My Garmin Colorado 300 Review

WGA Friend Joined: 2010-01-08 Posts: 275

Been using my Colorado for a few days now. I find the interface to be a bit clumsy, but overall I'm liking a lot of the features of this machine.
Here is a list what I like and dont like about it.

Disappointments:

Scroll wheel: It takes forever to enter coordinates manually. I prefer the joystick on the old eTrex
Navigation mode: I would have liked to see a larger arrow. Proximity rings would have been a nice feature
booting: It's locked up twice on me since I got it on Tuesday. Once after I loaded a new gpx file, the second time seemingly for no reason at all. I had to remove the batteries to shut it down before rebooting.
Maps: very slow to refresh when trying to pan around
Screen: hard to view in bright daylight even with screen brightness all the way up
Cache List: selected the GC mode while driving. List shows nearest caches first, but does not auto-refresh keeping the nearest cache at the top of the page.

Likes:

Paperless caching. I like how I can get whole cache descriptions, rating, logs and hints right on my GPS.
Boots relatively fast
Satellite acquisition: very fast. Within a couple seconds of turning on the machine I have a GPS fix (although it is a low confidence fix initially)
Accuracy: Only have the eTrex legend to compare to, but the Colorado seems to run circles around the eTrex in the accuracy department. I've placed a bunch of caches with the eTrex and I've gotten feedback saying they were 30-40 feet off. I doubt I'll have this problem with the Colorado
Wherigo looks promising

Other:

The website, manual, and others picture the Colorado 300 with street maps. I expected my Colorado 300 to come with street maps. After playing around for about a half hour, and not finding any street maps, I came to the conclusion that Garmin wants me to spend $100 to see street maps.

Conclusion:

While the Colorado is a nice unit with a lot of advanced features, especially features useful to geocaching, had I demo'd the Colorado prior to purchasing it, it is very unlikely that I would have purchased the Colorado.

I'm disappointed at my self more than anything, by not doing comparative shopping or better researching GPSr's.

On a scale of 1-5, I wouldnt rate my Colorado 300 any higher than a 3.

Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2010 8:56 pm

Quote:

I came to the conclusion that Garmin wants me to spend $100 to see street maps. Sad

About the only way to get a good street map from garmin without paying 100 bucks "extra" is to get a Nuvi wink

Even the 500 dollar Oregon (base model) does not come with a street map. Same old basemap. They like selling maps too.

WGA Friend Joined: 2010-01-08 Posts: 275

Yep. I've got a Nuvi, too. I take my Nuvi everywhere I go, or should I say my Nuvi takes me every where it goes?

I bought my Nuvi 200 sometime in 2007. It's been pretty good.
The only problem I really have with the Nuvi is that (since it's a couple years old) I get an annoying message at startup that says something like,
"Your map is over a year old. Insert $100 here to remove this annoying message for 12 months"

The main reason I'd like a street map on my Colorado is for when viewing caches on the map. It'd be good to reference the location of caches and get a good way to figure out exactly where they are before attempting to drive over there.

WGA Friend Joined: 2010-01-08 Posts: 275

I just installed the Wisconsin Topo map. What a difference that makes.

WGA Member Joined: 2007-04-27 Posts: 331 Location: Muskego

You might want to load web updater on your computer and makes sure you've got the latest firmware load on your colorado too. While there are a lot of new features added to the Oregon line, some of those have been making it to the colorado too.

WGA Friend Joined: 2010-01-08 Posts: 275

One of the first things I did after unboxing the Colorado was updated the firmware. Im on v3.20

Yesterday, after powering it on, I noticed that the altimeter data was indicating that I had ascended about 800 feet, from my base (home) elevation of 1020 feet ASL, saying I was at 1800 feet.

I realize changing weather will affect altimeter data, but not 800 feet worth.
If it happens again, I'll report the issue to Garmin to determine if I have a defective unit.

WGA Member Joined: 2007-06-03 Posts: 100

First, you can put all the caches you want on the Nuvi using GSAK. I had a Colorado when they first came out and sold it a few months later. There were a lot of problems with it. They have most of them fixed, but they are not doing much with it anymore.