Exchange tracks, waypoints, routes and geocaches wirelessly between similar units. Slim, lightweight and waterproof, Colorado is the perfect companion for all your outdoor pursuits.
Take on the trails with Colorado 400t. This rugged, advanced handheld is packed with detailed topographic maps for all your hiking adventures not to mention 3-D map view, a high-sensitivity receiver, barometric altimeter, electronic compass, SD™ card slot, picture viewer and color display. Exchange tracks, waypoints, routes and geocaches wirelessly between similar units. When the going gets tough, Colorado leads the way.
Explore Backcountry in 3-D
Colorado’s preloaded U.S. topographic maps, 3-D map view and a built-in worldwide basemap with shaded relief give you all the tools for serious climbing or hiking. Map detail includes national, state and local parks and forests, along with terrain contours, elevation information, trails, rivers, lakes and points of interest. Just in case you’re wondering how steep that hill really is, Colorado’s 3-D map view helps you visualize your surroundings — giving you a better perspective of the elevation.
Share Wirelessly
With Colorado 400t you can share your waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches wirelessly with other Colorado users. Now you can send your favorite hike to your buddy to enjoy or the location of a cache to find. Sharing data is easy. Just select “send” to transfer your information to other Colorado units.
Rock on. Find Fun
Intuitive and fun, Colorado features a Rock ‘n Roller input wheel for easy one-handed operation and supports Geocaching.com GPX files for downloading geocaches and detail straight to your unit. Customize Colorado’s interface based on your favorite activity. Even show off photos of your excursions with its picture viewer. Slim, lightweight and waterproof, Colorado is the perfect companion for all your outdoor pursuits.
Keep Your Fix
With its high-sensitivity, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver, Colorado 400t locates your position quickly and precisely and maintains its GPS location even in heavy cover and deep canyons. The advantage is clear — whether you’re in deep woods or just near tall buildings and trees, you can count on Colorado to help you find your way when you need it the most.
Get Your Bearings
Colorado 400t has a built-in electronic compass that provides bearing information even while you’re standing still, and its barometric altimeter tracks changes in pressure to pinpoint your precise altitude. You can even use the altimeter to plot barometric pressure over time, which can help you keep an eye on changing weather conditions.
Plug in and Go
Conveniently plug in optional preloaded SD cards for all your outdoor activities on land or water (see maps tab for compatible maps). Just insert a MapSource card with detailed street maps, and Colorado provides turn-by-turn directions to your destination. Add detailed trail information by purchasing additional TOPO maps for national parks and more. The card slot is located inside the waterproof battery compartment, so you don’t have to worry about getting it wet.
Colorado 400t: For adventure in any direction.
Product Features:
- High Sensitivity, WAAS-Enabled GPS Receiver
- Features A 2.55-InchH X 1.53-InchW, Transflective Color Tft Display With 240 X 400 Pixel Resolution
- Features Built-In Worldwide Basemap With Shaded Relief
- Wireless Sharing Of User Tracks, Waypoints, Routes & Geocaches Between Units
- 5 User Profiles – Automotive, Marine, Recreation, Fitness Or Geocache
Technical Details
- Brand Name: Garmin
- Model: 010-00622-45
- Receiver Description: 12 channel
- Connectivity Technology: USB
- Display Size: 3 inches
- Native Resolution: 240×400
- Battery Average Life: 15 Hours
- MP3 player: Y
Well, that’s lots of marketing stuff, but how well does it really work?
Size: 1.4 x 2.4 x 5.5 inches, weight 7.3 oz. This is pretty light for a unit that has a 1.4×2.5 display. Certainly portable for any use except perhaps jogging/running. 4/5
Battery Life: The unit is rated at 15 hours. The unit uses 2xAA batteries, so this will vary with the quality of batteries, but easily extendable with replacement batteries for any situation. 5/5
Maps: The Garmin Colorado 400t comes preloaded with a US Topographical Map. You can download and add maps through its sim card. The maps can (and really should be) backed up to a PC, but not viewed. 4/5
Features/Usage/Price: This is a pretty feature packed little GPS. For hiking and outdoors, it has almost everything a hiking enthusiast could want, including geocaching. Custom points of interest, and unit to unit transfers are nice additions to the Garmin Colorado 400t. The price…. Well, its not cheap, currently selling for around $400. (msrp $599) 4/5
Other comments:
Lots of owners have complained about the accuracy for driving. At approx 40-80’ accuracy, its good for hiking, but not perfect if your on the road. Hopefully Garmin will address the accuracy in future versions. Setup is complicated. Expect to spend a couple hours setting the Garmin Colorado 400t up properly. The screen is pretty good for a hiking GPS, and has a nice clean display; pretty awesome once you’ve spent that 3 hours setting the shortcuts up for your usage.
If your looking for a truly nice hiking/climbing/outdoors GPS, this could be your answer. It has tons of features, works pretty well, and is really slick once set up properly. Overall Rating…. 4/5. Catch it on sale for under $375 and make that 5/5.
eTrex Venture HC Review
eTrex Venture HC
eTrex Venture HC is an essential for any outdoor excursion. It features a high-sensitivity GPS receiver for peak performance in any environment and includes 24 megabytes (MB) of internal memory, a detailed basemap and crisp color screen.
Ok, thats what eTrex says about this little gadget, now for our eTrex Venture review.
Size: 4.2 x 2.2 x 1.2 weight 5.5 oz
Light weight enough for almost any excursion. A little bulky to stick in a pocket, but no need for a backpack. 4/5
Battery Life: 14 hours (AAx2) Normally I would object to a 14 hour battery life, but since this uses standard AA batteries, bring a spare set on multi-day journeys. 3.5/5
Maps: The bundled maps are very very very basic. Highways, some lakes, a few landmarks. You can download more specific maps, and have a generous 24mb of memory to save them in. Good maps are extra $$$ however. 3/5
Features and Price: Lots of toys.
- Geocaching – although ive heard some complaints about this feature
- Outdoor games
- Hunting/Fishing calendar
- Sun/Moon information
- Price – About $135 from Amazon.com
- Overall features and price 5/5
Other comments on our eTrex Venture HC Review
Satellite pickup is very improved over earlier versions. No more lost signals next to tall buildings or dense trees. Satellites were picked up almost instantly…. And I mean fast, about as good as i have seen in a GPS. Accuracy seems good. Screen is a little tough to read in daylight.
Overall rating: 4/5
Look at our Hiking GPS Review guide for more information in choosing a hiking GPS.
Hiking GPS Review
Hiking GPS
This week we will be reviewing Hiking GPS systems. These are incredibly useful for the camper, hiker, or anyone tired of being lost in the wilderness and eaten by bears.
Some things to keep in mind when reading the review:
1. Size – Smaller is better in hiking GPS systems
2. Battery Life – Like the energizer bunny, we like a hiking GPS that keeps going and going
3. Maps – Maps are good. Less paper to carry, save trees, all that stuff
4. Features and Price. We like fluff, we like cheap, we want it all.
Anyway, check back this week for the next hiking gps review.
Navigon 7200T
Laptopmag.com has a good review of the Navigon 7200T. We reviewed the 7200 earlier, which is similar. The “T” model has the lifetime traffic receiver.
Exerpt:
Any TomTom, Magellan, or Mio device can tell you the way to San Jose, but only one company has made a mission of telling you what lane to be in. If you’ve ever risked a multi-car pileup by veering across several lanes at the last second, you know it’s a good feature to have. Navigon has been a hot name on the GPS scene for a while now, and its 7200T impressed us with its elegant designs and highway navigation features. However, this $449 model has some eye candy that, truthfully, we could live without.
Full Article:
7200T at Laptopmag.com
Samsung Ultra Touch S8300, Official announcement
Check out this announcement for the Samsung Ultra Touch S8300. Looks like it will have some slick features, including a nice portable GPS system.
From Akhibara news:
Samsung just sent us an email with the latest information on their S8300 Ultra Touch mobile phone. Our 3G Wonder (HSDPA, UMTS, EDGE/GPRS), feature a 2.8” WQVGA AMOLED Screen touch screen, a 8Mpix Camera Module with LED Flash with AF, Face Detection, Smile Detection and GeoTagging, Support DviX, XviD, H.263, H.264, WMV9 and MPEG4 video plus 30fps VGA video recording mode, FM Radio with RDS, an Audio Player compatible with MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA files, Bluetooth A2DP, a A-GPS module and 80MB of internal memory with upgrade of microSDHC slot up to 16GB…. All of these little wonders in just 110×51.5×12.7mm.
Full article:
Akhibaranews.com
