Schattenjager
Expedition Leader
I have been on an exhaustive search for capable, easily used, highly accurate, and durable handheld GPS. I have narrowed it down to the likes of the Garmin offerings, primarily the 62stc, the Montana and the Monterra.
I had a 60csx and loved everything about it but as time went on and touch screens became the ubiquitous interface, it quickly showed its age. The 62 is a huge step up in screen and capabilities, but button driven nonetheless.
Enter the Montana. Beautiful large glove friendly touch screen, proven GPS chipset, easy to use and what I thought was a useless camera. Then I saw I a friend pull up a cool pic of a waterfall and with a button press it fired up a navigation route to the place. Pretty cool way to sort favorites, eh?
The Monterra is only a chipset away from being a smartphone. I am not a fan of Android. Nothing against those who are - its just not my gig. So there is a new culture to learn with it and the apps. Radio feature and torch are perfect additions to a nav unit. But for the price!
Then there is the iPhone. The kindly host of this site, Scot Brady, favored his iPhone last I recall and I must agree. It would seem that, in the correct case, the iphone could do EVERYTHING (save the radio bit) these units do and do it just as well. I am not a fan of the complexity in finding, scaling and adding maps to iOS apps, but that too may have changed since I last looked into it. I'm learning photography, a new camera, French and German right now. Adding a deep well of niche gps info to my lexicon is not what I want. But again, maybe this has improved too. With 64 gig of memory, I could chart the globe. When in WiFi or cell coverage, I could look up, share and plan the next step with one device.
So, what am I missing? How does Garmin still have any market share unless it is offering something that no one else - iPhone and Android included - has?
I had a 60csx and loved everything about it but as time went on and touch screens became the ubiquitous interface, it quickly showed its age. The 62 is a huge step up in screen and capabilities, but button driven nonetheless.
Enter the Montana. Beautiful large glove friendly touch screen, proven GPS chipset, easy to use and what I thought was a useless camera. Then I saw I a friend pull up a cool pic of a waterfall and with a button press it fired up a navigation route to the place. Pretty cool way to sort favorites, eh?
The Monterra is only a chipset away from being a smartphone. I am not a fan of Android. Nothing against those who are - its just not my gig. So there is a new culture to learn with it and the apps. Radio feature and torch are perfect additions to a nav unit. But for the price!
Then there is the iPhone. The kindly host of this site, Scot Brady, favored his iPhone last I recall and I must agree. It would seem that, in the correct case, the iphone could do EVERYTHING (save the radio bit) these units do and do it just as well. I am not a fan of the complexity in finding, scaling and adding maps to iOS apps, but that too may have changed since I last looked into it. I'm learning photography, a new camera, French and German right now. Adding a deep well of niche gps info to my lexicon is not what I want. But again, maybe this has improved too. With 64 gig of memory, I could chart the globe. When in WiFi or cell coverage, I could look up, share and plan the next step with one device.
So, what am I missing? How does Garmin still have any market share unless it is offering something that no one else - iPhone and Android included - has?