iamasmith

Yeah, I know the unit is still a bit buggy and quirky but I can't resist having the 3D views and the detailed GeoCaching information. I thought I might try out GeoCaching when I got my 60CSx and it has gotten a bit obsessive

Anyway, I'm keeping the 60CSx, I have no illusions that the 60CSx and the 76CSx are probably the best in the Garmin range as an actual mapping GPSr but I'm wondering if folks have any thoughts about Oregons that they have?

I have one on order and should get it in a couple of days.

The only thing I'm a bit worried about is the touch screen. I have ordered a screen protector but do you recommend the hard case? Is there a glass substrate that could be easily breakable?

(also I think I probably need to create a Ruby/SQLite3 script for the MacCaching database to generate the correct GPX file for this).

Regards,

-Andy

Andy

I can't want for your review! The 3D views and easier to enter information touchscreen look like a big step up from the 60/76 series.

I put a screen protector on my Nuvi 660. It works very well at keeping scratches off. Doesn't seem to affect the sensitivity either.

iamasmith

Well I got the Unit , it's really nice.

I'll do a full review soon, I want to do all the questions that I hadn't had answers from other reviews justice and this means some pictures.

I also want to get my TOPO GB unlocked for the unit which I can apparently do but there is a bug if you registered TOPO GB via MapSource and not the web site that inhibits you getting your second free unlock code :S, am waiting Garmin support to give me a second code.

Regards,

-Andy

iamasmith

OK, first post about the unit. I will keep them short as I will be adding additional photos.

Unit and screen size

I was pretty shocked at just how small the unit and the screen are. Seeing it beside other GPS units just doesn't really illustrate it so take a look at this picture.



This picture gives you a good indication of the screen size. Take a AA cell and hold it up against one of your fingers for comparison.

The cell resting on the screen here is at 45% and touching one corner and one side of the screen.

So, we have established that the screen is small but is it too small?



Firstly, we need to consider the impact on the whole size of the unit. Here you can see that the unit snugly sits in the hand. In fact it is nicely contoured and you can hold it like this quite naturally for a long time.

Holding the unit is further enhanced by virtue of the rubberised texture of the units case which enhances grip quite a lot.



As far as usage goes the size of the touch screen isn't limiting and it is just workable even with gloves.

The interface is so designed such that even the most farmer like digits will be able to operate it.

More about the touch screen in the next post.

iamasmith

No pics here folks just plain observations but there will be plenty of pics later.

Here I'm going to focus purely on the characteristics of the touch screen itself and not the display quality. That may be covered later.

Touch Screen Performance in Cold Weather

It's been down to -5C in some places that I have been with the unit and it hasn't effected the performance.

The manual provided by Garmin cite the operating range as..

From -4°F to 158°F (from -20 to 70°C)

but also say that many batteries will not be happy in these ranges, particular in the upper ranges where some may rupture.

For me this isn't an issue since the unit is purely for Geocaching for me.

Interestingly the 60CSx which I also have is -15 to 70C.

Assuming this range covers touch screen usability (since there is no other way of interacting with the unit) this says that Oregon is better... interesting.

Touch Screen Ruggedness?

Garmin support maintain that the Oregon has a scratch resistant screen... well it took me about 2 mins to find the Garmin Oregon Wiki (Garmin Oregon Wiki home) where the reviewer said that he scratched the screen pretty quickly.

I added a screen protector before I even touched the screen so no greasy marks even on the actual screen of mine. Unfortunately this means that I can't comment on general response from the screen without the screen protector since I have never touched it.

As far as breakability goes, well the small size helps. The screen is recessed a little and that will protect it from casual knocks. When I'm out and about I put it in my jacket's nelson pocket with the screen facing in to me and I'm confident that it is fairly happy like that.

I would certainly NOT put the unit in a pocket with anything else that could form a hard point against the screen or put anything in a case that may accidentally push against that screen!

I did do a little scrambling today, however, and was glad to put the unit into the additional hard case that I bought for the unit which I clipped to my belt. More info on that in the next posting.

Response and usability

Pretty good. It works with gloves on and the interface design is such that you can work with it without pin-point precision.

The only criticism on response is scrolling where there are no arrow keys. Certain parts of the interface such as the Geocache information don't provide scroll regions where you can touch with a finger. Instead you have to push and drag. Being a daily iPhone user I'm a little spoiled.. the screen doesn't provide the scroll control by dragging like the iPhone but sensitivity may also be impeded because I have a matte finish anti-glare screen protector (no I'm not taking it off, sorry).

I find the usability great but I do need to take my gloves off to scroll.

Note that there is a soft lock to stop the unit from accidentally registering screen knocks when it is in the pocket. This is used by blipping the power button and selecting lock/unlock screen from the display. I find this is worthwhile even in my jacket pocket so the screen IS reasonably sensitive.

iamasmith

Screen brightness

I'm not going to cover this thoroughly because it is covered quite a lot in many other reviews particularly the Garmin Oregon Wiki (Garmin Oregon Wiki home).

Suffice to say it isn't brilliant in bright daylight, it is reasonable for general use and it is fantastic for night time work.

I'm not highly enthusiastic but reasonably content with the screen brightnesss. I won't be doing switched on shots for other parts of the review, instead I will be using the screen capture that is built into the device.

iamasmith

What can I say, it is great!

The STA2062 Cartesio chipset used has some impressive features and provides a lock rapidly.

If you have used the unit within a couple of days and haven't travelled far then the unit provides instant lock and is almost immediately providing you a location (assuming you haven't travelled far with the unit off) and the unit gains high accuracy with WAAS/EGNOS turned off. I noticed that it tends to acquire and use far more satellites than my 60CSx and maybe there is an additional confidence factor that the unit gains by doing this. Accuracy seems to be just as good as my 60CSx with WAAS turned on and the WAAS on the Oregon turned off.

This actually turns out to be critical for many people at the moment because, sadly, at least where I am WAAS acquisition on this unit is something of an enigma.

My 60CSx will generally get an EGNOS lock within 60 seconds of being turned on... brilliant!, and it does make a difference to the 60CSx here.

The Oregon... well I tell no lie that I have been able to get only ONE EGNOS lock in the week that I have had it and it made absolutely no difference to the accuracy.

In a world where the manufacturer doesn't tell you everything and doesn't even tell their support people everything I can only speculate that Garmin have either decided that WAAS will kick in with a significant reduction in confidence based upon a traditional reading (limited number of birds) or that there are some issues that they have to work out with regard to WAAS acquisition.

I do know that if WAAS is present and the device gets it that you can turn off the device and reacquire WAAS rapidly (in the short term) but if you disable WAAS and re-enable it then WAAS disappears again.

I speculate that the almanac/ephemeris for the WAAS birds is discarded on these units at the moment and that acquisition requires a full almanac each time the unit initiates a WAAS search.

Reading various literature it appears that the hunt for general satellites is augmented by the units chipset being capable of storing ephemerides for up to three days hence and this provides the rapid lock that I describe.

Anyway, what I can say is WAAS/EGNOS or not, here, in London the accuracy is every bit as good as the 60CSx with WAAS turned on.

Finally one last point.

The unit is clearly designed for outdoor use and minimum number of points that may be exposed to the elements. It does NOT provide a port to connect an external antenna like most of the other units including the Colorado do.

iamasmith

Cartesio™ Application processor for portable navigation (PND), in-vehicule navigation and telematics

is the link to the ST website who manufacture the Cartesio processor.

The component offers some big wins in terms of manufacture since not only does it provided the GPSr technology but many other features including an ARM9 processor, memory controller, peripheral control and many other features.

I can see the sweet spot for Garmin in this product selection.

In terms of performance the Oregon, being run at ~333MHz is comparable to the capability of a low end Windows Mobile device, many of the higher end Windows mobile units actually operate at 624MHz.

Actual performance experience is of course governed by many other factors and there are advantages to using a lower power processor.

When designing a runtime (I can't find any reference to any specific RTOS that Garmin use but I presume that they have bought one as there are many around for this chipset, it isn't AFAICT Windows Mobile though) and an interface within tight performance budgets it is easier to come up with something more workable than working in a rigid framework. The Oregon pulls this off quite well.

Response to various events, screen redraw etc. are more than adequate and there are no serious performance issues to be aware of that may hamper use.

The two things that I can cite regarding performance is that very occasionally during map panning there are small white regions that appear very briefly on the edges of the map. This was more pronounced on the version of the firmware that the unit shipped with (2.20). On 2.80, the annoyance factor has disappeared, you are occasionally aware of them but they are repainted much more attentively than on 2.20. The second thing is the time taken to bring up a 3D view, the unit can take a minute before it displays a 3D map. It is plain from the display that the unit renders a bitmap of a local tile of mapping information and then displays that, simply scaling the pixels like a skin over its 3D elevation information (looks very Doom like).



3D display is where a major performance tradeoff is due. The Doom like graphics of the 3D view are obviously much easier to render than a smooth 3D terrain and pose less of a processor overhead to the unit. Some may bleat that this isn't nice, however, if the unit carried the necessary circuitry to render the smoothest graphics then it wouldn't necessarily be the greatest handheld GPSr... it would either need a much faster processor, much more elaborate internal architecture or 3D acceleration to achieve the performance necessary to do this and maintain this mapping on the fly. This would seriously impact battery life and wouldn't make for a good overall user experience. Personally I think Garmin have got this right for now based upon the performance vs power demand in devices available at the moment.

Note though, if you start using a 60CSx a week later, the lack of pretty graphics doesn't immediately hit you but snappiness of the 60CSx does.. great as it is the Oregon does reinforce how good the technology choices were for the 60CSx as a unit were at the time.

iamasmith

Final discussions on the actual unit form factor and qualities.

Firstly if we flip the unit over it looks like this..



The back of the unit has a slightly rubbery feeling to it helping with the general grip.

The spine, shown quite well here features a mounting rail and at the end a flip up release catch that allows removal of the back.

The weather protection for the USB port is also shown here. One point to note is that if you are taking the unit out of your pocket or the case then you may want to double check that the weather cap hasn't popped open. Mine keeps doing that and I can't figure exactly what I'm doing to cause it, I just find it waggling around.

Opening the back reveals the battery bay..



Very standard 'x' series bay here. You will find that the batteries are rather snug but in general it is exactly the same with the MicroSD card sitting under the batteries, the unit serial number printed on the side of the bay and the O-Ring fitted to the cover (shown).



Here is the end of the unit showing the weather cap closed and a lanyard attachment. I think it is probably useful to get one but Garmin don't stick one in the box :S. The only thing to be aware of when getting one is make sure that it isn't something that is going to push against the screen when pocketed or stored in the case. Be particularly careful of metal bits that might scratch the unit. Possibly this concern is why Garmin didn't include one.. possibly it was just scrimping.



Finally the battery switch. This is the ONLY non touch screen control on the unit. The picture illustrates that the power switch is nicely waterproofed and also illustrates the very grippy rubberised wrap around the main body of the unit along with the wavy buffer plastic that forms the shell and sits between this rubber and the back of the unit.

You can just see if you zoom the picture with the unit opened that the opened shell is actually contoured along this wavy region.

For the curious the shell material appears to be plastic but it has a metallicised hard coating and I did hear reference to there actually being a real metal skeleton in the unit somewhere. Anyway it is rigid and seems reasonably robust.

iamasmith

Garmin do provide a carabiner clip mount with the 300 and other units (apart from the 200) that attach to the mounting rail of the Oregon which is fine if you are clipping it away from a region that may gather knocks (such as your chest strap on a backpack). If you are scrambling, attaching it to a belt loop or generally a little more concerned you may want more protection.

Here is the case, Garmin part number 010-10850-20 that fits the Oregon and by all accounts the Colorado unit too. The original case 010-10850-010 for the Colorado AFAICT doesn't have the extendable velcro webbing strap.. or at any rate there is a slight difference.

Here you can see the case in its wide open position. Notice that it has straps that lock it to a maximum 90 degrees opening angle.

You can see the Garmin carabiner behind the case. This is a small trinket style carabiner and I wouldn't suggest that you replace it with a toothed load bearing crab since this will just snag if you snap it onto straps etc.



In this picture you can see the mounting rail attached to the Oregon. As you can see the webbing is velcroed and extends out of the unit. When you drop the Oregon into the case this meets up with Velcro inside the case.



This picture shows the unit in the case with it open. Note again the 90 degree opening angle. Also note that the Oregon is fastened to the outer part of the case with the empty part of the shell being the one with the carabiner clip. This has two functions, when mounted on the chest the unit drops open to a readable position in the right orientation and secondly the screen is facing towards you providing further knock protection.

Also note that the case is fairly roomy. Certainly it should be big enough for the Colorado's horn and should accomodate a lanyard if fixed to the unit. Again be careful with lanyard fittings making a bulge that could press heavily against the screen in this case.



This shows the case closed. It's a big sucker. If you are like me and have small head torches, swiss army knives, cache trinkets, travel bugs, spare batteries etc. etc. then you will be clipping this to a belt loop rather than trying to stuff this into your pocket.



Finally, the hard case isn't totally rigid. If you have an Oakley rigid case for your sunnies then you know what to expect.

Basically it is a semi tough case covered in webbed cordura and should be reasonably tough against knocks but if you fall with all your weight on it then you may have a few second pause before you get to answer on this thread just how rugged the Oregon actually is ... I suggest not trying it

The case, I think is probably worth the money. It has some nice features and has been thought about well. Even clipped to your belt you can still open the case and pull out the webbing strap and the GPSr is in a good position to be read - although not quite as convenient as being straight from pocket to hand. Use as you feel you need it, definitely recommended for a little more protection whilst scrambling.

p.s. Nearly forgot, as well as the Carabiner clip that I use to snap the unit onto my jeans belt loop there is actually a seperate velcro strap loop on the back that you could use to attach directly to a belt or other equipment strap if it was more convenient than the crab.

iamasmith

OK, that concludes the first batch of postings.

When I get more time I will talk about the unit software and provide some screen shots to illustrate what I'm talking about.

In the meantime there is a lot of information on the Oregon Wiki previously stated in this thread and if there are any specific questions that you want to ask I will do my best to answer them.

Kind regards,

-Andy

WhereMI

iamasmith, Thanks for the reviews! So far yours is the best one I've read (information wise). I'm looking forward to the rest. Excellent!

iamasmith

The main menu looks like this.



As you can see there are left and right arrows to navigate to other screens with other Icons. Garmin terms all the icons as 'applications' in the manual btw.

The screens can be navigated using the arrows or you can drag left and right with a finger swipe.

Pressing the area over the GPS indicator at the bottom of the screen reveals the satellite screen.



There is nothing remarkable about the satellite screen other than to say that you rapidly get a quick fix on normal satellite reception and the unit (with version 2.80) still does display the D symbol over the bars if it receives a WAAS/EGNOS lock.

I was so convinced at one point when trying to receive EGNOS in London that the unit didn't scan this regions birds or didn't display the D symbol. I can tell you now that it actually does display the D symbol if you finally get a lock.

Note that the number of bars here is shown after about 10 seconds following power on. Wait a few more seconds and more birds will lock and accuracy will be down to about 16ft based upon my observations.

The backdrop is user selectable and can be assigned to a profile btw from the Setup menu.

iamasmith

There are essentially two variants of Map view provided with the Oregon.

One is two dimensional set as North Up or Track Up and the other is Automotive using compass direction.

The settings screen for the Map allows for Orientation, which gives you this menu..



Auto Zoom, which can be set to On/Off

Show Data Fields, can be set to 'Never', 'When Navigating' and 'Always'

Advanced Settings that let you select 'Zoom Levels' where particular things appear, 'Text Size', 'Detail' giving detail level and the option of turning Shaded Relief off or on.

The 2D displays look like this..



Note that if you select data fields to be displayed it appears you get two to choose from. You can select the actual data displayed simply by selecting the field on screen.

I choose as one of my fields for Geocaching the GPS accuracy field since if you look closely the unit does NOT display the circle of accuracy :S, various folks have contacted Garmin tech support about this and they said that they removed it 'because it was confusing people' :S... I say give us the option to turn it back on, I like that feature.

Dragging the map with the finger allows you to pan around.

Tapping the map in one location drops a push pin, you can fine tune the point of the push pin by dragging the map so the tip appears over the point that you want. If the point of the pushpin lands on a Waypoint an additional information option will appear at the top of the screen allowing you to get more info about the waypoint.

The Automotive view looks like this..



Note that this is just about what you get on the real automotive navigation units. The major difference between this and the 'Highway' view on the 60CSx is that you get the roads appearing that you are actually navigating along with surrounding roads and names rather than just a simple change in direction on the magenta route line which seems pretty useless on the 60CSx. Note that this view was generated from a TOPO GB v2 card carrying routable road information.

Being your default map view you would expect a convenient way of changing to 2D view whilst driving. This is provided in Automotive view by pushing the screen and holding. The unit will switch temporarily into 'North Up' 2D mode until you hit the Return option. You can drag the map around like this but you can't Pushpin the map as you can in 2D mode.

Note that the automotive 3D mode is nice and smooth and generated by vectors.. this is quite different from the terrain 3D map that we will see later.

iamasmith

Apologies for not finishing this off just now.

I got busy on some other stuff, now the 2.85 beta is out and I'm running that and I propose to complete the review when the release version of whatever that turns out to be is issued.

Regards,

-Andy

dav

I'm enjoying this review, Andy. Thanks for posting... and we'll look forward to more when the new version is actually released.

tostig

I was seriously considering buying one when my 76CSx failed in Sept 2009. It was the second time in three years I had to send it in for repairs so I was considering the quality of the 76CSx or if the repairs cost too much it would have been time to upgrade.

After reading a bunch of reviews on the Oregon and factoring-in the replacement cost of the 76CSx at only 135CAD compared to the cost of a brand new Oregon, it was a no-brainer. Keep my 76CSx.