Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx

When I returned to America, I took the opportunity to buy an all-round GPS that would serve me equally well in the car as out and about. It wasn't that difficult of a decision. The 60CSx is one of the highest rated devices out there.

I bought an auto kit and a 2GB MicroSD card to go along with my hand held. The auto kit is essential for in-the-car use. It wasn't cheap, but worth every penny so far. I loaded the MapSource software into my Bootcamp partition and every thing is working out great.

I had troubles uploading the maps to the 2GB card initially, but it worked the second time around. I was a little worried there since it took about 3 hours the first time.

I love how I can create new waypoints, etc. on my computer or the 60CSx and sync them later. It's much more flexible than just a built-in system. The integration with GoogleEarth is fantastic. I've used the system to find wilderness POI's using the satellite imagery.

Unfortunately, I can't search for POI's by name and location on the road. If its not within a couple of miles here in the city, I have to know the address or approximate location and then search from there. That can make a huge difference. Last night, we were looking for a Thai restaurant, Kung Fu and if I didn't know the street, I wouldn't have found it. Thankfully that's not much of a problem because you can usually get an address or a general location. Still, it would be nice to have that extended search option.

I wish I could get a larger 4GB card and load up a full complement of topo maps as well, but that also makes map management difficult since map types can't be layered. Perhaps having two 2GB cards with different map sets is the best way for now, but it would be great to have other options like loading two cards and specifying which card you want to use.

No regrets here. A larger screen and something a little more compact would be great, but I'm not expecting perfection.

UPDATE 12/19/07: One of the things I mentioned earlier about searching for POI's... I found a very easy way to look for POI's outside of the 2 mile radius, without going to a different area with the pointer first:

If you want to find an "Old Navy" and there isn't one listed under "Shopping"... Hit the Menu button and select "Find the nearest containing..." (or something to that effect) and then type in "Old Navy" and it should begin to show you nearby stores in red in the search window.

I have City Navigator and Topo maps and two 2GB cards. I found that I could easily store all of my city maps (about 309 of them), but could only store a small amount of the topo maps (way less than 2gb worth). I realized that the limiting factor isn't the storage space... it's the NUMBER of maps (2025 is the max number of map sets). I can only store part (a pretty sizable chunk) of the US, but not the entire country. Kind of a bummer. I hope they offer a flash-firmware upgrade someday, but I'm not holding my breath. The 60CSx is probably limited by the amount of onboard memory to index all of the maps. Oh well.