Garmin Colorado 300

[davidr]

Info about Colorado 300 Model:

Gear up and explore the backcountry with the all-terrain Colorado 300. Packed with features, it includes a built-in basemap, high-sensitivity receiver, barometric altimeter, electronic compass, SD card slot, color display, picture viewer and more. Even exchange tracks, waypoints, routes and geocaches wirelessly between similar units. When the going gets tough, Colorado leads the way.
Explore More

Colorado 300 comes with a built-in worldwide basemap with shaded relief and accepts SD cards for all your outdoor activities on land or water. Just take your pick from Garmin’s preprogrammed SD cards including street maps, topographic maps, coastal charts or inland lake data. The card slot is located inside the waterproof battery compartment, so you don't have to worry about getting it wet.
Share Wirelessly

With Colorado 300 you can share your waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches wirelessly with other Colorado users. Now you can send your favorite hike to your buddy to enjoy or the location of a cache to find. Sharing data is easy. Just select “send” to transfer your information to other Colorado units.
Rock on. Find Fun

Intuitive and fun, Colorado features a Rock ‘n Roller™ input wheel for easy one-handed operation and supports Geocaching.com GPX files for downloading geocaches and detail straight to your unit. Customize Colorado's interface based on your favorite activity. Even show off photos of your excursions with its picture viewer. Slim, lightweight and waterproof, Colorado is the perfect companion for all your outdoor pursuits.
Keep Your Fix

With its high-sensitivity, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver, Colorado 300 locates your position quickly and precisely and maintains its GPS location even in heavy cover and deep canyons. The advantage is clear — whether you’re in deep woods or just near tall buildings and trees, you can count on Colorado to help you find your way when you need it the most.
Get Your Bearings

Colorado 300 has a built-in electronic compass that provides bearing information even while you're standing still, and its barometric altimeter tracks changes in pressure to pinpoint your precise altitude. You can even use the altimeter to plot barometric pressure over time, which can help you keep an eye on changing weather conditions.
Colorado 300: For adventure in any direction.

More info here:
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?...9&locale=en_US

[Jaws100]

Just bought a Colorado 300
Not used it yet, when I do I'll let you all know what I think of it, good or bad.

[davidr]

Coooooooool

I'd really like to hear about it.

I'll hopefully get to try one soon, it's looks like an excellent unit

[Jaws100]

Ok ! have the Garmin Colorado 300 up and running. So far this is my impressions on it.

On a forum site it was stated that they were problems with the duration of battery life with NiMh rechargeable. This is true if the setting on the unit is put to Ni-MH, a hour or two maybe. I have it set to alkaline battery with NiMh on board and it works up to 10hrs no problem. Obviously a software glitch on board where the battery setting is concerned. Have not encountered any other problems as yet.
(give it time!!)

It comes with a base-map of the world preloaded (non routable)

I have loaded NT V-9 Europe mapping onto a 4GB SD-HC SanDisk card and inserted it into the Colorado and its working perfectly. Purchased a automotive mount and power cable as well for the unit and have used it in my car on a couple of routes and very pleased the way it operates.

Have used the Colorado trekking in the mountains as well, does what it says on the box. Very pleased.

If I have anything to say so far on the downside it would probably be that it is a complicated little unit to operate, given that it has so many functions and settings, but I'm getting to grips with it and learning more each day.
For now.........that's it

John

[davidr]

Nice to hear some comments. World base map could be very useful.

Are there any particular favourite features that you have (e.g the screen size and quality looks good from what I can see)

David

[Jaws100]

David, their is an awful lot of features on the unit, only getting to grips with them still.

One of the features I particularly like at present is that you can switch between automotive mode and recreational mode very easy. You can lock it to roads only or set to automatic transition from road to off-road or off-road only.

Another feature I like is when you select a way-point it shows up all the information associated with it including the coordinates, distance address etc which is very nice feature indeed.

A feature I have yet to try out is setting the unit to pedestrian mode on NT_ V9 in a strange city to find your way around.

The screen and quality of same is very good, especially when connected to the automotive mount which powers up the back-light full time to a much higher degree of intensity than battery mode. In road mode it beeps when you approach a turn and flashes the direction to take in bold text on the screen.

It also picks up the satellites very quickly and holds the signal even indoors or in your pocket.

More...............as I get acquainted.

John

[davidr]

Just managed to get my hands on one, very cool!

I have a 300, it seems that the only difference between the 300 and 400 series is the maps with which they are packaged (the 300 doesn't come with any maps in the box, only trip and waypoint manager)

Here's a comparison of the features:
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/compare....ompare=compare

Looking at the unit, I can see that you're right, there are a LOT of features, I'm going to need to time to think about this :-)

David

[Jaws100]

I haven't bothered with the trip & way-point manager because I'm using Mapsource V9 instead which is obviously much better and routable. Stick in a SD card with V9 or the new version 2008 loaded on and you are really in business.

One thing I have found out is that if you put in an SD card with way-points on it the Colorado sucks them onto the internal memory without giving you an option to import or not.

John

[davidr]

One thing I have found out is that if you put in an SD card with way-points on it the Colorado sucks them onto the internal memory without giving you an option to import or not.

Strange . . .

I must admit that I like the look all the wireless cardio features (for cycling particulary) very cool!

[Jaws100]

Changes from version 2.30 to version 2.40:
Improved acquisition time in certain circumstances.
Improved power on time.
Improved backlight support.
Improved support for NiMH batteries.
Improved Wherigo player.
Added ability to show and review geocaches on the map.
Added ability to log geocaches as found.
Increased maximum geocache count to 2000.
Added support for BlueChart currents.
Added ability to view extended information for custom POI's.
Added ability for turn preview beep to reset the backlight timeout.
Corrected map to display road labels.
Corrected map to display small towns.
Corrected map to not change orientation when beginning pan mode.
Corrected metric nautical setting to display appropriate map scale.
Support for Colorado Field Notes, at geocaching.com.

Web Link: Garmin: Colorado 300 Updates & Downloads