"Bought this unit primarily for hiking and backpacking use, secondarily for street navigation use (I travel a lot for work). Doing so required me to purchase 2 seperate Mapsource programs from Garmin, one for the topos and one for the streetmaps. I also opted to purchase a car navigation kit which includes a GPS base that holds unit on dash, and a car power adapter cable. My review is based on my use of the unit utilizing these optional products.
The unit itself features a 256 color display, 24 megabytes of memory, up to 20 hours of battery life (2 AA's), route generation and off route recalculations, audible alarms (for off route, signal loss, waypoint arrival, etc),a USB interface cable and software for your PC. Also includes a calibratable compass and altimeter and WAAS (to increase accuracy), and an adjustable backlight.
The unit itself is about the size of an average cellphone and weighs 5.5 ounces. I bought a LowePro camera case which I thread my belt through, and keep the unit inside this. It receives satellite signals fine inside the case. You can also purchase official cases for the unit. The unit comes with only a Basemap, which I honestly found to be useless. The basemap only includes major highway info for the US. In order to use it as I inteded, I had to purchase a topomap program from Garmin which is loaded onto your computer. It gives you a map of the US which you can zoom into on specific areas, then select grids you want to load into the unit. The unit will allow up to 24 megabytes of data to be downloaded into it, which I have found to be enough for my use. I can load nearly the entire state of Utah topomaps into the unit. THe unit will accept ONLY Garmin's topomap software. The maps themselves display popular trails, mines, peaks, lakes, roads, etc. I have found the trails to be quite accurate, but only popular trails are included. Really my only complain about the software is it's scaled at about 1:100,000, I'd prefer it to be closer to 1:24,000. On well defined trails in good weather, I actually don't look at the unit much, maybe other than to check altitude out of interest. But on off route and in bad weather hiking it is fantastic. I recently did a hike in deep spring snow and where I was following other's tracks. They stopped abruptly but I was able to stay on trail via the units map display. I made it to my destination perfectly. Another hike found me decsending off route in the dark, and using the unit I was able to hike directly to where the trail picks up again, I figured it saved me an hour of searching. Also, it is great in bad weather, when visibility is low. I can use it to see exactly how far to the next lake, or peak, or whatever even though I cannot see them. It also keeps track of distance hiked, elevation gained, speed, etc.
I always carry spare batteries, but have found battery life to last me about two full days of hiking. Using the backlight however will cut this down quite a bit. It is very fast to acquire position upon being turned on, usually withing 5 seconds. However, this is true only if the last time you used the unit you turned it off. If you let the batteries die, or pulled the batteries w/o turning it off first, or disconnect it from external power w/o first turning it off it can take upwards of 20 minutes to get a signal lock. So always turn the unit off! It hold the signal well, accept in very narrow canyons. Even in dense forests it hold the signal well.
I have the unit keep track of my route, which I can then download into the Garmin mapsource program, or USAphotomaps, or Google Earth 3D. This lets me store the route for future use, or just to review.
The unit also features a sunrise/sunset almanac, fishing hunting recommend times, calculator, and many other features. It is very water resistant and shock resistant. I dropped it an accident down a steep slope, where it hit 3 rocks on it's way down, finally stopping some 30 feet below me. It hasn't had any problems since that accident, nor did it show a single scratch!
Also, I use it for street navigation when out of town, and it will calculate routes, telling when to turn, and recalculate your route if you miss a turn. The database with the City Select software includes millions of restaurants, hotels, rest stops, gas stations, etc. The only caveat is that although it's supposedly up to date through August 04, I've had it not find homes that were built in 2002.
To wrap up, I highly recommend this Unit for outdoor use. It's great to be able to pinppoint your location withing a few feet on the fly, gives great peace of mind, and can save you a lot of time if you get off route.
Pros: Tough, light, full color, accurate signal, feature loaded, real time map and position display, automatic route finding, route storage, long batter life.
Cons: To get the most use out of product requires buying Garmins software which is expensive!"
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