Garmin Oregon 550 Waterproof Hiking GPS

When you are out hiking you obviously need to have some idea where you are going. But by the very nature of where you are walking, you cannot expect to see many signposts and not many people to ask if you get lost. There are maps of course, but these are only any good if you actually know where you are in the first place. The Garmin Oregon 550 GPS helps you overcome this with one small handy device.

The Oregon 550 is very easy to use with a color touchscreen display which is designed to be readable is strong sunlight, so no having shade the device to see what you are doing. It is designed to withstand the elements and the kind of rough treatment you might expose it to when hiking - it is fully waterproof, bump proof and will withstand dust and dirt.

The Oregon 550 also has a built in electronic compass. Don't worry about having to hold it level as it is tilt compensated. It has a altimeter which tracks changes in air pressure so it can tell you your precise altitude. Also by these air pressure changes can help you keep an eye on changes in weather conditions.

It has a high-sensitivity, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver and HotFix satellite prediction, meaning that it can locate your position quickly and precisely and maintains its GPS location even in heavy cover and deep canyons.

The Oregon 550 is also a 3.2 megapixel autofocus digital camera with 4x digital zoom. Not only that but each photo is automatically geotagged with the location of where it was taken meaning that you can find your way back to exactly the same spot in the future. It has 850MB of internal memory so you have plenty of memory space for your photos. You can store your photos online via USB and upload them to Picasa. You can increase the amount of storage by using a microSD card.

The Oregaon 550 omes preloaded with a worldwide built-in basemap with shaded relief. To add more detail all you need to do is insert a MapSource micro SD card preloaded with detailed maps. There are a variety of different maps you can add; street maps, topographic maps to take advantage of Oregon's 3-D maps and elevation detail or BlueChart g2 maps for areas of water.

Also, with Oregon 550 you can share your waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches wirelessly other Oregon and Colorado users. Now you can send your favorite route to a friend to enjoy or the location of a cache to find. Sharing data is easy. Just touch "send" to transfer your information to similar devices.

"1st; I Love and highly recommend the Oregon 550... It does everything well that I wanted/hoped it would do... I bought it specifically for a 'lifetime' trip to Europe and it didn't disappoint. That is; a multi purpose mapping unit that would work on the trail and the road, for hiking, car touring, and cycling. I wanted to create/save tracks our trips and it does that with ease. I wanted to id my pictures by location on a map; again... Perfect.

Next; I have/do own(ed) lots of Garmins over the last 15 years... Plane, car, trail, road and mounting/cycling, etc... With the Oregon, there are some expected compromises to the dedicated units. I routinely use an Edge on the bike which is a bit easier and smaller, but not that much. I use a Nuvi in the car and LOVe the audible cues(which the Oregon doesn't have),larger screen, and slightly easier "Where to"/Favorites functionality, but it's too big to carry/ride around with and the battery only lasts a few hours... the Edge has some nice features for cycling (grade%, etc.) that the Oregon does not have.

...but none of the dedicated units can do it all as well as the Oregon 550; including geotagging nice pics, POI (points of interest) and a compass (great lifesaver for mid and cloudy days)... The City Navigator maps are perfect and highly recommended... even the smallest trails jump out... a great de-stress'r...

The camera works much better than expected from the reviews I had read... the color balance is excellent for outdoor use with amazing pics taken of the scenery and a joy to push a single button and have the detail map pop up automatically where the pic was taken (GReat for us Alzheimer patients that are always asking "WHere was that?")... For some reason, close up pics of people/skin tones didn't work as well at times and low light shots weren't great either... All in all though, I had a dedicated camera for the fringe/aperature shots; but on this last trip to Euro, I wish I had used the camera much more than i did...

The battery life with camera use, lasts 8 hours max, so I packed extra AA's which I used daily and recharged the batteries at night. Do not leave home without alkaline backups...

To install/load detail maps requires some extra effort with dedicated cpu time necessary. A call or two to support should be planned on and expected. My guess is that this inconvenience will go away as the unit is on the market longer and the download programs become more robust. I suggest using the unit for a couple of weeks before needing it on a trip. There are so many setup options, it takes some time to sort them all out... Navigating is best learned when the pressure is off... All in all a 5***** rating... "

"Great product, great set of features, compact, rugged, easy to use. The touchscreen is very comfortable to use, accurate. The software is great, lots of functions, got everything I wanted. The camera takes good pictures, I thought I wouldn't like it, but was wrong. Battery life is a little short, but acceptable, can run for 6-8 hours. Really a great product, happiest purchase of the year ."

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