Customer Reviews

Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx Handheld GPS Navigator

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Finally a GPS unit that simply works the way it's supposed to! Ok... I admit I am still on my honeymoon with the Garmin Map 60Cx, but so far it has worked like a dream and has exceeded my expectations.

This unit was very easy to use intuitively right out of the box. My greatest surprise was when I turned on the unit for the first time and, literally within a minute, I had locked 6 satellites! (with another 4 on the way). I just have to mention that with my previous 3 GPS units, I would have to wait 10 to 20 minutes for a lock on the minimum 3 satellites. Also, this Map 60Cx seems to keep lock well even with buildings, trees, and obstructions (whereas my previous GPS units would frustratingly lose lock when I entered a forest or even stood next to a building). This really makes the Map 60Cx a great pleasure to use. It initiates right away and keeps lock, just like it should. The displays are easy to read and interpret and it easily navigates through the different pages with simple intuitive controls (with Windows-like menus). Oh! and the colour display is great, very easy to see even without the backlight.

The difference between the Garmin GPS Map 60Cx and the Garmin GPS Map 60CSx is that the 60CSx has an electronic compass and a barometric altimeter built in and it usually costs about $30 more than the 60Cx. I opted for the 60Cx (minus the compass and altimeter) because I already had these instruments on my wrist watch, they were redundant with the GPS compass and GPS altimeter already included with the unit, and I noticed that compared to the 60CSx with an 18 hour battery life, the Map 60Cx sips power with up to a 30 hour battery life. Since the only difference between the two are these two additional instruments (compass and altimeter), I can only surmise that the exta power drain must be related to them.

As for battery life, I have not encountered any problems yet. One of my reasons for choosing this product is because it did NOT use an internal or proprietary rechargeable battery. I needed a unit that used plain, readily available, easily replaceable alkaline batteries. Rechargeable batteries do gradually lose their effectiveness over time (as another reviewer noted and attributed to the GPS unit). For me, it is easier and more reliable to just pop in 2 fresh Duracells than to wonder what the current max charge is on my rechargeables (or to pay $20-$30 for some exotic hard to find "EL-1078-4a" battery when it finally dies). This principle holds true for most consumer electronics. I try to avoid anything that uses some special battery (even a CR123 at $5 each) or worse, some specific proprietary battery made just for the device.

Another key feature that I required was waterproofness. I use my GPS unit on, in and over the water (not to mention inclement weather).

The base map is sufficient for my needs so far (hiking and geocaching), but eventually I will pick up the City Navigator software for road directions when I travel. I have seen this software in use on my friend's GPS Map 60CSx (the sister unit to the 60Cx) and despite the seemingly high additional cost, I think that for what you get, it is a good deal. Not only does it upgrade the unit into a highly effective turn by turn road navigator, but it also adds a nice city guide feature that allows you to find restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and Starbucks.

Also, having had some previous experience in law enforcement and familiarity with the California Vehicle Code, I would like to mention that the suction-cup mount accessory for the windshield is illegal in the State of California. It's CVC 26708(a).

UPDATE TO REVIEW 5/20/08:
Ok, I've used this product for a year now, the honeymoon's over... LOL... ...and I still love this product. It has performed superbly way beyond my expectations. First of all, it is indeed very rugged. I've dropped this unit many times, abraded the casing against rocks, accidentally given it impromptu dunkings in rivers and streams (not sea water yet!), and have taken it into extremes of temperature from freezing 20 below, to 120 degree desert. All I can say is, it has endured all of this abuse admirably.
Secondly, the unit when hooked up with the North America Map Pack and the car power cord (which illuminates the display constantly) serves as an excellent turn-by-turn driving GPS. Sure a bigger screen might be nice, but the GPS and directions work (with audible alerts), so I have no complaints. The big advantage is that you can easily unhook it and take the unit with you since it was designed to be handheld, thus avoiding the biggest new temptation for auto burglars.
Thirdly, much to my delight, the base maps pre-installed with the unit include INTERNATIONAL locations also! I was able to use my GPS extensively while traveling abroad 1) ensuring that I could not get "lost" and 2) keeping an automatic, constantly updating travel track log for me. This has turned out to be a wonderful extra benefit of traveling with a good GPS unit. Everywhere I went, every interesting site, every store, every restaurant, every beautiful vista, was accurately and duly recorded, and when I got home and uploaded this track log to my computer, I have a perfect travel diary of my journey. Also, marking waypoints and actually labeling them is quite easy with this GPS unit, and I've been able to do it with gloved hands. If I'm in a hurry, I'd just set a "marker" and then come back and label it later.
I burn through batteries at a consistent rate of 2 AAs every 3 or 4 days (as I power down at night), which is fine with me, to avoid all the hassles of recharging or degrading performance of rechargeables.

Any negatives??
Well, I wish that instead of suspending all functions and wasting power to give me multiple and redundant audible and lit up "pop-up" warnings that my "BATTERY IS LOW", that it would just go ahead and try to function with what little power is left until I run out of power. This is an annoying idiosyncracy of many small electronics including cell phones and iPods. I mean, I can't help but wonder how much longer these units might have functioned if they didn't expend their last gasp of power on these incessant low power warnings.
I think I would have extended the grippy rubber covering to the sides of the unit also. The times that I've dropped it were usually because it simply slipped out of my hand while holding it along the sides.
Alas, the nifty plastic belt clip did not last long under field use. Replacement clips are hard to get (and pricey too). I finally had to upgrade to a rugged military grade nylon web pouch (designed to hold a single smoke or flash-bang grenade).

There's no doubt that GPS technology has come a long way during the last decade. I bought this to replace my old Garmin etrex -- the 60Cx is vastly better at tracking under trees, in mountain valleys, and has a much faster processor. I use it primarily for hiking, and it is virtually impossible to become lost. Even under trees, in a valley, with the unit inside my backpack, it never lost satellite track and was never off by more than about 50 feet, comparing the hike in with the hike back.

So what's the problem? Surprisingly, the achilles heel of this mapping GPS is that there simply are no good maps for hiking/backpacking. Garmin sells a topo map set, which is completely unacceptable for any kind of in-the-field use. It lacks any kind of detail (for one thing, vertical countour lines are 150 feet, and it includes very few trails or national forest roads), and although it is nice to upload your journey to a map once you get back home and see where you went, the map itself is next to useless while hiking. Garmin makes a high-resolution topographic map set, but it covers ONLY the national parks (not even the national forests). I live in Oregon, with thousands of miles of trails, and only 1 place -- Crater Lake -- is available in high resoultion topo from Garmin. National Geographic makes a nice high-resolution map set, but it is expensive and the maps can only be loaded to a Magellan GPS, not any of the Garmins. Ditto with a GPS/topo map set from DeLorme. There is a company that has made high-resolution maps of 2 states -- Washington and Colorado -- but they require the Garmin Mapsource CD, and then they cost another hundred bucks per state on top of that.

The lack of good, high-resoultion topo maps is completely baffling, and -- at least for hiking -- makes the mapping function of this GPS completely superfluous. If I had it to do over, I think I would buy one of the newer but less expensive GPS units, like maybe a newer extrex. The extra money that you pay for the mapping capability with this unit is wasted, IMO, at least until good topo maps become available (if they every do).

I recently received my 60cx from Amazon, and after putting it through its paces, I am extremely impressed with it. I had the older GPSMAP 60c as well, and did some comparisons between the two.

Garmin's not kidding when they say this receiver is more sensitive. I can pick up at least 5 satellite locks from INSIDE my house, about 10ft away from any window. I don't even know how it's possible, but it locks on and maintains its signal.

Navigation is awesome as well. Do yourself a favor and get the CitySelect Maps for this thing, they're great. Highly detailed. The processor even seems faster as well. The re-draw time on the maps is fast, even when at maximum detail.

Bottom Line, if you're looking for a fantastic GPS unit that is perfect for rugged activities like hiking and geocaching, and can also handle "turn-by-turn" road navigation with ease, then this is the GPS for you! Garmin has done a great job with this thing! Buy this now!

Ok.. here's the deal. I've been an avid Magellan user for the past 3 years. I love my Magellan. I've never liked the Garmins because of their clumsy interface (the buttons placed above the display NEVER made sense to me) and how the menu structure was built.

However.... We're planning a 2000 mile road trip from Utah up to the Oregon coast. We needed something with expandable memory so we could upload more than one state map at a time. My wife bought me the Magellan eXplorist 600 for Fathers Day. I forced myself to use it for two days (and believe me, it was torture). I could go on and on about why I sent it back.
What I ordered as a replacement was the GPSMap 60Cx. Now keep in mind that I felt like someone who had turned to the dark side.
I couldn't be happier with my decision.

While I agree with most of the other reviews about the lack of base maps, and the expense of additional ones, this unit ROCKS! It acquires satellites within seconds. It has expandable memory. It has a color screen. It manages Geocaches. It auto-routes. It stores 1000 waypoints. It has SiRF Technology. It is a USB interface. It has a belt clip. It changes display contrast at night (automatically). It slices... It dices....
Suddenly the Dark Side isn't so dark!!

This is a great unit that I would recommend to anyone.

Among the plethora of handheld GPS models on the market, the 60CX probably offers the most all-around useful features.
What I like about the 60CX:
1. Very fast satellite acquisition thanks to the SirfStar-III chipset. Sitting indoors at my kitchen table and typing this review, my 60CX is tracking 8 satellites , including the WAAS satellite, and is showing the "location error" as only 22 feet. The 60CX also works remarkably well under tree canopy, inside my car, and in urban areas surrounded by tall buildings - all situations that would defeat most previous generations of handheld GPS's. The display processor has plenty of power, allowing speedy updates of the map even at tight zoom scales where the map is showing the maximum amount of detail and is changing rapidly if you are travelling at freeway speeds.

2. The Quad Helix antenna allows the unit to track satellites no matter what orientation the unit is placed in, horizontal, vertical, or face down: it still works. This allows the unit to be used on a belt clip, automobile or bicycle mount, or in a backpack pocket and you won't lose satellite lock. The patch antenna of units like the Garmin E-Trex or Lowrance IFinder models only works at full efficiency if the unit is placed horizontally on it's back, with the antenna facing upwards. For comparison, the E-Trex Legend I used to own would not track satellites if placed in a shirt pocket facing inwards, or if it got turned upside down on the dash of my car.

3. Connectivity and software. The 60CX comes with MapSource software, which allows upload/download of Waypoints, Track Logs, Routes, and Maps via the included USB cable. If you buy any of Garmin's optional cartography products like City Navigator or TOPO 2008, these maps all work together seamlessly in the same MapSource session. You can create or edit your routes and waypoints graphically against the map background on your PC screen, then upload the data to the GPS. Track logs recorded live by the GPS can be downloaded to MapSource, easily edited to remove "outliers" ("bad" track points caused by poor satellite PDOP), then uploaded back to the GPS. MapSource is pretty intuitive, user-friendly, and easy to learn.
While the 60CX is connected to a PC by the USB cable, it is being powered by your PC, saving the batteries in your GPS.
In addition to the USB connection, the 60CX has an RS-232 serial connection to allow it to communicate navigation commands to other devices, like marine autopilots, or chartplotting software like SeaClear or Fugawi Navigator, using the NMEA-183 Protocol. The serial connector is a 4-pin DIN socket that also allows the unit to be supplied with DC power from a vehicle or boat 12 volt electrical system. Garmin sells a cable with a 4-pin plug on one end, and the other end bare wires to connect to your accessories. This makes the 60CX a usable alternative to much more expensive dedicated Marine Chartplotters on your boat - it should connect to any marine autopilot that is NMEA-183 compatible. When you are not using your boat, the 60CX can be used in your car, as it does auto routing (if you own the optional City Navigator mapping product).

4. GPS Features. The 60CX is so packed with features, it's hard to think of anything else it could do that isn't already built in. It even has a display to calculate Glide Slope if you were using it in a sailplane. That said, keep in mind that the 60CX is a general purpose handheld unit, and while it has tons of features, dedicated Marine Chartplotters or Aviation GPS models will offer more capability for use specifically on boats or in aircraft, starting with a much larger display screen.

5. Build quality. The 60CX feels like it is sturdily built. The lower part of the housing is coated with knobby soft rubber right where most people would tend to hold it in hand, although increasing the area of the coating further up the sides would be nice. The latching mechanism on the battery compartment door uses metal instead of plastic for both the "male" and "female" components, which is good, but the effort required to turn the latch on my unit is higher than I would like, leaving me to wonder if the latch pin will eventually fail from metal fatigue. The micro-SD card lives under the batteries and is so tiny that changing it requires nimble fingers, at least more nimble than my "fat-sausage" fingers. If you've got an 8-year old kid handy, let him/her change your SD card. Or use a tweezers. The included belt clip seems to be well built, but I would recommend also attaching the GPS to one of your belt loops (assuming you're not wearing a skirt or dress) with the supplied wrist lanyard (or a longer cord for more reach). I have had the belt clip come off when getting into or out of a car, which would have caused the GPS to free-fall onto my concrete garage floor if I had not also used the lanyard.

The display is reasonably readable in direct sunlight, and very good indoors with the backlight on. The display is hardest to read when the ambient light is less than "full sun", but still too bright to use the backlight, for example outdoors on a heavily cloudy day, or in twilight like that first 1/2 hour after sunset. Although the above sounds like I rate the display as "poor", it is MUCH better than the display on the E-Trex Legend I used to own. I guess what I am trying to say is that I have seen sharper color displays on high-end PDA's, so the 60CX display might be a little disappointing to people who own such devices.

The most noteworthy features are:
(a) Ability to record your Active Track Log as a GPX file on the Micro-SD card, up to the memory limit of the card. A new GPX file is created each day (at 00:00 if the unit is powered on as midnight passes). These GPX files can be loaded into MapSource and edited as a tracklog, allowing multiple GPX files to be combined if you want. This feature means that the 10,000 point limit on the "active track log" could theoretically be worked around to record a much larger series of track logs at FULL precision. Lowrance IFinder models can also record track logs (trails) to micro-SD card, but Lowrance's track logs do not include Elevation or the time/date stamp on each track point like Garmin track logs do.
(b) Automatic generation of Routes for your road trips. This feature looks and works pretty much the same as on a Street Pilot or Nuvi, except the screen on the 60CX is smaller, and you don't have Voice commands telling you when to turn. This feature requires you to purchase extra-cost optional mapping like City Navigator, that includes all the "attributes" of the roads, like where and how they intersect, speed restrictions, one-way restrictions, etc. In auto-route mode, the 60CX does warn you of upcoming turns with big text messages and arrows, and it will automatically calculate alternative routing if you miss a turn. If you don't own City Navigator, the 60CX will let you manually create and store routes, or back-track a previously recorded tracklog, and the turn warnings will still operate.
(c) Route Profiling. If you have TOPO 2008 cartography (see my review on that product), the 60CX can generate and display the Profile of the roads along your route. This is nice for planning any kind of hiking, biking, or road trip.
(d) Topo Mapping (land) or BlueCharts (marine). These are extra-cost optional mapping products that allow your 60CX to display maps or charts that look a lot like USGS Quad Maps, or NOAA Marine Navigation Charts. Many other Garmin GPS's can also do this, it's just that the 60CX does it in a handheld package with lots of versatility to use it in your car, boat, RV, bicycle, or airplane, or even just walking around on your own two feet. The built-in basemap in the 60CX is pretty rough and includes only major highways, also the outlines of coastlines, rivers and lakes are mostly horribly inaccurate - the 60CX can't realistically be used as a marine chartplotter unless you buy an appropriate optional mapping product like TOPO 2008, BlueChart (for your region), or Inland Lakes. Check out Garmin's website for more details on what you actually get with their mapping products.

The rest of the 60CX's feature set is pretty much the typical features that you get on all Garmin or Lowrance IFinder handhelds, i.e. Waypoints, Routes, Tracks, Calendar, Sun and Moon set/rise times, etc. The 60CX also has some extra features specific to Geocaching, Marine Tide Stations, and Hunting and Fishing recommendations. For an exhaustive list of everything this GPS can do, go to Garmin's website and download the PDF of the complete owner's manual.

WHAT I DON'T LIKE ABOUT THE 60CX:
1. The map display shows land areas as a medium tan color, and I have not been able to find a way to lighten this color or change it to plain white. This tan color is too dark and offers insufficient contrast to overlaid features like city streets that are a brown or red color that is only a little darker.
Battery life is less than some other handheld GPS's, but this isn't really a complaint since the 60CX has a very powerful display processor. I also own a Lowrance IFinder GO, and while it has nearly double the battery life of the 60CX, it is a monochrome display and the processor is so underpowered that it is positively agonizing to plan a route using map pointing. The 60CX is light-years better than the IFinder GO, and if the price of all that power is only 16 hours of battery run time, it's worth it when you are actually using the unit for real-time chart plotting or route planning.

OVERALL SUMMARY: In my opinion, the 60CX is probably the best all-around handheld GPS from Garmin, offering the most comprehensive and versatile suite of features. Although it is not as capable for automobile routing as a dedicated Auto Navigation GPS like the Street Pilot, or as powerful for Marine Navigation as a full-fledged chartplotter, it can substitute for these devices if you can live with the small display screen and lack of some features specific to Marine or Auto Navigation. For hiking or bicycling trips, it is an excellent GPS that offers far more capability than the smaller wrist-mount GPS's (although at the cost of a little more weight and bulk). The ability of the Quad Helix antenna to allow satellite lock with the unit in a pocket or mounted vertically makes it preferable to any GPS with a patch antenna for hiking or backpacking, and probably better for mounting in a car or boat where you would probably mount it vertically. NOTE: for use on a yacht making a blue-water passage, I would recommend the 60CX as an emergency backup to your boat's regular chartplotter.
I rate the 60CX as Highly Recommended and I give it 5 stars with no reservations.


*******
UPDATE: June 9th, 2009:
My original 60CX is still going strong, except for one issue: the power button has started to get unreliable, sometimes requiring many presses before it "wakes up" and does it's job of turning the power and screen backlight on or off. Over the 22 months I have owned this unit, it has proven it's versatility and value many times over. I've used it for navigation on the road, in my boat, on hiking trips, and even at 35,000 feet on airplane trips. I recently added City Navigator NT 2009 and with it installed, the 60CX seems to do everything a Nuvi or Streetpilot can do except talk. The entire content of City Nav 2009 (that's all of the US and Canada!) can easily fit on a 2 gig microSD card with nearly a gigabyte left over for tracklogs or other maps. I have also started playing with "home made" maps, which can be compiled and uploaded to the 60CX's microSD card with several different suites of mapping programs, some commercial and others freeware.

*******
UPDATE: June 04, 2010
My old 60CX is still operational, the power button problem is still happening but remarkably not as severe as a year ago. It will usually power on with only 1 or 2 presses of the button. The price of the 60Cx on Amazon is down to $260, half what it was when this GPS was first introduced. More than ever, I feel the 60Cx is a fantastic handheld, and the best all-around value for the price. However, if a touchscreen is a "must-have" feature for you, the Garmin Oregon 450, at about $100 more, would be my first choice recommendation. Compared to the 60CX, it has a much larger, higher resolution touchscreen display, about the same battery life, and as far as I can tell from the specs, it supports almost all of the features the 60CX does, especially realtime backup of the tracklog to the MicroSD card, auto-routing (if City Nav maps are installed), and even Marine functions like Tide Prediction and NMEA-0183 interface.

NOTE: The latest firmware releases for the 60CX, version 3.9 and later, adds support for SDHC cards (presumeably up to 16 gigabytes), a big improvement over the original 60CX firmware, which was limited to a maximum 2 gig size SD card. The implication here is that you can now put multiple types of maps on your 60CX, HOWEVER, it turns out that the 60CX can only display one map layer at a time. So, even though you could theoretically put all of TOPO US 2008, Blue Charts for the entire US, and City Nav NT all on one 8 gig card, City Nav will default to being the "top" layer of mapping and will obscure any Topo or Blue Chart maps that happen to cover the same area. To enable/disable various map layers: from the Map screen, press Menu/Setup Map/ then scroll sideways to the Information tab, then press Menu again. You will now see a pull-down menu with various commands to turn on/off the various map layers.
If you own more than one Garmin map product, you can also split your maps up onto different microSD cards. For example, put your Blue Charts on a 1 gig card, City Nav on a 2 gig gard, and TOPO US 2008 on another 2 gig card, and swap them out as needed. There is a another reason to split up your map sets on different cards: As your mapset selection gets larger, the time required for Mapsource to compile and export the mapset grows exponentially. A really big (3.5 gigabyte) mapset that I tried to build, that would have had all of City Nav, and about half of Topo 2008, would have taken 12 hours to complete! A 500 megabyte mapset by comparison, can be compiled in about 20 minutes. So there's a pretty compelling reason to avoid selecting gargantuan mapsets in Mapsource. There is just enough room between the microSD card retainer and the batteries to store a second microSD card in the unit (just be careful not to drop and loose it when swapping batteries). So, for example, you could have City Nav on one for use in your car, and your Blue Charts and Topo Maps on the other card for use in hiking and boating trips.

I ordered mg GPSMap60Cx and had it two days later. Amazon came through in no time. The unit itself is impressive. I sports the SiRF III GPS chip and a quad helix antenna. The SiRF chip is the best one on the civilian market for accuracy, and reception. There are other GPS units, and some by onther manufacturers that use this chip, but I decided to go with a recognisable name brand. Glad I did too. This thing gives me 6 near full signal strength sat's while under thick tree cover and tracks accuratly. I stood in one spot, marked the spot with a waypoint. Then walked a quarter mile, marked the spot, then came back to the first spot and was within a few feet of the waypoint. All under heavy tree cover. The GPSMap60 series is quickly gaining a reputation as a high accuracy reciever from what I already have read.

The only drawback is the fact that the topo and city sreet maps are expensive. The unit is $360, and the maps are over $100 each. By the time I get done, I will be into this about $600.

If you are looking for a hand held GPS unit, I would go with any of the 60 series from Garmin. They all have the same GPS chip and antenna. The only differences are the screen, color vs. b/w, and if it has a barometer and compass or not. The Cx that does not have an electronic compass, DOES have a compass that gives you your heading. It's operated by the sat signals, so you have to be moving to have it show you your heading. But with that, you can figure out north if you need to. I'm against having the sensors because they draw too much power to operate. It also costs another $40 for the CSx model.

Other than that, I'm entirely satisfied with the GPSMap60Cx. It has proved to be everything that I came to expect after much research.

Wayne

This is my fourth GPS I have had and it does everything I could ever want a GPS to do. I use this for Search & Rescue work, Geocaching and general GPS usage.

Realize to really use this unit you need the maps and they are not cheap. I agree that Garmin should provide them out of the box, but they don't and we just keep buying them - so can you blame them. It connected right up to my PC and the new update software gamrin provides makes adding software a snap. I already had the TOPO software and an old version on Metroguide that was not supported by this unit. I do not know why they say that the old Metroguide is not compatible, my copy works fine and even gives routing directions. The last unit I had was the eTrex Vista. I don't miss the compass or altimeter at all, save the $50 and battery life and skip the GPSMap 60CSx. The altitude is given to you via the GPS location and you only have to move a few feet to get the compass direction.

It picks a signal up extremely fast, better than any GPS I have ever seen before. The color screen is really amazing after being used to my monochrome unit for so many years, worth the extra cost alone. Now I can actually read the screen day or night. With the out of the box memory card I was able to load all the topo maps for Colorado and all of the metroguide data for all major cites within 200 miles of home. I was going to purchase a larger manual, but now can not think of a reason to do it.

What I like best:
Battery Life - even with rechargeable batteries it is amazing
USB - easy and fast, fast, fast
Simple Navigation
Automatic backlight
Ability to show topo and Metroguide at the same time
MicroSD slot
Ability to show current any address with one click
Navigate on map to route points
Size
Water Proof (critical for the work I do)

What could be improved:
Slightly larger screen would be helpful
Simplified menu navigation
Main map page
Ability to turn the sound up for turn notifications

Overall for this unit has the best cost vs. performance of anything out there - but figure in the cost of maps when you look at this unit. You will not be sorry if you buy this unit.

I just returned from a trip to Europe. For our trip we flew in to Rome, drove to a rural area an hour outside Florence, spent a week there and drove to Florence, then on to Parma, the Loire valley and finally on to Paris. I purchased this unit and the Garmin MapSource European City Navigator v8 [CD-ROM] and offer the following comments.

1 - The unit it extremely fast and accurate in identifying location. Often I had coordinates in 20-30 seconds. I believe that this unit was more accurate than the GPS unit in my 2005 Accord. The Garmin unit knows exactly when I am at a turning point, even in Italian cities with narrow streets and 3-4 story buildings on all sides.

2 - The ability to load in regional European maps as needed was a big selling point.

3 - The download / upload process was relatively pain free and reasonably fast. There is no need to delete the existing maps in the unit before loading a new map in - your upload simply writes over the current maps.

4 - The battery life seems to be as advertised. I could run the unit for anywhere from 12 to 20 hours on two standard AA batteries. My rechargable batteries ran 8-12 hours. I will probably purchase the car power cord before my next trip.

5 - The turn-by-turn directions were mostly spot on. However there were some places in Italy where I ran in to areas that were recently / currently under construction and in these areas, some wrong turns were indicated. The most useful feature in these circumstances was the automatic recalculation for directions.

6 - A couple of small cool items. Heading through the alps we drove through some multi-kilometer tunnels. Even though we lost satellite reception going through the tunnels, the system kept accurate track of actual mileage driven. Also, when you zoom in to a quarter mile radius, the location of restaurants, local attractions, etc show up with useful symbols, sometimes with amusing results. Outside the door of our hotel in Florence I turned on the unit and saw no fewer than 15 pizza symbols (pizzerias) within 2 blocks of our hotel.

7 - I deduct one star because of the 64MB limit for downloadable maps. This is room for perhaps 5-8 regional maps. A regional map may cover only a relatively small area - for example you need 4-5 maps to cover Paris. This is not a problem for a person sightseeing around a limited area. However in my case, I needed directions for Parma to Paris. This 640 mile trip required 16-20 regional maps. This meant that I had to reload maps to the unit from my laptop a few times during the trip. More annoyingly, the unit could not plot out a direct trip between Parma and paris with only a subset of the maps, even when I downloaded the 'Route' plotted by my laptop. This meant that I had to tell the unit to pick an intermediary spot along the route, reach that spot and then load in the new maps.

This means that a person not traveling with their laptop would be out of luck. It seems to me that they could have used a standard SD or CF card instead of a non-standard 64 MB memory card. Extrapolating from what I was able to do with 64MB, 2 GB would allow you to load in to memory the majority of Europe at one time - Certainly enough for a backpacker on a summer long trip or a group of people on tour with a car. This would be an AMAZING improvement and would make this device practical to a much wider market.

Alternatively, it might be useful to change the way that the maps are segmented in the software package. For example, I was forced to load an 8MB map of a small portion of Paris even though I was only in this section for perhaps 2 miles while on a major highway. If I did not load this map, the device could not render a route to the airport.

One alternative would be to consolidate some areas together in to fewer maps - the center of Paris can be 2 maps instead of 4 while outlying suburbs can be treated as separate maps. The other option would be to break up some large maps in to smaller sets so that you can be more selective in downloading. For example, I was in the northeast corner of Burgundy for a few miles but I had to load in the entire map segment, comprising 6MB.

Hopefully version 9 of the software will offer some option to help solve this problem.

This purchase was to update an older Magellan Map 330. I was excited to see the device and quickly found it easy to use. I purchased the Garmin MapSource 2008 and then disapointment set in. After loading a section of the local topo map, i went out of the house to test it. It had my location almost 200 feet to the north of my house with 8 stations in view. A driving test had me as much as three streets off at times. I would stop the car and check outside and the error remanined. A Dolorme LT-20 with a laptop on the car seat was dead on. After comparing a friends 60Cx, he had the same problem. It's a shame that Garmin does all this development and then provides such inaccurate maps. It is sitting in the glove box for emergency use only to determine north and south.... pitty...

After alot of research into all of the GPS units out there, I decided on this handheld unit. My choice was based on my need to cover both automotive and marine needs. I've been using GPS since the late-80's on a sailboat that converted from Loran. I'm quite accustomed to navigation, and the terminology and concept of GPS. Others who are new to navigation may be confused by the terminology. Since I race sailboats (and I drive), Bearing/Heading/Velocity Made Good, etc., all made sense to me. This unit is one of the few that is useful for my land and marine requirements. The internal memory and expandable MicroSD slot allow for conversion to either mapset.

The base map that comes with this unit is limited. Aside from showing major highways, it isn't much useful beyond that. I took it on a road trip in the first few days after my purchase, and the base map it came with was very limited. Aside from telling you what state and major highways you're on, it won't tell you much more than that. But I was surprised that it new the approaching highway exit name, even with just the base map. Shortly after my purchase, I invested in the City Navigator software, and wow!, what a difference. Suddenly it is smart enough to plot my route to specific addresses, although it doesn't pick the best route...it just picks a route that works (would've had me going on some small roads unnecessarily).

I've also begun geocaching with this unit because it is set up nicely for that purpose. This unit allows you to enter waypoints easily, and it comes with various icons to depict most waypoint types.

This unit is bulkier than some of the automotive units on the market. But I've found that many of those "card deck" size units don't work well for marine use. They are limited mostly to automotive needs. But it's amazing that they can pack so many features into this small device.

I decided on the GPS Map60Cx rather than the Map60CSx. The Cx simply doesn't have an electronic compass or altimeter function. Interestingly, the unit does plot heading and bearing (both directional and degrees), but you have to enter a waypoint so it knows where you want to go. You just can't stand still and get a compass heading. Also, the unit will tell you your altitude above sealevel, so I'm not clear on what the CSx altimeter could improve on. Since I don't fly or climb mountains, I didn't see the need for an altimeter. I also don't mind taking a step or two to determine my compass heading. These two functions seemed irrelevant for my needs.

I had difficulty getting my PC to recognize the GPS unit. But after exchanging a couple of emails with Garmin, my problem was solved (it seemed to be a missing Registry command which Garmin Tech Support helped me work through. I thought that was nice considering the problem appeared to be my PC, not the driver or unit itself. I have to say that Garmin Tech Support was very good with me. My only comment would be that live tech support is only available during daytime hours which might make it difficult to handle if you work all day (and who doesn't?). But even so, I corresponded with Garmin through email and they responded quickly and accurately. I'm pleased.

I intend to purchase the Bluechart map software (marine use), but even with the base map, the unit recognized the Freighter Channel, Range Lights, and International Border found in Lake St. Clair (Michigan).

One note when trying to decide whether to purchase the maps on MicroSD card versus DVD software, I understand the MicroSD card can't be viewed on the PC, while the DVD software is viewable on the PC and you select which "areas" you want to download to the GPS unit. The download speed is relatively slow, but not rediculous. I loaded up the 64 meg card in about 10 minutes. I've read that a 2 gig card may take an hour or more. I've also read that if you intend to load a 2 gig card, you're better off with a card reader rather than the USB interface.

I can't think of a single "Con" for this unit except that the maps are too expensive, considering you can get the same detail on a $3.00 paper map (but then you couldn't enter an address I suppose). Still, the maps aren't cheap. It isn't as pretty as the automotve GPS's on the market, but then, you can't trek through the woods or sail a race course on the automotive units either. The screen size also isn't as big as the automotive units, but this size is perfectly functional too.