On one of our last cachingtrips our old Colorado 300 “rock n roller” started to have a problem. After a long time this part of the GPS starts to wear out and even though I was able to repair it to keep the unit in working order it seemed to be a good time to take a look at the new Oregon family. I had been reading reviews for a while and saw there were problems of all sorts not in the least with accuracy. It seemed strange that a GPS that not only uses the US GPS satellites but also Russian Glonass would be less accurate than the older units.
With an upcoming trip we decided on ordering the 600 a few days ago so we could get used to all the possibilities and tweaking some user settings. The last few evenings were spend reading the manual and experimenting and today we finally got out caching. Caches were loaded in GGZ format with GSAK’s garminexport macro, images were loaded with the SendImagesTo Garmin macro. This worked without a flaw.
When we arrived at the parking location the Oregon took just seconds to get a lock on the sats and after choosing the geocache we could see the 11 images attached to this cache. We set out for a 12 WP bikeride where we needed to recognize a photograph. Each time we got to the exact spot the picture was taken and at the end, after adding the “final location” waypoint and adjusting the coordinates, we found the cache with a 4m mismatch. Not bad under light treecover.
A few kilometers further away there was another multi, Lier – Anders bekeken, with 10 WPs where eacht WP had to be calculated. Once again WP location was spot on even in a few narrow streets.
First impression on this new Oregon 600 is that it works as advertised and some of the problems that were reported when the unit was first on the market have not been seen (yet?).
The problems I read about:
- Poor accuracy: I used my trusty old Colorado a few times next to the Oregon. Perfect match. All WPs within 1-5m
- Poor batterytime: Put in full NiMH Eneloop 1900 mA in and after 6.5 hours battery went from 4/4 to 3/4. No backlight was used as the screen was easily readable in today’s bright sunshine.
I did update the original 2.60 firmware to 2.80.