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Oregon 450 World Wide GPS

User Reviews about Garmin Oregon 450 Handheld GPS Navigator

This is the 3rd GPS we bought for geocaching and by far the most userfriendly, don't even need to look at the directions and I'm pretty much computer challenged. It makes geocaching so fun, gets us within 6 feet every time without doing the fish hook dance that the magellan has us doing, you know, go forward 5 feet, now turn 180 degrees and go 6 feet and turn 180 degrees and go 9 feet now do this about 10 times, My son was holding the GPS and I was following him looking like Mrs. Gomer Pyle. The Oregon just omits the little dance so you blend in and no one was wanting to call the guys with the white jacket to pick me up. The only complaint I would have would be it is not very bright in the sun light but I can work with that. You get all the hints and logs when you download from [...], it saves the title (which the Vista did not) can mark it as found or not found, easy on batteries, can't get much easier then this. When my son goes off to college he gets to keep the Magellan, momma gets this one, lol. If you're on the fence this is the one I would buy again, no hesitation. -- Love, Love, Love it

Garmin's engineers have created a great handheld GPS with good features. Unfortunately, they only did half of the job. The documentation is incredibly poor lacking any information on important details. For instance, the device has a set-up feature to tell it whether you are using Alkaline, Lithium. or NiMH rechargeables. Why? Does it recharge the NiMH batteries when externally powered? Are there different functionality/preferences for the different battery types? Nothing in the documentation to indicate why it cares.

Another example is the MicroSDHD card device. There is no indication of what size cards are supported. I installed a 16GB and it allowed me to install maps and such onto the card; however, when I attempted to install two DVD's worth of 24K quads to the card the basemap application crashed and required me to reformat the SDHD externally before the GPS would recognized it again. Ok, so maybe the map files are limited to 4GB? Well I installed just shy of 4GB of topo onto the 16GB card and everything worked fine. However, when I attempted to install some geocache files and waypoints, it tells me that the drive is full (even though there is 12GB left). So I guess the GPS only supports cards up to 4GB.

As I said a great device, and the above limitations are something I can live with, but it would be nice if they put in a modicum of effort in writing a decent manual. -- Great GPS, poor documentation

We bought the Oregon 450 as an upgrade from our Garmin GPSMAP 60CS. Here is a quick summary of the relative benefits of the Oregon 450 for geocaching:
Pros:
- Much better position accuracy
- Does not lose signal as quickly under tree cover
- Holds thousands of caches (60CS just had 500)
- Includes[...] information, including logs and hints (go paperless!)
Cons:
- Basemap appears to just have major roads, with no lakes or rivers. This is just silly for a hiking/caching handheld. We would have been perfectly happy with something like the basemap on the 60CS. If you are deciding between the 450 and 450t and don't want to load custom maps, go with the 450t. If you don't mind about an hour of work, you can download free topographical maps and save $100.
- Touchscreen could be better than buttons, but the logic in getting from page to page is often not intuitive. It will take some getting used to, and you will find yourself making multiple taps to, say, go from the compass to the tracking to the satellite strength. (On the 60CS, the "PAGE" button would scroll between the important screens.) I think the Oregon series could be improved if Garmin added just one button for key functions.

Summary: A huge upgrade for us on the key things we need for geocaching. The map and interface issues are a little frustrating, but we are happy with our purchase. -- Load better maps for geocaching

We love our new Garmin Oregon 450 for geocaching. It's compact, easy to use, and the battery will definitely last for a full day of caching. -- Geocaching Fun

My husband LOVES this GPS. He's in the military and does a lot of overseas traveling for work. He likes that he's able to share his maps/info with other people with this GPS. I've played with it a couple of times and it's soooooooo user friendly I couldn't believe it. It's very accurate. -- Awesome