DeLorme Earthmate PN-40 Waterproof Hiking GPS (Electronics)
Saturday, June 18, 2011
DeLorme Earthmate PN-40 Waterproof Hiking GPS (Electronics)
DeLorme Earthmate PN-40 Waterproof Hiking GPS (Electronics)
I wrote a review on Amazon about the Oregon 400t. In short I really liked the feature set but found fault with the compass, issues with the battery, and the screen was HORRBLE in direct/indirect sunlight. I returned it because at the price I paid it was not worth it.
So I bought the Delorme PN-40 because the screen was said to be better and it also had a 3-axis compass (the 400t doesn't but the 450t and 550t do but are much higher priced than the PN-40).
Though the screen is somewhat smaller it looks so MUCH better in direct/indirect sunlight. I can turn the backlight completely off and it looks great. The backlight is also much brighter when you need to turn it up. No problems there.
The compass works better than the Oregon 400t being that it is a 3 axis compass. I've been out with the PN-40 four times now and one time the compass got a little 'nutty'. I did a quick calibration and it worked fine after that. The Oregon 400t went nutty on me multiple times and I simply could not trust it. Bottom line though is if you need a compass... take a real compass and only trust these things if necessary.
It comes with some coppertop batteries but I put in energizer lithium 8x batteries. The documentation says that the GPS can determine between alkaline and lithium but when I went to the battery page it said the were alkaline so I manually changed that. They worked great and I highly recommend them. I hiked 8 miles with them and it is still reporting they are full. I had issues with batteries with the Oregon 400t though most people say they work fine. I had problems within 40 minutes with coppertops and the batteries were FINE (multimeter doesn't lie).
Both GPS's have great features and this is where Garmin has something very unique. I raved in my other review over being able to put your own trail maps onto the garmin and use it for hiking. It is a cool feature and if you make it correctly can be a real benefit. You 'can' do the same thing with the PN-40 but you need to purchase their GIS software XMAP. It isn't cheap and isn't worth it just to put trail maps in.
While that is a downer, you can download a large number of map layers from Delorme such as USGS Topo, Aerial and Sat photos. I've done this and while it is probbly very useful I haven't had to resort to using it yet. I think I need to take it somewhere I am not familiar with yet to gauge its usefulness.
Geocaching: Both support geocaching and downloading GPX's from Geocaching.com out of the box. The download of individual GPX files using the Send To GPS function worked faster (or so it seemed) with the PN-40 than the Oregon. And... IF you are a paid member of Geocaching.com you can buy ($9.99) Delorme's Cache Register software. Basically this app manages your Pocket Queries (query search that contains large number of geocaches). You can download from Geocaching.com HUNDREDS of Caches into the GPS at once. It took about 2 minutes to download 500 caches from the website and put them into the PN-40. Quite nice and might be worth the $9.99 if you are a hard core into geocaching. The Cache Register software also will sync up all caches you marked as 'found' to your Geocaching.com account. The PN-40 allows you to mark a Geocache found and also allows field notes. Those too get uploaded to your account and it seems to work as advertised so far.
The user interface for the GPS isn't hard to use. Matter of fact it works like some of my older Garmins (Page goes forward, quit goes backwards). If you read the manual (and who does that?) you can find useful button/keyboard shortcuts when entering in text for Geocaching.
One neat feature the Garmin 400t had was it could show you a graph in how your hike changed in elevation on the GPS itself. The PN-40 cannot do this but you can get the exact same thing if you import your track into the included Topo software (now comes with version 8).
Speaking of the included Topo program, it actually IS a very good program but its user interface isn't the most intuitive thing to learn. If you ever used Delorme's Street Atlas it basically works the same way. I 'think' it is because Delorme makes a lot of GIS apps (like XMAP) and the interface comes from that software. GIS people think 'differently' about geospatial data and so the interface is tailored more to their liking.
DeLorme Earthmate PN-40 Waterproof Hiking GPS (Electronics)
BUY Now DeLorme Earthmate PN-40 Waterproof Hiking GPS (Electronics)
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