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The touchscreen Garmin Oregon 550t: taking handheld GPS to new heights
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In the past we have written about the joys and sheer utility of GPS for your motor vehicle. We have also written about some of the potential pitfalls such devices carry with them. Today we are going to look at a state of the art handheld GPS: the Garmin Oregon 550t. Handheld GPS has many applications for the outdoors person and they are widely used by hikers, campers, hunters and geocachers (geocaching is a global treasure hunting game utilizing GPS receivers, it’s a tremendous amount of fun, learn more about it at www.geocaching.com). With the addition of street maps a handheld GPS can also be used for turn-by-turn directions and routing, though they aren’t as fully functioned as a GPS designed for use in your car.
The 550t is a powerhouse of features. It has a built in base map of major roads as well as detailed topographic maps. With the addition of optional street maps it can provide point of interest lookup as well as turn by turn directions. It has a very sophisticated 3 axis digital compass. There are two great advantages to this compass: you don’t have to hold the device level to get an accurate reading (as was necessary with previous models. Also you don’t need to be moving to get an accurate heading, with GPS you need to be moving at least 2mph to get an accurate heading. There is also a barometric altimeter for accurate elevation readings and basic weather prediction.
In addition to all the very powerful navigation features, this GPS receiver also sports a 3.2 megapixel auto focus digital camera with a 4x digital zoom. What we really enjoyed about the camera was the ability to geotag our images. This means each image records (in the invisible header information) the exact location (latitude and longitude) where it was taken. This capability opens up interesting possibilities such as the ability to navigate to the exact location where an image was taken. Additionally, utilizing Picasa, the photos can be “placed” on a map. There is a microSD card slot to supplement the built in 850MB of internal memory. These features make it simple to store lots of pictures. The image quality of the camera was quite good outdoors with ample light. Since there is no built-in flash, images taken in low light aren’t quite as good, they exhibit a bit of noise. We really don’t fault Garmin for omitting a flash as this is a device that was designed to be used in the great outdoors and we doubt anyone would use it as their primary camera.
The Garmin Oregon 550t is a touch screen GPS. The touch screen interface makes using the unit fast and easy due to its intuitive nature. It has a 3 inch (diagonal) color display. While we did have to turn the backlight up to the maximum, the display is readable in sunlight, and is a nice improvement in brightness over previous Oregon units.
The Garmin Oregon 550t is a geocachers delight. It is designed for paperless geocaching and it can download (from geocaching.com) and store the information for up to 5000 geocaches. Once you’ve geocached this way you will be spoiled and wonder how you ever lived without this paperless capability.
We tested the Oregon 550t outdoors while hiking and geocaching since these are among the primary uses for a unit of this type. We found that the unit got a very quick fix on our location and was quite accurate (it utilizes a high-sensitivity, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver and HotFix™ satellite prediction). We tested the 550t alongside our trusty and well worn Garmin 60Csx and found they frequently agreed or were within a few feet of each other. For hiking the topographic maps are great, they show the land contours with shaded relief along with information like elevation, trails, rivers etc. As mentioned earlier, geocaching was a great deal of fun when you combined the paperless caching, touch screen interface and accuracy of the unit.
The 550t is very ruggedly built and designed to take the bumps and knocks it is sure to receive in the great outdoors. It is also waterproof and can survive immersion for up to a half an hour. Needless to say rain, dirt and dust are no match for the Oregon 550t. Garmin knows how to produce reliable, rugged handheld GPS receivers and we believe this unit follows in that tradition.
We really liked the Garmin Oregon 550t. It did everything we expected of it and the touchscreen made it a pleasure to use. One of the only negatives we could come up with is the price. The 550t is a pricy unit at an MSRP of $599.99. If you want to add the additional maps that allow turn by turn street navigation that will add an additional $100 or so. Nonetheless, this is the state of the art in handheld GPS technology and if you can afford the purchase price we don’t hesitate to recommend it.
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