Garmin Colorado 300 Tested

Garmin Colorado 300 - GPST Review

GPS Training is a specialist GPS Training consultancy. They run GPS courses nationwide, can design custom courses to suit you and your friends and also sell and advise on upgrading GPS Units. More about them at www.gpstraining.co.uk

The new Colorado 300 sits at the top of Garmin's range of hand-held GPS units. It's an outdoors specific, waterproof GPS receiver that comes complete with a worldwide basemap. Additionally you can add local mapping via an SD card, the most useful of which for walkers and climbers are Garmin's topographic maps.

It can be used with third party mapping software to plan and save routes and the topographic mapping option should make it easier to use as a navigation tool in the field by relating your route to recogisable geographic features.

Garmin offers more affordable units for basic use, but if you're after all the bells and whistles, the Colorado 300 is the one to look at.

We've been using the Colorado 300 for about four months now and the more we use it the more we like it, Garmin has worked very hard over the years to not only add innovative features but importantly to give thought on how easy the operating system is for the user, the Colorado delivers on both counts. The unit itself fits nicely into the palm of your hand, feels solid and looks great.

To existing Garmin users the 'Rock'n Roller' input wheel will come as a bit of a shock replacing as it does the usual buttons and keys, but give it a spin or two and you'll soon get the hang of the new menu design by using the one handed single digit operation.

Simply spin the wheel to zoom in or out on the map page or to select the feature you wish to use from the Shortcuts Menu a single click takes you to the new screen then you can use the wheel to scroll around the different menu options

Technology A Go Go

The Colorado is packed with features some tried and trusted, some new, it delivers a new 65k high resolution colour screen, Electronic Compass and Barometric Altimeter, 384MB of internal memory with built in worldwide basemap for storage of your routes, tracks, and waypoints, 3D view of worldwide mapping and a JPG picture viewer

Arguably most useful is and expandable SD card memory for loading additional maps like Topo GB and storage of imported images, turn by turn routing on roads, wireless unit to unit data transfer, and is compatible with heart rate monitor and bike cadence sensors.

What It Means...

But let's cut through all the jargon and see what that all means for the average GPS user, we'll explain what each feature offers and you can decide if it's essential or nice to have.

All the basic features you would expect in a handheld GPS are to be found in the Colorado but at an enhanced level, it will store 1000 Waypoints, 50 Routes, and 20 saved tracks in it's internal memory, the electronic compass will provide bearing information even when you're standing still, and the altimeter can be used to keep an eye on weather conditions.

For almost all our customers it's the combination of a handheld GPS with colour screen and mapping software like Garmin's Topo that is the complete package. They transfer the OS based Topo maps to a 2GB SD card, and then when the GPS is locked onto satellites it will locate your position to the centre of the map.

Routes and trails created on your PC in software like Anquet, Memory-Map and Quo can be transferred to the GPS and will be see overlaid on the Topo Mapping. The UK Topo maps are available on three cards priced at approximately £70 each.

Topo opens the door to both on and off road navigation adding an extra dimension to the Colorado &endash; imagine you're planning at trip to the Lakes and an expedition over Blencathra. Topo will calculate your road trip giving turn by turn routing and printable directions then when you've arrived in Mungrisdale ready for your walk it will navigate you off road using a saved route perhaps imported from your favorite online walking site.

For the first time in a Garmin unit the Colorado includes a picture viewer, what use is that you ask? We have found it an invaluable tool to deliver information on the hill, any image can have text added to it and any document can be scanned and turned into an image they can then be simply copied to either the internal memory or the SD card of the unit. We ask our students to navigate to a location then open a numbered image and follow the instructions contained within the image.

Runners, bikers and fitness enthusiasts can add fitness products to the Colorado such as a heart rate monitor which will send heart rate data wirelessly to the device, or bike cadence sensors which can once again wirelessly measure your pedaling strokes per minute providing information for optimal performance.

Unsung Hero

There's one item that comes in the box that's unmentioned in the Garmin promotional material that hits the spot with our customers - it's the carabiner clip. Specially designed for the Colorado it allows you to attach the unit safely to your rucksack or clothing yet is flexible enough to allow easy viewing of the screen when on the move.

Important Update

We recommend that all our customers update the unit software immediately after purchasing their new Colorado, why would you need to do this? Updates supply in the main fixes to operational issues and occasionally new features, they are free and easily accessed by visiting www.garmin.com looking for the Support page and updates & downloads, where you will find the latest update for your unit. Use the web updater or download the file to your PC and run from there.

Although it's a unit which can be used at a basic level, we reckon there are others in the Garmin range better suited, but for advanced users, the Topo map option when combined with PC-based route-planning software.

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