I loved my Vista until owning the 60CS. The Vista only lost signal once we got in some heavy woods. But being in open land, I never saw many satellites on there. The 60CS, I can fire it up anywhere and never once see only 5-6. That external antenna does wonders. 3 of my riding buddies have Vistas that all function the same way. One of them has upgraded to the 60CS along with me. As a side note if you ever want to upgrade, sell your old one on ebay. I upgraded for very little money.

 

I have a Magellan Sport Track Colour with the MapSend Topo Canada. It is my first ,but not the first that I have used and I am quite pleased with it. Great detail on the Topo maps with good road , lake and river names and accurate topo lines down to 12 foot increments. Nice display , easy to figure out.

 

Excellent point yaK. The topo map has to be a big benefit!!
BryceGTX

 

I have a Garmin III and am looking at getting a Ram brand mount for ATV's
Anyone have experience with the ram mounts?
tia
jinks

 

jinks,

Just tuck it in a tank bag or shirt/coat pocket, you'll save money on the Ram mount, and your GPS will last longer. You can't read them when your bouncing around on the trails any ways....

ZMan079

PS: Check out this link on the review of the Magellan Sport Trak Pro

 

Hey jinks. The Ram mount works quite well on my quad. Check my pics.
BryceGTX

 

I have to disagree. The RAM mounts are the top of the line out there. They are the ONLY ones I have riden with that you CAN read while riding down the trail. Movement is minimal with them as they are designed for this type of thing. I think they work great.

 

I'm not trying to take over the thread here, but perhaps my conversation will help answer some of your questions.

I have a etrex vista now, and I have been very happy with it. I always knew that when trees came, I was going to lose the signal, but I just thought that's what all GPSs did. Other than that I'm still very happy with it. The only other thing I don't like about my vista is perhaps just user error... maybe I don't know how to do this correctly. I hike 14ers (14,000+ foot mountain) a lot, and when I get to the top, I tell the GPS to tell me how far my hike out is. after a while, I figured out that it's really telling me calculations based upon "as the crow flies", so it always takes us twice as long to actually hike back as it predicts. I don't like the backtrack feature, because it always tells me the time to get to the next waypoint. I don't care where the next waypoint is... it's an ambiguious point on the trail as far as I'm concerned. I can't figure out how to tell it to follow this path, and tell me data based upon the final destination. Maybe I'm just retarded.

Having said this...

I'm wanting to upgrade to a new GPS for both hiking and ATV. I think I've narrowed it down to either a Garmin GPSMap 60CS or a Magellan SporTrak Color.

I think that either one should pick up signals better than my etrex, so I'm not terribly concerned with which one would be slightly better. What I want to talk about is features on either one. Everything I've read says that magellans have the "best backtrack in the business". This is a feature that I use a lot...although I don't like how it works on my etrex as I said above. Would the magellan do this differently? My concern with the magellan is two fold... 1.) Battery life is kinda weak. 1/2 that of the garmin. 14 hours vs. 30 hours. 2.) The tracks are continuous regardless of distance apart. Personally I think this is rediculous. Maybe all you have to do is save a track to a route when you're ready to start a new one and you solve that problem. Is that true?

One thing that I LOVE about the magellan is that it has a thermometer. I actually carry a seperate thermometer/berometer by brunton when I go because I just like to know the temperature. It's fun to see how cold it is at the top of those 'teeners. Does anyone know if it will actually plot temperature vs. time like it will pressure vs. time? If so... I think I'm sold on that feature, and I'll figure the rest out [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

The 60CS does have a better color screen, as it's 256 color vs. 16 color on the magellan. I don't think this really makes a darn difference for my purposes, but I do think it's prettier [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

The last thing is software. I have Mapsource TOPO for the US. I thought this was made for Garmins... will it work with a Magellan? I also have National Geographic Topo software (the state by state one) for about 1/2 the US. I assume that'll still work too.

On a final note, I've seen the street navagation software for the GPSs now and although I haven't used any, it looks awesome for finding those hard to find addresses. Do you have to load all this into the GPS, and how much memory will it take up? The Magellan doesn't have nearly the space that the 60CS does. 22MB vs. 56MB on the Garmin. On my vista, I filled the memory with as much of CO as I could. I got almost all of CO on it with 24 MB. That makes the 56MB look much more attractive, especially if I'm going to try to put in detailed street maps as well.

Any advice for me?

 

Sport track colour has been discontinued.........so you can get then for a good deal....

 

I thought this would be the case, but that external antenna on the 60CS does wonders. Its rare that I loose a signal now.


MapSource software only works on Garmin units.


The extra memory in the 60CS is great. I have most of north Texas, southern Oklahoma, and western Lousianna stored in mine. Those are all the detailed street maps from City Select.