Review on Garmin Montana 610 GPS Navigator by Vedavyas Fleming

Nothing is perfect, but Garmin offers the best outdoor GPS devices. I bike a lot (5000 miles a year or so). And I have a lousy sense of direction. Bike GPS is a requirement for me. I love Garmin's. You are tall. they are heavy And they are very, very hard. My previous GPS was a Garmin 450. For five years it has worked flawlessly in very cold weather, very hot weather, heavy rain and everything else. He survived many bumps, many bumps and even a few falls. Recently the power button stopped working. If I fiddle with it long enough I'll get it to turn on and it will keep working. But I decided I wanted a new block. I chose the Montana because the screen is bigger (better to see with my old eyes) and the bike mount is better. (I'll look at the mount separately.) The Montana 610 is an upgrade of the 600. The main innovation is the use of GPS and GLONASS satellites. The screen is a transflective LCD. It's easier to see than my 5 year old set, with better color reproduction. However, it is not as good as a smartphone. The backlight doesn't help much when I'm outside during the day. I usually turn it off. The touchscreen is much more responsive than my old device. Scrolling is easy and predictable. It works just as well with the installed screen protector. And it works well with cold weather gloves. Definitely recommend using screen protectors. I didn't use them with my old GPS. Various scratches and potholes have appeared over the years. Sometimes it is difficult to read a detail on a map. The new screen looks just as prone to damage. One of the great things about this GPS is its ability to use either a rechargeable lithium ion battery or 3 AA batteries. I like lithium ion batteries. Some of my devices use them too. I have a multi-port USB charger where I park my bike. All I have to do is plug in my headlights and GPS when I get home. It's ready to use the next day. No fuss, no fuss. My longest ride with this GPS was over 7 hours. I had the backlight off, the screen was constantly on in map mode, following the route. At the end of the ride, Garmin showed that 57% of the battery was left. That's all I'll ever need. Meanwhile, if I go on a multi-day trip and either can't charge or forget to charge, I can just hook up a couple of AAs and I'm good to go. I uploaded the road map of North America to Garmin. . 610 can create a route and provide turn-by-turn directions. But that's not very useful with a bike. When I select a destination and ask Garmin for a route, it usually uses major roads. Turns are indicated by an acoustic signal that is not very loud. You can create a route on your Garmin device, but it's not easy to use. I found it very easy to create a good bike 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 Garmin's internal storage. The route is displayed as a track. When I drive, I choose the route I want. Garmin displays the route on the road map. All I have to do is "follow the yellow brick path". If I miss a corner or want to take a detour, I can easily find my way back to the track. When I decide to just go exploring, I turn on the map view and let Garmin leave a breadcrumb trail on the map. When I'm ready to go home, I easily find my way back. Where Garmin falls short is in the software. As I mentioned before, their navigation software is difficult to use. When updating firmware or downloading maps, you must use an IE (Internet Explorer) extension called "Garmin Connect". This software does not work with the new Microsoft Edge browser. Doesn't work with Chrome either. IE is still available on Windows 10 but I had to look it up. I bought a downloadable roadmap. I had to temporarily make IE the default browser to allow the Garmin software to open in IE. Obviously Garmin needs to change this before Microsoft stops supporting IE. But so far so good. Garmin is very strict about its licenses for using maps. I had a five year old roadmap in Oregon. Garmin wouldn't let me transfer that map to my new Montana. I had to buy a new card. Yes, it's 5 years newer, but the back roads I drive on don't change much. I think Garmin should allow us to transfer maps from one GPS to another. But I can understand Garmin having to sell new maps to support their map development. Despite the inconvenience, I give Garmin 5 stars. The software is cumbersome, but I only have to download the roadmap once. I will use the device for many years. The map license could have been more reasonable, but a full set of North American street maps costs 1/3 of what I need to update my Honda's GPS maps. I bought this GPS for its reliability and solid construction. Everything I see indicates that I will not be disappointed.