Portable GPS System

Review by Kai Dozier:

I had a Roadmate 700 for 18 months, and it became an indispensible tool for my vehicle – especially when traveling to multiple locations I’ve never been to in a new city. On the downside, after 11 months I started getting automatic messages that my software was out of date – but Magellan hadn’t released the new software. Four months later when they did, they failed to notify me even though I had registered for it.

Now I have the Roadmate 760, and the unit is even better. The flash card for saving addresses (use it, you’ll be glad you did), the automatic re-routing for when you’re stuck in traffic, and the automatic backlight adjustment are all handy. But after only two weeks, the new unit started freezing on startup. At three weeks it got worse, and I sent it back to Magellan – and learn they need “10 to 12 business days in-house” to fix it, plus shipping time. No apology, no offer to loan me another unit, no way to speed it up. My confidence in the company and the unit has dropped precipitously, and they seem not to care that they are converting a customer evangelist into a very unhappy user.

UPDATE on the above, 3 months later:

My love/hate relationship is deeper than before. I recently was stuck in traffic on I-95 when terrorist threats shut down all tunnels around Baltimore. I checked the gps for nearest exit, worked my way to it, then re-programmed the unit for “least use of freeways”. It then guided me through areas of Baltimore that by-passed all tunnels, and I made a critical meeting in Delaware on time. My wife also uses it, and she clearly is more comfortable knowing she will not get lost. This is worth a lot to both of us.

On the other hand, the unit is freezing for the second time, and is now on its way back for repairs again. This means another two weeks of waiting for a 4 month old unit to be repaired a second time.

ARRGGHHH!

Review by Heightsgtltd:

I did a ton of research and I am really happy with this device. It is a step up from the 700, and the features such as audible street names really make it a viable substitute to the factory installed units.

It uses NAVTEQ mapping like most major car companies. TomTom uses Teleatlas, which many have found to be less accurate.

The 760 has performed flawlessly, and I highly recommend it!

Some small gripes:

I live in NYC, and the only problem is that the signal can get lost for a little bit around large buildings downtown. This is true of all systems. Even if this happens, the 760 gives you the directions to follow until the signal picks up again. This might be solved by picking up the external antenna, but I haven’t done that yet.

Since there is no internal battery, if you turn off the car at a a gas station, the 760 powers off. It saves the route and where you are, but still takes a minute to find satellites again.

Other than these issues, it is a champ.

Review by John-Paul May:

Fantastic – buy one immediately. IMMEDIATELY!!

Much smaller than you may think – fantastic.

GPS speed — super fast, fantastic.

Display and controls — absolutely fantastic. As simple as they can possibly be, yet does every single thing you want. See your exact miles/yards walked, exact time (both moving, stopped, average, etc etc etc) and everything else from sunset time to height climbed or whatever.

Battery life, fantastic, 15 to 20 hours.

Works with computers PERFECTLY. If you have basic understanding of computers — so for example you do know how to “Open A File” — you will have a ball with this machine:

The 401 is simply a USB hard drive — just connect it to your laptop using a normal compact USB cable. (They pointlessly give you a cable for free with the 401 package…like you don’t have ten laying around already from your video camera, USB drives and everything else.)

So, simply plug in the 401 to your laptop. You will instantly see a file “Current.gpx” GPX is the label for GPS files.

Now, open the file — so for example launch Google Earth and open your “Current.gpx” file in Google Earth. You will immediately see the track where you walked shown as a blue line on the Google Earth map!!

Or, look on the web for one of the awesome track measuring applets (eg at utrack dot crempa dot net) and get graphs, etc, of your speed and the like.

It literally could not be simpler — nothing to install, no passwords, nothing.

Once again assuming you “know how to open a file” you will have no problem.

TIP: the 401 uselessly includes a digital COMPASS, as a freebie (much like the digital compass in say an iPhone). Digital compasses are of little or no value; however they use a lot of battery power. Look through the settings and turn OFF the digial compass.

Note that, of course, like any GPS unit, the unit will flawlessly and perfectly show you your heading AS YOU ARE WALKING, using the GPS signals (nothing to do with a magnetic compass). But the actual “digital compass” (i.e., you are sitting by the fire and you want to see which way “North” is) is largely useless (not because of the 401 — all digital compasses are useless), so just turn it off in settings to save power.

Tip — if you want rechargeable batteries, buy the terrific LaCrosse smart charger, and some eneloop batteries.

Enjoy your hike! Buy one of these before Garmin changes it to something confusing and not so good.

Review by azguy:

One of my Foretrex101s expired a few weeks ago and I decided to replace it with the just released Foretrex401. It arrived mid-week and I had no trouble accessing and opening the Foretrex401 generated gpx file with Easy/ExpertGPS and Topofusion. The 401 appears as a USB drive in Windows. I was hoping to use the 401 along with the Garmin heart rate monitor during my mtbike rides instead of the my Edge205 and separate HRM. The 401 had no trouble picking up the HR reading and displaying the values.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Garmin website has no substantial information of the 401 as of yet and no discussion of what software will work with the 401.

[...]

At this point the Foretex401 appears to be corporate orphan that no Garmin division is able or willing to support. It is unclear if it is intended for jumping out of airplanes (jumpmaster function), hiking (altimeter/compass), cycling/fitness (HR/cadence) or providing a heads-up when ordinance is going to explode (countdown-up/timer). In addition to the above, function wise, the 401 adds a USB interface, faster satellite acquisition and wireless data transfer to the venerable Foretrex101. It is slightly more compact in size than the 101, has a better strap attachments and stores the data is in a gpx file. Operationally the Foretex401 does what is it supposed to do but with no software included, undocumented functions and virtually non-existent technical support, most purchasers will be frustrated in trying to use the Foretrex401 right out of the box. A printed quick start guide is in the box but the manual in a pdf on the CD.

As noted above, with some tinkering and non Garmin software I’ve been able to list and view the Foretex401 tracks, waypoints, routes and other data as well as transfer the data to GoogleEarth. For what Garmin lists as a basic handheld GPS it should be much more straightforward to operate and transfer data. I’ll give it 2 stars until it is better supported.

Review by Matthew A. Jones:

This GPS is the biggest piece of junk I have seen try to pass itself off as a GPS. My Cadillac has built in navigation but when I travel I needed an inexpensive GPS to take with me in case I go to a place I don’t know.

In this case, my wife and I took this GPS and a 2.5 year old TomTom One (as a backup) with us to try out on a vacation to California. I actually bought this device at BestBuy, so I had to be quick about trying it out before I ran out of time to return it if it was no good.

The first sign that this device was junk was on the way out on I-10 Westbound heading from Arizona to California. This is the biggest freeway in the southwest and largely runs through the desert arriving in Los Angeles. While driving on I-10, five different things happened over a period of time without making a single adjustment to our course (such as getting off at an exit, etc):

1) The GPS would say we were in the oncoming lane of traffic but still heading in the correct direction. This would essentially shut down the GPS function and the destination mileage became 0ft and destination arrival time became 0min.

2) The GPS would say that we were on an access road or some desert dirt road, so it would say we had to make a U-Turn and get back on the interstate.

3) The GPS would change (without us making a course change) from showing us in the correct lane to driving in the middle of the desert with no roads around.

4) The GPS would re-calculate the route without us making a course change, and the re-calculation would take 5 minutes.

5) The GPS would essentially lock up and when you tried to do anything (hit menu, hit pan view, etc) it would pop up an error message saying we were driving in an HOV lane (of course there was no HOV lanes) and you had to reboot the device to get it working again.

Once we got to California (we went to San Diego first, then LA) it worked moderately well, but was slow in response. The location search feature was nice, but three times we did searches for restaurants in the area and the restaurant was closed down or it was the wrong information because either the phone number was disconnected or when we showed up there was nothing there or a sports bar had replaced an Iranian restaurant for example. On several other occasions we searched for things that we knew existed but even though our spelling was perfect it couldn’t find the location

Once we left San Diego we went to Universal Studios in Hollywood. We tried to input the directions two different ways: we searched for the location in the location search box on the device and found the address, and we manually inputted the address. In either case, the address was correct (we had also gotten the address from the internet at the hotel before we left the night before), and the GPS would say “calculating route”…when it was finished it simply put us back to the map screen as if we had chosen to drive around with no directions and just on map view.

The entire trip we essentially drove around with two GPS attached to the windshield – this piece of junk and a 2.5 year old TomTom One…the 2.5 year old TomTom outperformed the Insignia in every single facet. It was the only time we could count on things to be correct.

Do not buy this at any cost! Best Buy and other online sites often offer this product for 89 dollars or less, but don’t be suckered! Spend the extra 70-80 dollars on a device that works. If you want inaccurate directions and tons of frustration and to save a ton of money, just print out directions from the crappy website [...]. At least the only thing it will cost you is ink and paper instead of 100 dollars with tax/shipping.

Review by Nicolas Antczak:

I bought this unit last week. It’s a simple, basic GPS with big screen, easy to read menus, and responsive keypad. Entering addresses is fast and easy, unlike my old GPS in which the battery died. The only problem is that it can take up to 60 seconds for it to aquire signal. The first time I used it, it took 5 minutes to get the signal. Also, you can’t ‘bookmark’ current location. You have to enter the street address, hence only three stars.

Just make sure you have the latest maps and firmware. I was told that you can go to Best Buy and have the Geek Squad do it which I will do next week.

Despite it’s shortcomings, at this price, it’s hard to complain.