Gav's Blog

What seems like a lifetime ago, I wrote my initial thoughts on the Garmin Colorado after having owned it for a few weeks. Now I’d like to return and offer more definitive thoughts on it after nearly a year of fairly heavy use. In this time it has been with me on somewhere around 1000 cache hunts, and a few overseas trips – mostly to Australia, but also Singapore and Sri Lanka. Naturally, it has seen a fair bit of domestic usage in little ole New Zealand as well.

I’m not going to spend any time going over what the Garmin Colorado is – there are plenty of articles on the net. I want to focus on the big pro’s and con’s associated with the Colorado. (Many of these comments may or may not also apply to the Oregon, I haven’t had enough hands on time with one to see what improvements they made from the Colorado.)

Made of Win
Win 1 – Stunning Maps. The screen and map display on the Colorado is absolutely gorgeous and blows away all of the previous generations of Garmin mapping handheld GPS units. The clarity of of the mapping display and the ability to clearly represent more layers at the same time is just great. I really struggle going back to older mapping units like the 60 series with far lower resolution and clarity in the maps.

Win 2 – USB Storage Device. Whilst it doesn’t sound like much, the change in metaphor for sending/receiving information from the GPS is a huge plus. You can accomplish most things purely by mounting the GPS as a USB device, and copying/deleting files from the GPS. No longer is it necessary to have Garmin GPS drivers to be able to communicate with the GPS. This is incredibly handy for travelling. If you prepare a whole lot of geocaching GPX files before you go, you can just store them on the device, and as you move around delete the active ones you are finished with, and store the others under a filename that the GPS won’t recognise e.g. use .bak or similar. Then, just rename the file from .gpx.bak to .gpx and next time you boot up, the GPS will load the new geocaches. This works the same for maps when travelling from country to country. If you have enough storage space to store multiple countries .img files from OpenStreetMap in the main memory, then as you move from one country to another, you can just rename/delete the old file, and rename the next country you’re heading to as the current gmapsupp.img – it works very well. Compare this with the alternative of either creating a massive gmapsupp file with all the countries you are travelling to, or having to take MapSource/RoadTrip with you and reloading maps as you go.

Win 3 – Paperless Caching (PC). The basic paperless caching functionality works pretty well. Two thousand caches is a far more reasonable limit than 500/1000 waypoints. The cache specific icons are great and make it so easy to see the types of caches at a glance on the map. The field notes work really well and speed up the logging of caches no end. It is very useful having the cache descriptions and logs, and we used this feature well on the road when figuring which caches to do next on a road trip.

Win 4 – Roller. What can I say, it is absolutely brilliant for zooming in and out on the maps.

Win 5 – Mount. The new mount connecter is very solid and works well on bikes and car dash mounts.

With that said, there are some areas where the Colorado let’s you down fairly significantly.

Epic Fail
Fail 1 – Archived Tracklogs. The 60 series had a near perfect means of archiving tracklogs. You could set it up to record to the SD card, and the unit would create a file for each day. Never, ever, did the GPS unit end up writing over already recorded tracklog data. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the Colorado. The archive track capability of the Colorado will only store 20 GPX files of approximately 1MB/5k trackpoints each before it will start overwriting the archived tracklogs. As a keen OpenStreetMap track logger, and also someone that wants to keep tracklogs from travel so that one day I can geotag some of my photos, I was livid the first time that I have found the Colorado was overwriting archived tracklogs. I really liked the 60 series handling where you could leave it going, and just trust that you come back and once every couple of months copy of all the archived tracks. Not so with the Colorado and it is one of my biggest frustrations. This means that archiving tracklogs becomes a hassle and a chore. This is such a big dealbreaker to me I am now considering what my next GPS is going to be. I want to be able to travel for weeks, have everything archived AND HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING DELETED WITHOUT ASKING ME FIRST. Why can’t the system save tracklogs to the external SD card just like the 60/76 series do?

Fail 2 – Paperless Caching. Whilst PC has been extremely successful for traditional caches, there are many, many failures and oversights. Consider that earthcaches don’t have their own icon, and for some reason Garmin has seen fit to default them back to Traditional caches, when at a minimum they should be Virtuals. How hard is it really for Garmin to update the software to display them with their correct icons, or at the very least as a Virtual? Why, are all the child waypoints associated with a cache loaded as actual waypoints, rather than being linked to and accessible as part of the cache? All they do is take up the waypoint allocation, and they aren’t easily accessible from a cache description. Why does the list of nearest geocaches not show the cache type icon – instead you have to click through each cache to see what type it is.

Fail 3 – Lack of user-centric design. I’m not sure how Garmin tested the Colorado, but there are some silly design decisions that make no sense at all. When changing the location of a waypoint (e.g. editing the co-ordinates to enter a waypoint for a multicache) you can only see 10 of the 20 characters at any time. This makes it very frustrating when copying co-ordinates from a cache. The only way you can see them all at once is if you save the waypoint, then find it, and view the co-ordinates on the screen before selecting ‘Go’. This is an impractical solution. This is perhaps my most frustrating experiences, but there are others, and these point to a poorly designed interface that doesn’t appear to have any real thought around the development. How hard would it have been on the lat/long entry screen to have both the latitude and longitude visible at once? There is certainly enough screen real estate to support it.

So, what does this mean?
To me, I think there is something inherently flawed in Garmin’s design process. A number of these usability errors SHOULD have been picked during testing before release. One wonders if Garmin skimped on the end-user testing and rushed the Colorado to market. The Colorado has the feel of Windows Vista about it – some really nice new features, but some absolutely fundamental design errors that are real deal-breakers.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to sell the Colorado and move back to a 60 or 76 series – I just couldn’t handle looking at the maps on one of them again, or losing the paperless caching. But, more than ever, my recent experience with losing archived tracklogs on the Colorado has got me thinking about the best approach to paperless caching and decent tracklogging – what is the next step.

Perhaps it is a fundamental mistake by me, thinking that I can have a single GPS that does everything I need it to. Even now, I still need my iPhone with caching details in addition to the Colorado. Perhaps I need to use a simple tracklogging GPS unit such as the Wintec G Rays 2 for logging tracks and not rely on the Colorado for this – it after all will automatically delete the archived data (which I don’t think is mentioned in the manual, just on the unofficial Colorado wiki).

The iPhone may end up being my saviour for paperless caching. Currently, we are tied to Garmin’s model and method of paperless caching on their units – you either use their approach, or you use another piece of hardware.

I’m starting to think that perhaps I can go the other way. Perhaps I should focus on looking for paperless caching capabilities in the iPhone. After all, all we need is something like GSAK/GPXSonar for iPhone, with an inbuilt map viewer that understands Garmin img map files, and that solution would likely blow away anything that Garmin could come up with (based on my 11 months with the Colorado). Sure, you could still use a basic eTrex high-sensitivity unit with caches loaded as POI’s, and take all the intelligent processing to a device capable of acting in an intelligent manner.

Garmin has had at least 12 months to improve the capabilities of the Colorado via software updates. All these issues, and hundreds more have been identified in the Garmin Coloroado wiki. Yet few have actually been resolved.

The core problem here comes down to Garmin being a hardware vendor, and they are still locked into the thinking that once the hardware is sold, only critical bugs will be fixed, and everything else will be left to the next generation of units – so you have to purchase new hardware to get a real upgrade.

This is in almost complete contrast to the Apple iPhone. With the iPhone, the software sees regular updates, and there have been some significant updates to old hardware. For example, the 1st generation iPhone and iPod touch were able to be upgraded to the v2 OS for either free or minimal fee, but the user received significant new capabilities. Come this June or July, even the original users of these devices will be able to upgrade to v3 of the OS and reap nearly all the benefits (yes, 1st gen. iPhones don’t have A-GPS, so the users will miss out on that – one of the reasons I didn’t get an iPhone until it had GPS).

On top if this, the iPhone allows developers to create competing applications. This means if you are so inclined, you can write a caching application if you choose. Whilst only geocaching.com will be able to have the tight integration with their website, I still believe there are possibilities for developers to deliver some stunning paperless geocaching applications that will blow away any capability that a hardware vendor such as Garmin appears to be capable of developing.

The software approach means that applications are sometimes updated every couple of months for existing users, and this is an area that Garmin has perhaps had their biggest fail. Garmin has failed to improve the utility in their existing units by fixing minor issues that the community have identified, and they are not releasing software updates as frequently as they should be. Any Garmin release generally addresses only a limited number of issues, especially when compared to the large number of outstanding issues identified by the user community.

This has perhaps been my big lesson with the Garmin Colorado. Garmin don’t appear capable of maintaining and improving unit capabilities once the product has been sold – certainly not when compared to iPhone updates. If Garmin keeps up like this, they are going to be made increasingly irrelevant by programmable devices like the Apple iPhone that will deliver extremely powerful paperless caching applications in spades.

The corollary, of course, is that if Garmin want to continue to deliver more complex and software-driven units to the market, they need to be far more responsive to the issues raised by the community, and provide more significant software updates.

The summary of course is that I’ll continue to use the Colorado – it is after all a sunk cost for me, and it does do some basic things pretty well. But am I seriously going to be keeping an eye out for alternative solutions that are more responsive to user feedback. I’m hoping that by sharing my experience with the Colorado, it will get you thinking about your choices more too.

Note – this is a living document and will be continually updated with more observations as I spend more time using the unit.

Introduction
For a couple of years now, I have been borrowing a friends Garmin 60csx for going geocaching with. My last GPS was a Garmin GPS Map 76S, and before that the venerable 12XL. With my use of the 60csx steadily increasing, my friend was seeing less and less of their GPS, so I finally decided after some reading to take the dive and purchase one of the new Garmin Colorado’s to become my primary GPS.

This article is my living review of the Garmin Colorado 300 that I purchased, and I’ll be continually updating the page as I find more likes and dislikes. Any additions after the first publication will have the date of addition in brackets. I’ll mark positive and negative points with the obvious +/-.

Summary
I had heard quite a few comments and discussions about the Colorado’s, and had the brief opportunity to try one out up in Hamilton recently thanks to RadioNut and ButterflyLady. I had been tossing up between trying a Colorado and getting a Nuvi for the car, but the need to stop hoggin my friends 60csx made the decision for me.

To date I haven’t regretted it. The benefits so far appear to outweigh the hassles, and I’m sure that there will be many improvements made to the software in due course. Haven’t yet cached with it, but it looks promising – although I don’t think it will replace the PDA notes functionality I use for recording multi-waypoint information and calculating final caches.

System Software History
* Initial Writing – Software Version 2.40, GPS Software Version 2.60

Casing and Connectivity
The new exterior to the unit is remarkably different. Most noticeable is the big shiny screen, the roller, and the silver finish.

+ In the hand – the unit fits in my hand much better than the 60csx and feels much more solid and durable.

+ Big screen – more real estate taken up by the screen is a good thing!

+ External antenna port – this is in a far better position than the 60csx, and is far less likely to come out during use. The problem I had with the 60csx was the rounded casing around the external antenna port caused the plug to come loose with just the slightest antenna cable movements. Initial tests in the car show this port to be far better designed.

+ Latch system – the new latch also looks a big improvement over the 60csx. Having previously attempt to carabena the 60csx to something using the metal ring on the back, I quick discovered that with a big of movement the latch would soon open the battery compartment and you’d end up with the GPS on the ground, and just the back lid still attached to you. Not good. The new latch appears to secure the back much better.

+ Mounting system – the new mounting system on the back also seems a big improvement. I haven’t got the bike mount set up yet, and the car mount hasn’t arrived, but it appears to have a very nice rile system to slide the unit snugly into mounts.

- Silver finish – sure it looks high tech and all, but I’m wondering how long it is going to remain in that pristine condition once it has been on a few geocache hunts with me.

- USB Storage mode – why oh why did Garmin decide to have the Colorado automatically switch to USB storage mode as soon as a USB cable is connected? The 60csx was fantastic in that you could power the unit in the car via USB. Now you plug it in with the same cable and the unit switches to USB storage mode. Even worse, because you can’t eject it, you have to remove the batteries to reset the unit to its ordinary operating mode. For sure, make the storage mode easy to access when connecting it to a computer, but don’t have it default to it. Perhaps pop up a brief window that gives the option of converting to USB storage mode, but if no input is given in a few seconds then the GPS should stay in the same state.

Configuration and Profiles
The Colorado can be a bit of a monster to configure at first glance. It introduces profiles for different activities that allow you to quickly change the setup of the GPS.

+ Profiles – it is great being able to customise the the GPS for different activities. The unit came with profiles for Recreational, Geocaching, Automotive, Marine and Fitness activities. Each profile allows full customisation of all settings of the unit. Even allowing different co-ordinate systems, or measurement systems to be defined.

+ XML Profiles – I haven’t had much more than a casual poke-around on the USB file system of the GPS yet, but it appears that the profiles are stored in XML. This means in theory that you may be able to create a global XML template, and then adjust them in a software editor or even a web page. This may be particularly useful for sharing profiles with mates, or for suppliers to create profiles, and then upload new profiles just by copying the XML profile files into the appropriate folder.

- No global profile – one problem with the very configurable XML Profiles is that there doesn’t appear to be a global profile. This means that if you want to change a setting in all profiles you have to either load and edit each profile individually in the GPS, or change it in each XML file. What would be really nice is being able to have a Global profile (XML, just like the rest) that defines settings, and then each profile is able to either overwrite a setting, or inherit the property from the Global profile. Likewise, if the profiles are able to inherit properties from the Global profile, then the XML profiles would be smaller and easier to edit as they would only have to record the settings that are different from the Global profile, rather than record every setting.

Interface and Input Methods
This has been perhaps the biggest learning curve yet, as the Colorado has a significantly different user interface and input methods.

Having come from the 12XL, 76S, and more recently the 60csx, I have become very accustomed to the ‘page’ style of navigation.

+ After a few days usage, the roller is very very nice for changing the map scale, and sure beats the continue – in, in, in or out, out, out on the 60′s.

- Shortcuts Menu – I’m not yet convinced this is the easiest way to navigate around the pages, and for the time being I have changed this to the more familiar ‘page’ navigation. This can be changed in System Setup Page > Shortcuts > Options > [ Use Shortcut Menu | Use Page Loops ]. This may be where profiles come in. If using a profile with only a few pages, it may be better to use Page Loops. If using a profile with a large number of pages, the Shortcut Menu is probably a far better option. At least with profiles, you’ll have the best choice.

- Navigation strangeness – When navigating to a waypoint, and using Shortcuts, the Stop Navigation function is found under the Shortcuts list. However, when using Page Loop, it is dynamically added to the top of the Other list. Strangely enough, neither of the two obvious pages that may be used for routing – Map or Active Route – provide a quick option to either Stop or Detour the current navigation. Detour doesn’t even appear in the Other list in Page Loop mode. For some reason, when you are navigation, and are set in Page Loop mode, a second Mark Waypoint is added to the Other list, so you end up with Stop Navigation, followed by two Mark Waypoints. Clearly a bug with handling these dynamic menus. As it is currently structured, the Shortcuts mode appears to be far more reliable and easier to access Stop Navigation.

- Profiles – it should be far, far easier to change profiles. Right now you have to head to either Setup or Other, select Change Profile and select the profile. Too hard for constant changing, particularly if you’re going from Automotive to Geocaching as you drive to a cache, hunt a cache, drive to the next cache etc. It should be possible to load profiles into the Shortcuts menu.

- White message pages – these have frankly become a little irritating. Having the whole screen revert to white to display an error message is annoying. Particularly when you are driving and navigating and you are not necessarily in the possible to dismiss the error. More subtle error messages should be implemented that allow you to continue to at least see the display of the GPS.

Function – Tracks
The tracklog is a mixed bag so far with the Colorado, and I haven’t yet quite got my head right around it. The setup is relatively simple and allows you to select Auto/Time/Distance as always.

One thing I loved about the 60csx – particularly for travel – was the way you could set it to record track points quite frequently, and have it save them to the card. Each day it would create a new tracklog file with the date as the filename – e.g. 20080508.gpx. This was great.

The Colorado setup is different. In particular is the way it handles Current vs Archive tracks. This of course may just be nomenclature in that the Current track is the same as the 10k active track on a 60csx, and the Archive tracks are the equivalent of those save to a card. However, instead of naming and filing the tracklog GPX files by date, the Colorado appears to be using a serial number e.g. 1.gpx, 2.gpx etc. It appears to create a new file at a certain size, rather a separate file for each day.

Function – Geocaching
The geocaching functionality on the Colorado certainly deserves a lot of discussion. Some aspects of it work very well, others leave a lot to be desired.

+ Geocaching GPX – the ability to store geocaching GPX in the unit and display cache information is quite useful. It provides nice quick access to difficulty, terrain, cache size, trackables, full description, hints and logs. This certainly brings the Colorado a long way towards true paperless geocaching.

+ Field Notes – these appear to work very well. After heading out for some geocaching where I found four, and DNF’ed another, I tested the upload of the field notes file. It worked flawlessly and provided me with an easy means of creating logs for each cache, and these were removed from the list as the caches were logged. The are loaded in the order they were logged in the field – making the logging of caches easier than ever before. I am certainly going to make good use of this function. Of course, given that field notes are nothing more than a text file, it could also be crafted on a PDA in the field and uploaded. But the Colorado certainly makes it painless.

- Geocaching GPX for multis and puzzles – the geocaching GPX is fantastic for simple geocaches such as traditionals and letterboxes. However, it does fall down when multicaches are concerned. Multis still required something to record details and solve to find the final cache. Coming from a PDA, I still found myself reaching for the PDA to complete the multi-caches today.

- Geocache waypoints – Unfortunately the geocaching functionality does not recognise multicache waypoints, or carparks and the like. Instead of finding them under the Geocache page, you have to return to the Where To? page, and go to waypoints and then try and find the waypoint. The Colorado really should be smart enough to match the 3rd-6th/7th characters of a waypoint name so that it can match it to a geocache, and then display these child waypoints under the Options menu with a nice quick Go To Child Waypoints page or similar.

- Routing – it is quite cumbersome to  select road routing to drive to a cache, and then revert to geocaching mode to find the cache. All navigation in the built in geocaching mode is point-to-point. The Geocaching profile really needs an additional option when selecting Go To Location – it should ask whether you would like to route or go direct. I found it quite frustrating today to switch back and forwards between modes today so that one could route from cache to cache in the car.

- Cache identification – it would be nice on the Geocache page if the type of each geocache was identified with a little icon. It would help when deciding what cache to do next to see whether it is a traditional, multi or puzzle.

The Geocaching functionality has a lot of potential, but it is still in a relatively immature state. The capabilities are huge step up from the 60csx in terms of complexity, however the ease of use and thought about the interface doesn’t look that refined.

Function – Automotive
Wow – used the Automotive profile today and was very impressed by the map. A nice oblique view looking down from behind to show the streets ahead. Upcoming streets a nicely labelled. I’m really looking forward to getting the car mount now and using it. It looks very nice.

Function – Satellite
It is a simple page, but one I refer to quite often to check the signal. Whilst the display of information is very nice, I feel that it has a few improvements that could be made.

- Signal Strength Bars – the dark blue signal strength bars are very difficult to see against the default dark green background. Please provide a higher colour contrast setting so that you can actual see the signal strength bars at a quick glance.

- Unknown Number – there is a little number down the bottom right of the constellation map, but it is not identified. I assume it is the elevation. Please mark it as such.

Function – Map
What can I say other than the new map looks absolutely fantastic. Most of these comments are based on the NZ Open GPS Maps and the Global DEM.

+ Global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) – the inclusion of a global DEM means that even New Zealand to some degree gets the pretty shaded relief map imagery when zoomed out. Note that this is not the 3D view, and that requires additional information to be added to the maps to support that.

+ Resolution and Screen Size – the combination of increased screen size and increased resolution have created a gorgeous and practical display. Practical as you can display more detail on the map by using smaller cartography.

+ Tracklog Mapping – the mapping of tracklogs is far less intrusive than it used to be. A nice thin black line that doesn’t obscure the actual roads is a big improvement. It even allows you to see more detail in you tracklog, such as the line around roundabouts. Very nice.

+ Options – the map options are very simple and easy to use. It is simple to select maps and enable/disable them with just a few simple clicks. Likewise adding and removing data fields are quick and easy. Modifying data fields couldn’t be much easier either.

- Only Two Data Fields – with the increase in map size, it might be nice to have say four data fields on occasion, but the options didn’t appear to allow anything other than the default two.

Function – Compass
I haven’t really used the compass yet, so more comments will come.

- Easy On/Off – it seem really strange that to turn the compass on and off, you can’t do this from Compass Page > Options, rather Setup > Heading > Compass > [ Off | Auto ]. You should be able to quick toggle this from the Compass page options.

Function – Project Waypoint
This is a really bad example of user interface design. I can’t believe that to enter the bearing, you have to enter each digit of the degree. How slow, painful and indicative of someone that hasn’t really thought about the design. They should use a different graphic to indicate a compass, and have fast turns translate to +/- 10 or 15 degree increments, and have slow turns refine the bearing by individual degrees. Far quicker entry than the tortuous system they have now.

Recommended Improvements
These are listed in no particular order, and are a brief summary of what is contained in the review above. I’m sure some of these we will see in time with software upgrades – assuming that Garmin just wanted to get the Colorado’s to market, and then continue adding/refining features to an existing userbase.

* Create a global profile, and allow custom profiles to inherit or override properties from the global profile. This will make profile management quite a bit easier.
* High contrast signal strength bars on the Satellite Page.
* Identify the mystery number of the Satellite Page.
* Allow the display of more data fields on the map display e.g. default is two, allow say four, or even six.
* Provide a quick Compass Off/Auto option on the Compass Page.
* Provide a different user interface for selecting degrees on the Project Waypoint page. There is absolutely no reason to enter each digit individually for a bearing.
* It would be nice on either the Satellite or Map pages to have an option to quickly turn the Tracklog on/off.
* Make it easier to access the Stop Navigation/Detour modes when in Page Loop mode. In fact, why not just put these under the Options menu for both the Map and Active Route pages – as these are the most commonly used pages for routing.
* Profiles should be able to be added to the shortcuts menu to speed switching e.g. I’d like to be able to quickly select Automotive and Geocaching profiles with as few button presses as usual.
* Geocaches page needs to identify different cache type at a glance.
* The Geocaching function needs a much easier means of integrating routing for driving between caches, and then switching to cache hunting.
* Stop the unit switching to USB mode when a USB cable is plugged in.  Why can’t it work just like the 60csx? USB should power it by default, and perhaps the USB mode could be selected from the Shortcuts instead
* Get rid of the full white page error messages.