Garmin 76c /76cs

[ttorborg]

I am looking to upgrade my old Garmin III with something new. I was looking at the Quest but I don't like the idea of rechargable batteries. Now I am looking at the Garmin 76c/76cs. It looks like I could use it on the bike, car, boat and hunting. Does anyone have any experience with the 76c/cs?

[Stan Walker]

I have a 60CS which is virtually the same unit with a smaller case and less memory. Same display and feature set with the 76C/CS having a slightly better built in map set.

 

I like my unit a lot. It's fairly fast and has lots of features that work well for navigation on or off the road. I use it for hiking and for exploring dirt roads on my F650. But on long road trips it stays home.

 

One major downside to either of these units is the limited amount of loadable memory. On long trips you would be forced to reload detailed maps from time to time. Since you can't swap out the mapping memory you will be forced to carry a laptop or do without detailed maps in some areas.

 

Another downside is the size of the screen. It's small and a lot of it will be taken up by data fields leaving the available map area even smaller.

 

For not much a lot more $$$ you can get a 276C. Twice the size screen, still daylight readable, and the data fields can be configured to make almost all the screen usable (Overlay Characters). A large (16 hour) replaceable rechargeable battery (you can get a spare battery, but why? the unit automatically recharges while plugged into the bikes power even while the GPS is in use). Voice prompts (I don't use them on the bike but Jan really likes them in the car). Hot swappable memory mapping modules (max single memory module is 256 MByte). Even more features than the 60C/76C as it's a full blown chart plotter too (including sonar displays).

 

Downside to the 276C? Well it's a bit too big to take on a hike. You could do it, but it wouldn't be my first choice.

 

Stan