Garmin Montana 610

Garmin Montana 610

• SEE YOUR SURROUNDINGS - Includes a 1-year Birdseye Satellite Imagery subscription1. Display type : Bright, transflective 65k color TFT, dual-orientation touchscreen; sunlight readable
• GPS AND GLONASS - With its high-sensitivity, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver, Hotfix satellite prediction and GLONASS support, Montana locates your position quickly and precisely and maintains its location even in heavy cover and deep canyons
• TRACK MANAGER - Ability to organize and navigate through waypoints/routes/track logs (easily start/stop recording track logs)
• 4-inches dual-orientation, glove-friendly touchscreen display. 3-axis compass with barometric altimeter

Buy Now : Garmin Montana 610

Brand : Garmin
Category : Electronics,GPS, Finders & Accessories,Sports & Handheld GPS,Handheld GPS Units
Rating : 4
Price : US $559.99
Review Count : 238
ChildASIN : B014QN502O

Garmin Montana 610

• I bought this to replace a Delorme PN-60 which I\'ve had for several years. I mainly use the GPSr for hiking and for Geocaching, and I\'ve had a number of them over the years from DeLorme, Garmin and Magellan. I chose the Montana 610 mainly for the improved accuracy (hopefully since it has GLONASS support) and because of the larger screen. My impressions so far, unfortunately, have led me to thinking this was a huge mistake. Main issues:- Documentation is terrible. Not much printed material comes with the unit,which is fine, but the online help is just plain terrible. It took me longer than I care to admin to figure out how to load a Geocaching pocket query on it, and that was only after doing some online searching for additional help- I find the menus confusing and non-intuitive. To do simple things it seems like you have to go through a number of nested menu items to get to what you want- I bought an SD card, but it\'s apparently useless for my usage of the unit. With all other GPSr units I could load my pocket queries onto the SD card. This doesn\'t work with the Montana 610 - the gpx file apparently MUST go into the unit\'s system memory. I guess the SD memory can be used for maps or other stuff, but it\'s disappointing that I can\'t use it for geocaching- Once you figure out where to load the gpx file - I had to attach it to my laptop through the USB cable and figure out that the files go into the Garmin/GPX subdirectory - there\'s apparently no way to tell it which file to use. I\'m not sure if it loads all the GPX files you have on there into memory or how exactly that works yet. Since I travel quite a bit I often have a bunch of files ready to go when I need them. I also create different GPX files for the same area but with different query parameters, but now I don\'t know how to tell the unit to use one vs the other- To see the geocaches in an area you either need to zoom way in or set the default zoom level. It was confusing at first since I thought I had loaded a GPX file (I think the unit comes with some caches preloaded as well) but nothing was showing up. Turns out the default zoom level is set to show caches only when zoomed in fairly close. If you zoom out they all disappear- For having a bigger screen than my previous GPSr units, the graphics don\'t look very good. I\'d say they look almost like what you might see on some device made for small children- The area for the lanyard is at the bottom of the unit. Plus, it\'s recessed so every clip and lanyard I currently have won\'t work- Made in Taiwan and ChinaI\'ll update this review as I get more experience with the unit, but this is about the 5th or 6th one I\'ve had over the years and has the worst first impression out of all of them.UPDATE 30 OCT 2018:I\'ve gained some more experience with this unit hoping that after I became more familiar with it I\'d appreciate it more. Quite the opposite has happened. I HATE this device. I just finished up a trip to do some hiking and geocaching and found over 100 caches over the weekend.- I was on a trip where I was going to be in several areas heavily laden with geocaches, so I downloaded several pocket queries. Since all files are loaded when the system starts, it took a L-O-N-G time for the system to boot up- The navigation is terrible. To find a cache I\'d open up the map, select the cache I wanted to go to, click Go, then had to exit the map, click the compass icon, press the power key and select to Lock the unit. If I don\'t lock it it\'ll quickly screwed up if it accidentally gets touched. Then when I\'ve found the cache I\'d have to unlock the unit by pressing the power button twice, choose unlock, go back to the main menu, bring up the secondary menu, choose the geocache menu, press the Log Attempt button, then go through several more to mark the cache as found, get back to the main menu, go to the map and start over with the next one.- The battery doesn\'t last terribly long. I was lucky to get about 4 hrs out of it.- The unit would randomly shut off or go into some kind of sleep mode. It wasn\'t a time-out issue since it would happen while I was interfacing with the menus. If it went into its sleep mode it would restart fairly quickly, but was frustrating nonetheless. Sometimes, however, it would have to fully reboot in which case I had to sit there for 10 mins while it restarted and loaded all the caches. I think this is a bug in the firmware.- When the battery died while on a hike I went to plug in an external batter from Goal Zero. The unit would shut down and not operate while externally powered. I was able to get it working briefly after recharging for a few minutes, combed through the various options but could find no way to configure it so you could have it plugged in and operate at the same time. Frustrated, after my hike I went online to see what I was missing. The secret is to set it to \"Garmin Spanner\" mode. Once set it will prompt you each time you boot up if you want to go into mass storage mode (which is what it does by default where it doesn\'t allow you to actually use the unit while plugged in). Choosing No lets you have it powered up and operational at the same time. Why it\'s called \"Spanner\" mode I still don\'t know, but it\'s typical of the unfriendly interface.With so many people using smart phones to do this type of stuff now, I\'m afraid the handheld GPS marked is dwindling. I\'m still on the hunt for a decent unit and was hoping this was it, especially due to the cost, but it was definitely a step backwards for me. The search continues.
• Nothing\'s perfect, but Garmin makes the best outdoor GPS units available. I do a lot of biking (5,000 miles a year or so.) And I have a lousy sense of direction. A bike GPS is a requirement for me. I love the Garmins. They are big. They are heavy. And they are very, very, tough. My previous GPS was a Garmin 450. For five years, it performed flawlessly in very cold, in very hot, in heavy rain, and in everything in between. It survived a lot of jostling, a lot of bumps, and even a couple of drops. Recently the power switch stopped working. If I fiddle with it long enough, I\'ll get it to turn on, and it will continue working. But I decided I wanted a new unit. I chose the Montana because the screen is bigger (easier to see with my old eyes) and because the bike mount is better. (I will review the mount separately.)The Montana 610 is an upgrade of the 600. The major new feature is that it uses both GPS and GLONASS satellites. The screen is transflective LCD. It is easier to see than my 5-year old unit, with better color rendition. However, it\'s not as good as a smart phone. The backlight doesn\'t help much when I\'m outside during the day. I usually turn it off. The touch screen is much more responsive than my old unit ever was. Scrolling is easy and predictable. It works equally well with a screen protector installed. And it works well with cold-weather gloves. I definitely recommend using screen protectors. I didn\'t use them with my old GPS. Over the years, various scratches and divots appeared. It is sometimes difficult to read a detail on the map. The new screen looks just as susceptible to damage.One of the great features of this GPS is its ability to use either a rechargeable Li-Ion battery or 3-AA batteries. I like Li-Ion batteries. Some of my lights also use them. I have a multi-port USB charger where I park my bike. All I have to do is plug my lights and GPS in when I get home. It will be ready to go the next day. No muss, no fuss. My longest ride with this GPS so far was over 7 hours. I had the backlight off, the screen on continuously in map mode, following a track. At the end of the trip, the Garmin indicated it had 57% of the battery left. That\'s all I\'ll ever need. At the same time, if I take a multi-day trip and I either can\'t recharge or forget to recharge, I can just pop in some AAs and I\'m good to go.I loaded the North American road map in the Garmin. The 610 can build a route and offer turn-by-turn directions. But it\'s not very useful with a bicycle. If I pick a destination and ask the Garmin to route me, It tends to use major roads. Turns are indicated by a beep, which isn\'t very loud. One can create a route on Garmin\'s navigator software, but it\'s not easy to use. I found it\'s very easy to create a good bicycling route using one of the many websites, such as RideWithGPS.com. I save the route as a .GPX file. I connect the Garmin to my USB port, and transfer the .GPX file to the Garmin\'s internal memory. The route shows up as a track. When I ride, I select the track I want. The Garmin shows the track on the road map. All I have to do is \"follow the yellow brick road.\" If I miss a turn or want to detour, it\'s easy to find my way back to the track. If I decide to just go exploring, I turn on the map view and let the Garmin leave a breadcrumb trail on the map. When I\'m ready to head home, it\'s easy to find my way back.Where the Garmin falls down is in the software. As I already indicated, their navigation software is difficult to use. When updating firmware or loading maps, one must use an IE (Internet Explorer) extension called \"Garmin Connect\". This software doesn\'t work with Microsoft\'s new browser, Edge. It doesn\'t work with Chrome either. IE is still available in Windows 10, but I had to go looking for it. I purchased the downloadable road map. I had to temporarily make IE my default browser so the Garmin software click would open in IE. Garmin will obviously have to change this before Microsoft stops support IE. But for now, it\'s OK.Garmin is very strict with their map licenses. I had a 5-year old road map on my Oregon. Garmin wouldn\'t let me transfer that map to my new Montana. I had to purchase a new map. Yes it\'s 5 years newer, but the back roads I use for biking don\'t change all that much. I think Garmin should let us transfer maps from one GPS to another. But I can understand that Garmin has to sell new maps to support their map development.In spite of the inconveniences, I give the Garmin 5 stars. The software is an inconvenience, but I only have to load the road map once. I will use the hardware for many years. The map license could be more reasonable, but a full set of NA road maps costs 1/3 of what it costs me to update my Honda\'s GPS maps. I bought this GPS for it\'s reliability and rugged construction. Everything I can see indicates I won\'t be disappointed.

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