Re: Magellan Crossover (2500T) vs. Garmin 478 vs. ??

J Evans wrote:
I see you use the 76 and it seems it seems mostly marine usage. With the tiny screen, how is to see on the boat dash (or car dash) at a little farther that arms length away. The 76 has most of what I want, but it seems so small.


Actually the 76Cx, it is quite a bit better than the earlier 76 model.

The display *is* a little small but it has good brightness and resolution. That all is part of the equation on using it for long periods of time on batteries and using it anywhere and anytime equation.

But it works good for marine and on the road too.

For marine, in the narrower channels, I zoom down in and stay on or near the magenta lines that are the point to point legs of the route.

And I'm also looking at buoys, ledges, daymarks, other boats, etc., and steer by the overall picture. On the long straight deep water runs, I am usually using an autopilot to steer and hold my heading and I just give it an occasional plus or minus a degree or two to keep me on the heading and near the leg seen on the 76Cx.

I'm delivering different boats that are all well equipped but it is not worth the trouble to try to get my well tested and familiar routes into someone else's nav suite. So the 76Cx and my chartbook are the "bibles" for navigating. I usually also have the boat's chart plotter going for the "big picture" and for another source of info/confirmation.

On the road, once you activate a Follow Road route, the 76Cx has two more pages that become available on it. One is a list of the route legs and it shows distances and icons for the upcoming maneuvers. So I can press Back, see that page and tell I'm going to make a left in 3.6 miles. Then I can hit Quit and get back to the map view.

On the map view, I can have data boxes that will count down the distance to the turn and tell me the name of it. As I get near the turn, about 1/2 mile out, the GPS zooms in for a better view, it makes an initial turn warning noise (easily heard in a car, not as easily heard in a boat or on a motorcycle) and a larger box pops up and characterizes the nature of the turn. Then I get a final turn warning at .3 miles with a different warning tone, the same zoomed in big box, and it counts it down to the turn in yards and then feet.

I usually have it all eyeballed and figured out by the time the final turn warning is heard so I'm not watching the GPS, my eyes are looking outside the car.

Once on the new leg the map view zooms back out, and off you go to the next turn.

If you are using the 76Cx from the shotgun seat and prompting the driver, it is really simple to keep things on track.

All in all, I really feel I can go anywhere and do anything with the 60/76 "x" series models. They have the wonderful SiRF III chipset and I wouldn't consider buying a model that did not have that unless I was severely constrained on money. Even then, the saving is does not offset the loss in performance in my opinion.

West Marine has the 76Cx on sale right now for $299.00, about $323 shipped I think. But they want about $150 more for the 76CSx which sounds like a pricing error to me. Garmin's MSRP price for the 76CSx ($482) is only about $53 more than the MSRP for the 76Cx ($429).

I always have compasses around and don't need an altimeter so I chose 76Cx with slightly better battery life and no calibration requirements.

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)
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