The Summit HC has the newer chipset that’s suppose to work great in the woods. This model is pretty much Identical to the VistaHCX except it doesn’t have a microSD card slot for maps, it only has 24mb of internal map storage. with only 24mb of storage you’ll only be able to load half the state of Wisconsin of topo maps at once.
The Summit HC also can’t do autorouting, but it sounds like you have a better autorouting device anyway(Nuvi350).
I usually just turn off the compass since it needs to be recalibrated every time you change batteries. The normal gps compass will work great as long as you are moving, though there are times the electronic compass is pretty useful.
Once I was in a swampy woods and couldn’t move more than 3ft straight in any direction(hopping bog to bog) so without the electronic compass on my gps was constantly pointing all over the place. another place it worked great was climbing to the top of a large cliff, the waypoint was at the top but since we were moving to slow and couldn’t walk directly toward the mark it was also all over the place.
I most often look at my gps when I am stopped taking a break, when you use a gps without an electronic compass it doesn’t work standing still.
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