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I recently just bought 2 new Garmin GPS units to upgrade my aging Garmin Legend (Original Model). I was hesitant to purchase the Oregon due to the mediocre reviews on Amazon, but ultimately I decided to take a chance.
First I bought the Garmin Dakota 20, and I really liked it. Small, Battery Efficient, Easy to Use, and Paperless Geocaching using the touchscreen. Good stuff. I called my friend who likes to have the latest and greatest, and he told me he had purchased the Oregon 400t when it first came out last year. I took a drive to his house to compare it to my new Dakota 20… Very similar in capabilities, only smaller and less resolution on the screen. After seeing his unit, and how well it ran I found myself craving the higher resolution screen, and 3D Terrain features, so I went up and bought another one, this one, the Garmin Oregon 550. I decided against buying the Oregon 550t because the 550 had a little deeper discount than the “t” version. Ultimately I chose to purchase the 550 since it was around $60 off retail, VS. only $1 less than retail on the 550t. I figured I could add the TOPO maps later. Plus I had also just purchased the Dakota 20, and the $160 difference in cost was sounding pretty good. I have completely busted my mad money for now.
Ultimately I find this unit to be right in line with all of the other Oregon models software wise… it works exactly the same way. So go and read some reviews on the other Oregon models sine this unit doesn’t have many reviews yet. It is VERY similar in capabilities, but this one has a few added goodies.. 3 Axis Compass + 3.2MP GEOTagging Camera (Good stuff)…
Another observation between the new 550 and 550t models… Garmin’s specs say the these models have equivalent storage, but in fact this is not the case, the 850MB seen in the specs relates to the free space after taking into account the included maps. In reality it is more like 550 = 1GB, 550t=4GB internal memory. Mostly a non-issue since both have a Micro-SD slot behind the battery, which happily accepted an inexpensive 4GB SDHC card, and since SDHC was supported I would expect you could add an even larger one.
Like the other reviewer stated I noticed that the roads on Garmin’s 2008 TOPO maps are slightly off.. this is easily recognizable if you load a driving map, calculate a route, and then disable the driving map, you will see the driving route is not exactly on the road. To me this is all the more reason to just get the 550 model (at this point) without the TOPO maps. You can add them later once the road data is fixed. On second thought, the TOPO features themselves on the 2008 map seem fine, only the road data is a little off, so if you are using the maps as they are intended this is probably a non-issue. At the time I just felt like the 550 was a better bargain, only $90 more than the Dakota 20 I had just purchased, which also was still at the full $350 retail price since it is still a brand new model.
The only other glitch was with the Compass calibration, which went haywire for a moment, but resolved itself after a reset, and hasn’t happened since. We’ll see if it becomes an issue.. but I doubt it. The reset was very fast as this unit boots up very quickly.
I decided to make these purchases since my girlfriend has expressed an interest in “Re-Taking Up Geocaching”, we really haven’t done it in a while (Since ‘02), and its such a great outdoor activity. The original point in making these purchases was the ease at which you can add Geocaches into the unit directly from the website with a single mouse click. She was having trouble getting used to adding the co-ordinates into the old Garmin Legend with that tiny joystick, it was VERY TEDIOUS.
So now she has the Dakota 20, and I have the Oregon 550, and we can easily transfer geocaches back and forth wirelessly, and it is easy as pie to download them from [...].
To me, these new Garmins are a huge upgrade from my old “Legend”, and they are waterproof and rugged as ever.
I would have given this product 5 stars had it not been for the couple of small glitches, which I expect will be fixed in the future via a firmware update / map update from Garmin.
Truely.. the new touchscreen Garmin units are to GPS’s, as the iPhone is to mobile phones. In a class by itself.
I have had this for a couple days now and have to admit, I’m “underwhelmed” by it so far. I had very high expectations of the 550 and ordered it with the 24K Topo maps from Amazon. Here’s my issues:
1. This is my first Oregon unit, but the screen seems small….I’m a big guy, it feels like my thumb covers half the screen when navigating.
2. Compass accuracy is questionable, or at least it seems very “jumpy”. If I move an inch, it rotates way more than I did.
3. Not sure why, but it’s hard to see in the shade. Outside on bright sunny days and it’s easier to see in direct sunlight than in the shade.
4. Having map problems….can’t display a 3-D view of my map (open case with Garmin support).
5. All the manuals are on CD and the CD had issues loading in my computer. Had to find a PC that would read the CD and copy to my hard drive.
What’s good about it…
1. The camera. While 3.2MP is not “hi-def” by any means, it is nice to only carry one device and have my pictures geotagged. The resolution and quality is respectable.
2. Unit feels very durable….I fish a lot so it’s nice that it’s somewhat weather / waterproof.
3. Comes with some nice accessories….I was surprised that Garmin included NiMH batteries and a charger.
4. Battery life is good. Although I’m using 2700mA batteries (not the included batteries) I get almost 20 hours from a set of AA.
Maybe I’m being a little too hard on Garmin and I generally like their products. However, for $600 (Oregon 550 and the Topo Map) I was expecting an iPhone like experience….an oohhh ahhhh kind of moment……hasn’t happened so far. Not sure if I’ll keep it…it’s not a “bad” device, just don’t know if it’s worth $600. I was on the fence about giving it two or three stars….I gave it two because of the price and some of the frustrations I’ve had getting the maps to work right.
** Update (8/16/09): I did get the map issue resolved….turned out to be a software glitch with the Topo maps, but I did get it corrected. Took this unit on a 3 day trip to the Pike National Forest in Colorado. I would upgrade my rating from two stars to three stars as the GPS was extremely accurate when geocaching….but I didn’t even get a full day from one set of batteries and the pictures I took with the 550 were hardly usable. It was cool that they were geotaged, but pretty poor in quality. Because of the price, picture quality and low battery life, it’s going back. There are better options for less money.
My wife and I have heavily used our Garmin 76CSx and loved it for the last 2 years. Long story short, we sold it and bought this one after a lot of research. Even after the research, I was very surprised by how great the improvements were over the 76CSx.
* The touch screen made navigation a night and day experience, especially typing in addresses or other POI.
* The calculation time for routing is very much improved. The boot time is longer than the 76CSx but it can lock in satellites much faster and in areas with more interference (ei. in a basement of a house).
* One of the biggest improvements that I didn’t realize with my research is the resolution of the screen. Having twice the resolution made viewing maps much easier. You don’t need to zoom out to see the detail you need. This is very clear with topo maps.
* The coloring schemes are also much better for City navigation maps.
* When you take a pictures it marks it location on the map and comes with GPS coordinates which my dad would love for his snowmobile trips.
* Enabling and disabling maps is so much easier. On the 76SCx, when you loaded topo maps and CN maps, in menu under map setup it would list every image map that you loaded, which with topo maps there could be hundreds listed. To see the topo maps you need to disable/enable the CN maps, to do this you would have to scroll through a very small window to find the CN map image then disable it. This was a huge pain and time consuming. On the Oregon 550 it lists the maps in map packs, not images. This is a improvement.
Another point of information, the sdhc memory uses fat32 memory type which is the type of memory this GPS uses can hold can only have files sizes of 4 gigs. This is a requirement/limitation of the fat32. Also, Garmin has a restriction of only 4,000 (it might be just over 4,000) map images per map transfer. In topo maps, it is common to reach the 4,000 map images than the 4 gigs limitation. However, the Oregon 550 can handle at least 2 map packs images. I haven’t tested for more. You just load on map pack to the GPS or memory card. After it is done, rename it from gmapsupp.img to gmapsup1.img. Then transfer the other map image pack. It will read both map packs as one. So, you can have 8 gigs of maps on your GPS. You just need to do it the right way. You might be able to add more map packs, but I haven’t tested it.
The only down side is the battery consumption is noticeably higher than the 76CSx. But with a car charger it makes it much easier on the batteries. I also love how they include rechargeable batteries with the GPS.
