Name: Jeff Farris
Location: NE Miss.
Date: 2006-05-19
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Excellent GPS-Top Shelf
Comment: This is my second GPS. I use it for hiking, geocaching, and street navigation. This unit performs flawlessly. When in the woods under a heavy canopy, I can still have 20' accuracy when other units have lost satellite connectivity all together. Great features, tough, accurate. Highly recommend.
Name: Michael A. Jobes
Location: Vallejo, CA USA
Date: 2006-05-23
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Absolutely thrilled with this purchase! (Still!)
Comment: *** Updated Review *** (29 Oct 2007)
So I bought the Garmin specifically for Geocaching... so far, I've found 366 caches! The 60CSx is rugged, it gets great reception, and in my experience has been very accurate.
I also use it frequently in the car for road navigation as well. If road nav. is your main need, there are better units, but it does a fine job of getting me where I need to be. It does not have voiced direction, just beeps that let you know that a turn is coming up. The screen is also a bit small for most automotive uses. Yes, you will most likely need additional mapping software to get the optimum use of road navigation.
I purchased the Garmin road mapping software at the same time as the unit and have been very happy with the software as well. All the reviews that say the unit is useless without additional maps are misleading you. A GPS receiver is designed to guide you to coordinates (longitude and latitude). It still does this exceptionally well, even with the provided base map. You do not need extra maps (or any maps) to locate coordinates. I also ended up in an area one night that I didn't have maps loaded for. I still managed to find 10 geocaches with no problems using just the basemap.
The screen on the 60CSx is high and exposed. I would recommend a protective device of some sort. I highly recommend the "InvisibleSHIELD" found at: www.shieldzone.com
Any problems? I did have some accuracy issues at one point involving the compass (the problems were caused by a combination of settings I made in the unit). I reset the device, updated the firmware... and back on the road, operating flawlessly once again.
I can't recommend this unit enough. It does everything its supposed to and more. The sour grapes in some of these reviews are exactly that. Before you spend this kind of money on anything, you should research it thoroughly.... obviously I knew it needed maps, I purchased them in the same transaction as the unit. Anyone "surprised" by the need for maps didn't do their homework.
I've owned this unit for over a year now and I'm still extremely happy. Will I buy another Garmin product... you bet!
Name: Michael A. Davis
Location: Boynton Beach, Fl United States
Date: 2006-08-14
Customer Rating: -
Summary: It's all that it promises
Comment: Great state of the art GPS! I am a veteran GPS owner. I have a Garmin Etrex Summit and the 60CSx not only adds a tremendous amount of functions (mapping, etc.) it also makes many of the older generation of functions more user friendly. I do all my hiking in the eastern US, mostly in the heavily forested mountains of North Carolina and New England. My old etrex would struggle to get a fix here and there along the trails but this 60CSx locks onto my every footstep continuousely thanks to the new microprocessor (SIRC)
Name: toemaas
Location: Seattle, WA
Date: 2006-09-26
Customer Rating: -
Summary: All the things you need in a GPS
Comment: I purchased an eTrex a few years back and have been pleased with that and resisted upgrading for a while. I'm glad I did as I would have ended up with a unit that was inferior to this. Everything I was missing on my eTrex or the other units I looked at is here. This unit is light, actually not much bigger than an eTrex but with a much larger screen, and is full of great features.
First and foremost the satellite lock is exceptional. This was the biggest complaint I had, and others too, with the eTrex series, that their internal antennas were not that great. With this unit I have kept a lock in deep tree cover, canyons, cities with high rises and more.
Next the color screen. Again, this was one of the things I looked for, and the screen really lives up to the promise. It is visible in all kinds of conditions, and when it is lacking a little, turning on the backlight slightly brings the clarity back.
Another thing that made me stick with my eTrex was that very few handheld units allowed for memory upgrades. This unit does this and with the cost of transflash/microSD coming down so much, you can carry just about as many maps as you like. I have a 512MB card and have all of the western United States topo and street maps on there.
Another thing I wanted but couldn't satisfactorily find in a HH unit was auto route generation. This has it and it works great. I love being able to drive somewhere and just take a turn off the road to investigate a new place and having the unit just put me straight back on track again when I am ready. You do have to purchase additional software, and for those who are complaining about this, it is quite clear that this is the case when you buy the unit. I agree with a couple of the other reviewers that without the supplemental maps you may as well just stick with the eTrex. I love the eTrex and would recommend it to any one who wants a basic GPS. For what this unit can offer though and when you compare it to comparable in car units, that are limited to the car, the price is actually not so bad. If you want to spring for the other maps though, or have a license for them from another GPS that you have only registered once, this GPS stands head and shoulders above the rest.
Personally I love it and at the current price on Amazon ($[...] after rebate as I write this!) I don't think it can be beaten.
Name: Donald A. Nelsen
Location: Vancouver, WA
Date: 2006-10-06
Customer Rating: -
Summary: unbeatable - with reservations
Comment: I've used the 60CSx for three months and carry it with me on all my hikes - mostly bushwhacks in deep, old-growth pacific northwest forests - often in deep canyons - and have never lost signal - (and I'm talking 200 foot trees and thousand foot deep, steep-walled canyons, too.) Accuracy suffers in such challenging terrain but seldom gets worse than +/- 100' and is usually in the 20' range. As previous reviewers have noted, the unit's standard base map is worthless so you will have to purchase another $100 worth of software to correct that problem. Unfortunately, and again as other reviewers have noted, there is a lot to be desired with the extra Garmin software but I've found it to be pretty good for my purposes on the trails and most city data is pretty accurate but there are some glaring mistakes and ommisions here and there.
The unit has a few idiosyncrasies such as adding up distance on the odometer while sitting still for long periods in poor reception areas but, oddly, not recording all distance covered in poor signal areas when you are moving. Strange - but a minor annoyance. Another annoyance is that in an airplane, the unit will only give pressure altitude, not GPS altitude on the readout. You can get GPS altitude by going into the setup screen, but it won't stay on the readout. Again, a minor annoyance.
I download all my hikes into NG TOPO! and there is no comparison with old tracks I've saved from my older 60C Garmin. In tough terrain, the older unit would lose signal constantly and often record data points 1,000 feet off when it did manage to get a signal.
If you are a hiker, hunter, explorer, mushroom gatherer, geocacher or just want a highly accurate GPS, this is the unit!
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