Garmin Oregon 400t with
Discoverer Mapping -
Tested
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Price:
£399.99 [Discoverer Maps - £129.99]
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Weight: 197
grammes including 2xAA batteries.
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Features:
Touch-screen operated GPS unit, high sensitivity receiver with Hotfix,
barometric altimeter, pre-loaded road mapping, elctronic compass,
microSD card slot, pciture viewer, stopwatch, HRM support, 3-inch
diagonal colour screen - 240x400 pixels, waterproof, USB interface,
1000 waypoints, 50 routes, 10,000 track lg points, 20 saved tracks.
Auomatic turn by turn routing on roads, custom POIs, wireless data
sharingwith other Garmin units. Full spec.
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What's It
For?
We've already carried a first look at Garmin's
Oregon
300 GPS unit and the 400t is very similar,
albeit with some added features, but the real interest with the 400t
was that it came complete with Garmin's new GB Discoverer map of the
Peak District.
It's a full topographic. 1:50,000/1:25,000 Ordnance Survey map
on a microSD card and while Satmap has been doing the same thing for
over a year now, this is the first time either Garmin or Magellan has
given users the option of having a real OS map on their screen instead
of a topo or basemap.
The Garmin GB Discoverer maps cover National Parks and Trails only in
both 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 form and cost £129.99. The pack
also includes data which allows full turn by turn navigation in the UK.
The Vector mapping accounts for the limited coverage and the cost.
The unit uses a touch screen interface and a neat icon-based navigation
system that at first look is a lot more user friendly than traditional
GPS units with their relentlessly user-hostile interface.
The Techy
Bits
We' re not going to get obsessed with the technical minutae here,
ultimately we're interested in how well the Oregon works as a real
world outdoors navigation tool, but there are some stand-out features
that are worth pointing out.
The Oregon uses a Transflective color TFT touchscreen, which you
operate with your finger, gloved or not, the only button is the on /
off one. Nice and simple.
Next, the unit has raster and vector mapping. The latter means that it
can navigate you, on the road, step by step to any number of stored
points of interest from the local Italian restaurant, to an airport or,
more usefully, to the start point of your walk. In effect you can use
it as a car-type Satnav, though thankfully it won't talk to you...
Finally a microSD card slot nestling behind the batteries, allows you
to load additional mapping and storage capacity, in our case the
1:50,000 OS map of the Peak District.
How It
Performed
Initally the Oregon 400t was a little overwhelming. Dig into the easy
to access, icon-based menu and you'll find it can do pretty much
anything short of making the tea and toat. There are no fewer than
three pages of options ranging from the obvious - 'Map' to stuff like
stopwatches, calendars and a calculator. A lot of this you can simply
ignore.
The Oregon is based on a completely different rationale to the Satmap
Active 10. While the Satmap has been designed from the ground up to
work with OS mapping, it's the complete reason for its existence, the
Oregon is basically a very refined traditional GPS unit with a more
coherent interface with bolt-on OS mapping.
That means you can do everything you'd expect from a Garmin GPS unit in
terms of uploading and downoading tracks, GPX files and so on, but
you'll see it all on an on-screen OS map. What you don't get is a unit
that's anything like as self contained as an Active 10.
Screen size relative to Satmap
Active 10 unit
That's fine in that you're getting a good GPS unit with knobs on, but
it's really let down by the screen and the way the mapping appears on
it. For starters, the screen is just too small to see enough of the
mapped area. Next, it's nigh on impossible to read in anything
resembling sunlight, even at full brightness, which burns batteries for
fun. Finally, the mapping itself is horribly blurry. Apparently this is
down to the unit overlaying different mapping layers, but even with the
latest software update installed, it's still not as clear as we'd like.
That's a shame because when you can see it, it does work reasonably
well with a clear directional position indicator and a neat black line
to represent your track. We had the odd grouse with the interface too.
So far the touch screen works well, even with gloves and in wet
conditions, but there are so many options and they're not always
obvious.
For example, you'd think the trip computer reset would be easy to
locate and should be on the trip computer screen, but no, it's buried
in 'Setup' some four touches away.
Other aspects work really well. Our unit seemed to acquire a GPS fix
really quickly. It downloaded routes in GPX form and direct from some
mapping web sites easily and quickly via its USB port and displayed
them clearly.
We were also impressed with the way you can use the unit as a sat-nav
in the car, where it did work reasonably well and with the endless
lists of potential destinations including restaurants, pubs, petrol
stations and so on. We would, however, happily have swapped them for a
bigger, brighter, clearer screen and mapping that displayed more
sharply.
In some ways the Oregon 400t is massively impressive. The interface
isn't perfect, but the touch screen and icon-based menu are far better
than other GPS units we've used. We do have reservations over the
longterm durability of the screen, however only time will tell on that
count. We like the vector mapping satnav capabilities as well and the
compatability with mapping software and computers including Macs.
Unfortunately the OS mapping comes across as being a bit of a bolt-on,
it displays blurrily, the screen is too small and very hard to read in
any sort of sunlight and keeping the brightness level high took its
toll on battery life. Use it like a traditional GPS with added OS-ness
and you'll be fine, but don't expect to be able to get the full benefit
of the mapping in the way you would with an Active 10.
Buy if
you're after a traditional do-it-all GPS unit with a better interface
that will allow you to navigate to the trailhead on the road then see
your route displayed on an OS map and you don't walk much in bright,
summer conditions.
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Loads of features, rapid satellite acquistion, neat interface icons.
 Let down by
screen performance, not always intuitive, needs computer to maximise
performance.
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Performance
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Value
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gary williams 4
