For the past two years a Garmin eTrex (Vista HC) has come along on almost every hike. After long deliberation and a lot of research online, I have now bought a new outdoor GPS: a Garmin Oregon 300, the sister model of the Garmin Oregon 400t.
Update January 2010: The Garmin Oregon 300 is largely sold out by now. Its successors, the Garmin Oregon 450 and Oregon 450t, are already available from many retailers. A review of the Oregon 450 will follow shortly. Some Garmin GPS Oregon 400t
units are still going cheap in the clearance sales (see the Amazon link at the end of the article)
The Oregon’s large display doubles as a touchscreen
The first thing you notice about the Oregon 300 is how much larger the display is than on the old eTrex. That size is necessary, though, because this is a touchscreen. Almost every function – and there are a great many – is controlled entirely through on-screen menus. There is only one physical button, for power, which also opens the menu for the backlight and the screen lock.
The backlight is the Oregon’s weak point
The backlight, together with battery life, is the weakest point of this otherwise very accomplished and thoroughly practical outdoor GPS.
Screen brightness is capped when the unit runs without external power, which on a hike is normally the case. In other words, the maximum brightness you can set is lower than when the unit is connected through the mini USB socket to a power source such as a car charger. In sunlight the display is therefore not especially easy to read — you have to change your angle to the sun now and then to make out all the detail. Indoors, at dusk or in shade the display is bright enough and perfectly legible.
It goes without saying that a touchscreen display is not technically comparable with the eTrex’s screen, but you still find yourself wishing the Oregon had the eTrex’s brilliant image — and that is probably beyond today’s technology. On balance, though, the larger display and the ease of use that comes with it still justify the purchase, at least for me.
Quick, straightforward operation with the touchscreen
The Oregon 300 is easier and in many respects considerably quicker to operate than the eTrex. Like the eTrex it works as a car navigator too with the right maps, provided you can do without spoken directions. Here as well the Oregon has the edge thanks to its big display. In the car, with the charging cable plugged in, the brightness is fine.
I use the unit mainly with Garmin’s TOPO Deutschland V2 map for hiking, and less often with Garmin City Navigator NT Europe as a car navigator. Since I do not look at the display very often while walking, and it is set to switch off 15 seconds after the last touch, I get a run time of roughly 15 to 18 hours on 2700 mAh rechargeables. That means day walks are no trouble at all and weekend trips are perfectly possible (as long as you remember to switch the unit off in the evening). The old eTrex Vista was clearly better here, though: with the backlight low its battery life could easily be twice as long.
Battery life: adequate to good, depending on how you use it
Anyone who leaves the display on permanently and turns the brightness right up — on a mountain bike, say — should expect a much shorter run time of around 6 to 10 hours.
The Garmin Oregon also comes as the Oregon 400t with topographic maps covering nearly all of Europe at a scale of 1:100,000. That scale is not detailed enough for my hiking and I use Garmin’s Topo V2 in Germany anyway, so I gave it a miss. For anyone who travels a lot elsewhere in Europe and would rather not buy an expensive detail map every time (assuming one even exists), that model could be an interesting alternative. Apart from the maps supplied and a slightly larger internal memory, the two units are identical.
I have since found a few tips online for improving the Oregon further:
- a better German language file – the original files contain translations that are unclear or plainly wrong in places
- improving the screen rendering with a different background
- making topo maps easier to read by switching off the hill shading.
- Beyond that, you can improve how much information the Topo V2 shows by swapping out a type file.
- Current firmware for the Oregon
More on that shortly, in this article:
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