Garmin Oregon 450 Portable GPS Navigator 010-00697-40
Garmin Oregon 450 Handheld GPS Navigator

Manufacturer: Garmin
Oregon 450 World Wide GPS
Amazon.com Product Description:
With Oregon 450 you can really get in touch with nature. This next-generation handheld features a rugged, sunlight-readable, touchscreen along with a built-in basemap with shaded relief, a high-sensitivity receiver, barometric altimeter, 3-axis electronic compass, microSD card slot, picture viewer and more. Even exchange tracks, waypoints, routes and geocaches wirelessly between similar units.
Touch and Go
Oregon 450 leads the way with a tough, 3-inch diagonal, sunlight-readable, color, touchscreen display that offers crystal clear enhanced colors and high-resolution images. Its easy-to-use interface means you’ll spend more time enjoying the outdoors and less time searching for information. With user-selectable dashboards, you can customize the appearance of your display. Both durable and waterproof, Oregon 450 is built to withstand the elements. Bumps, dust, dirt, humidity and water are no match for this rugged navigator.
Explore More
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3-axis compass view. |
Geocaching view. |
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Map and compass view. |
Upcoming elevation view. |
Share Wirelessly
With Oregon 450 you can share your waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches wirelessly other compatible Oregon, Colorado and Dakota users. Now you can send your favorite hike to your friend to enjoy or the location of a cache to find. Sharing data is easy. Just touch “send” to transfer your information to similar units.
Find Fun
Oregon 450 supports Geocaching.com GPX files for downloading geocaches and details straight to your unit. By going paperless, you're not only helping the environment but also improving efficiency. Oregon stores and displays key information, including location, terrain, difficulty, hints and descriptions, which means no more manually entering coordinates and paper print outs! Simply upload the GPX file to your unit and start hunting for caches. Show off photos of your excursions with Oregon’s picture viewer. Slim and lightweight, Oregon is the perfect companion for all your outdoor pursuits.
Get Your Bearings
Oregon 450 has a built-in 3-axis tilt-compensated electronic compass, which shows your heading even when you’re standing still, without holding it level. Its barometric altimeter tracks changes in pressure to pinpoint your precise altitude, and you can even use it to plot barometric pressure over time, which can help you keep an eye on changing weather conditions. See changes in your elevation ahead of you and where you've been with enhanced track navigation. With its high-sensitivity, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver and HotFix satellite prediction, Oregon 450 locates your position quickly and precisely and maintains its GPS location even in heavy cover and deep canyons.
Add Maps
Conveniently plug in optional preloaded microSD cards for all your outdoor activities on land or water (see maps tab for compatible maps). Just insert a MapSource card with detailed street maps, and Oregon provides turn-by-turn directions to your destination. Add select topographic maps to take advantage of Oregon’s 3-D map view which gives you a better perspective of your elevation. With BlueChart g2 , you’ll get everything you need for a great day on the water including depth contours, navaids and harbors. The card slot is located inside the waterproof battery compartment, so you don't have to worry about getting it wet.
Get Connected
You've been busy exploring and now you want to store and analyze your activities. With a simple connection to your computer and to the Internet, you can get a detailed analysis of your activities and send tracks to your outdoor device using Garmin Connect. This one-stop site offers an activity table and allows you to view your activities on a map using Google Earth. Explore other routes uploaded by millions of Garmin Connect users and share your experiences on Twitter and Facebook. Getting started is easy, so get out there, explore, and share.
Oregon 450: Touch the great outdoors.
What's in the Box
Oregon 450, carabiner clip, USB cable, and quick start manual
Lowest New Price: USD 340.11
- 3-axis tilt-compensated electronic compass and barometric altimeter
- Improved 3" sunlight-readable, color, touchscreen display, enhanced clarity
- High-sensitivity GPS receiver with HotFix for improved performance and reception
- High-speed USB for faster map transfers with your computer
- Wirelessly share routes, tracks, waypoints and geocaches between units
Model: 010-00697-40

Love, Love, Love it
This is the 3rd GPS we bought for geocaching and by far the most userfriendly, don't even need to look at the directions and I'm pretty much computer challenged. It makes geocaching so fun, gets us within 6 feet every time without doing the fish hook dance that the magellan has us doing, you know, go forward 5 feet, now turn 180 degrees and go 6 feet and turn 180 degrees and go 9 feet now do this about 10 times, My son was holding the GPS and I was following him looking like Mrs. Gomer Pyle. The Oregon just omits the little dance so you blend in and no one was wanting to call the guys with the white jacket to pick me up. The only complaint I would have would be it is not very bright in the sun light but I can work with that. You get all the hints and logs when you download from [...], it saves the title (which the Vista did not) can mark it as found or not found, easy on batteries, can't get much easier then this. When my son goes off to college he gets to keep the Magellan, momma gets this one, lol. If you're on the fence this is the one I would buy again, no hesitation.

Great GPS, poor documentation
Garmin's engineers have created a great handheld GPS with good features. Unfortunately, they only did half of the job. The documentation is incredibly poor lacking any information on important details. For instance, the device has a set-up feature to tell it whether you are using Alkaline, Lithium. or NiMH rechargeables. Why? Does it recharge the NiMH batteries when externally powered? Are there different functionality/preferences for the different battery types? Nothing in the documentation to indicate why it cares.
Another example is the MicroSDHD card device. There is no indication of what size cards are supported. I installed a 16GB and it allowed me to install maps and such onto the card; however, when I attempted to install two DVD's worth of 24K quads to the card the basemap application crashed and required me to reformat the SDHD externally before the GPS would recognized it again. Ok, so maybe the map files are limited to 4GB? Well I installed just shy of 4GB of topo onto the 16GB card and everything worked fine. However, when I attempted to install some geocache files and waypoints, it tells me that the drive is full (even though there is 12GB left). So I guess the GPS only supports cards up to 4GB.
As I said a great device, and the above limitations are something I can live with, but it would be nice if they put in a modicum of effort in writing a decent manual.

Load better maps for geocaching
We bought the Oregon 450 as an upgrade from our Garmin GPSMAP 60CS. Here is a quick summary of the relative benefits of the Oregon 450 for geocaching:
Pros:
- Much better position accuracy
- Does not lose signal as quickly under tree cover
- Holds thousands of caches (60CS just had 500)
- Includes[...] information, including logs and hints (go paperless!)
Cons:
- Basemap appears to just have major roads, with no lakes or rivers. This is just silly for a hiking/caching handheld. We would have been perfectly happy with something like the basemap on the 60CS. If you are deciding between the 450 and 450t and don't want to load custom maps, go with the 450t. If you don't mind about an hour of work, you can download free topographical maps and save 0.
- Touchscreen could be better than buttons, but the logic in getting from page to page is often not intuitive. It will take some getting used to, and you will find yourself making multiple taps to, say, go from the compass to the tracking to the satellite strength. (On the 60CS, the "PAGE" button would scroll between the important screens.) I think the Oregon series could be improved if Garmin added just one button for key functions.
Summary: A huge upgrade for us on the key things we need for geocaching. The map and interface issues are a little frustrating, but we are happy with our purchase.

Geocaching Fun
We love our new Garmin Oregon 450 for geocaching. It's compact, easy to use, and the battery will definitely last for a full day of caching.

Awesome
My husband LOVES this GPS. He's in the military and does a lot of overseas traveling for work. He likes that he's able to share his maps/info with other people with this GPS. I've played with it a couple of times and it's soooooooo user friendly I couldn't believe it. It's very accurate.








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