Garmin spits out new handheld, touchscreen GPS devices

If you're the outdoorsy, adventurous type, this will no doubt be of interest to you. Garmin's just outed two new touchscreen, handheld GPS devices -- the Oregon 450t and 450. These mid-range devices both boast 3-inch displays, weigh in at in 6.8 ounces, and supposedly get around 16 hours of battery life on their two AA batteries. They also have 850MB of internal storage, microSD card slots, and can store up to 2,000 waypoints, 200 routes, 5,000 caches and a track log of 10,000 points and 200 saved tracks -- good news for avid hikers, no doubt. The main difference between the two units here is that the 450t comes preloaded with topographic maps of the entire United States, with coverage of major trails, urban and rural roads, interstates, highways, coastlines, rivers and lakes, national, state and local parks, forests and wilderness areas. Both units are available to order now on Garmin's site, and the Oregon 450 retails for $399.99, while the 450t will cost you $499.99.

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OLATHE, Kan./December 29, 2009-

Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), the global leader in satellite navigation, today announced the Oregon 450t and Oregon 450 touchscreen GPS devices, the newest of Garmin's next-generation outdoor handhelds now compatible with the online community at Garmin Connect as well as Garmin's free Custom Maps utility for transferring paper or digital maps onto your compatible handheld. "More than ever, Garmin offers intuitive touchscreen options for anyone exploring and enjoying the world around them," said Dan Bartel, Garmin's vice president of worldwide sales. "Oregon 450t and Oregon 450 provide a bridge between the slimmed-down Dakota™ family and the top-of-line Oregon 550t, all of which work seamlessly with Garmin Custom Maps in planning your adventure and Garmin Connect for reliving the experience and sharing the memories."

Responsive to the touch of a finger, yet resistant to the rigors of nature, Oregon 450t and Oregon 450 simplify navigation through a glove-friendly touchscreen interface. This bright 3" color display is easier than ever to read and use in all conditions. Other key upgrades include user-selectable dashboards, enhanced track navigation, high-speed USB for faster map transfers with your computer, photo navigation and the 3-axis tilt-compensated electronic compass, which shows your heading even when you're standing still, without the need to hold it level. The new dashboards give users the ability to customize the appearance of various pages on your Oregon, including the geocaching, compass, stopwatch and elevation functions. For hikers, cyclists and trail runners, the enhanced track navigation will prove especially useful. When navigating to a destination on an active track, users will see the changes in elevation ahead of them as well as where they've been. Also, waypoints and other key locations along the active route – such as start, end and high and low elevation points – now appear on the map and active route pages. The new Oregon units also include a barometric altimeter, paperless geocaching and wireless exchange of tracks, waypoints, routes and geocaches with compatible Oregon, Dakota, Colorado® and Foretrex® devices.

Both units boast a worldwide shaded relief basemap, and Oregon 450t adds preloaded 100K topographic maps for the entire United States and state-of-the-art 3D elevation perspective. Coverage on the 450t includes major trails, urban and rural roads, interstates, highways, coastlines, rivers and lakes as well as national, state and local parks, forests and wilderness areas. In addition, you can search for points of interest by name or proximity to your location and view descriptive details for terrain contours, topo elevations, summits and geographical points. Customizing maps for your Garmin outdoor handheld – and downloading your activity afterward - were never easier. Through a few simple steps, Garmin's Custom Maps can bring the details, labels and landmarks of your existing paper or electronic map to a compatible Garmin Oregon, Dakota or Colorado. Compatible with both PC and Mac, this free utility complements the myriad of mapping products already offered for Garmin devices, including City Navigator®, NT for turn-by-turn directions on city streets, Blue Chart® g2, for marine charting, and TOPO U.S. 24K and 100K map software for incredible terrain detail (each sold separately).

The power of Custom Maps is exemplified through paper and digital maps labeled for specific events and purposes, such as a college graduation invitation that lists campus buildings; a roadmap of a parade, marathon, 5K or bike race; a park pamphlet showing trailheads; land-management maps of wildlife and game areas; or a historic illustration of an area as it once stood.

To walk through the steps, to find and share maps and to join discussions about Garmin Custom Maps, visit www.garmin.com/CustomMaps. Experiences will live on long after the activity has ended, thanks to Garmin Connect's newly announced compatibility with Garmin outdoor handhelds, adding an expansive new product line to the free-to-join online community of more than 17 million activities – with more than 38,000 new activities per day – for sharing, storing, analyzing and enjoying. Outdoor and fitness enthusiasts alike can share activities on Facebook and Twitter, export to Google Earth or relive the activity in table view, calendar view or on a variety of maps including our new embedded Google Earth view.

This December 2009 update also allows you to: easily upload to and from next-generation Garmin devices; manually upload .gpx files; send any track found at Garmin Connect in Explore to your Garmin Outdoor device for navigation; and export activity files in .gpx and .tcx format to use on third-party applications. Learn more and join Garmin Connect at http://connect.garmin.com. Weighing only 6.8 ounces, the Oregon 450t and Oregon 450 last up to 16 hours on two AA batteries. Each device has a high-sensitivity GPS receiver with HotFixTM, which automatically calculates and stores critical satellite information and can use that information to quickly calculate a position. The new Oregon models have 850 MB of internal memory and a microSD™ card slot for photos and optional map data, and you can store up to 2,000 waypoints, 200 routes, 5,000 caches and a tracklog of up to 10,000 points and 200 saved tracks. Geocachers can help the environment and be more efficient by going paperless with Oregon by quickly downloading cache information directly to the device. Oregon stores and displays key information such as location, terrain, difficulty, hints and description, so that you don't have to tote printouts with you.

Learn more about geocaching, getting started and going paperless at www.garmin.com/geocaching. Oregon 450t and Oregon 450 are the latest breakthroughs from Garmin, which has spent 20 years developing technologies and innovations to enhance users' lives, making Garmin a household name in the automotive, aviation, marine, wireless, outdoor and fitness industries.

For more about features, pricing and availability, as well as information about Garmin's other products and services, go to www.garmin.com, www.garmin.blogs.com and http://twitter.com/jakesjournal. To watch step-by-step, feature-specific tutorial videos for Oregon, Dakota and other Garmin products, visit the online learning center at www.garmin.com/learningcenter.

About Garmin International Inc. Garmin International Inc. is a subsidiary of Garmin Ltd. (Nasdaq: GRMN), the global leader in satellite navigation. Since 1989, this group of companies has designed, manufactured, marketed and sold navigation, communication and information devices and applications – most of which are enabled by GPS technology. Garmin's products serve automotive, mobile, wireless, outdoor recreation, marine, aviation, and OEM applications. Garmin Ltd. is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and its principal subsidiaries are located in the United States, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit Garmin's virtual pressroom at www.garmin.com/pressroom or contact the Media Relations department at 913-397-8200. Garmin, Bluechart, City Navigator, Colorado, Foretrex and Oregon are registered trademarks and Dakota and Garmin Connect are trademarks of Garmin Ltd. or its subsidiaries.

[jdude4 Posted Dec 29th 2009 7:05PM]

That interface is too, like, cartoonish almost.

[naz Posted Dec 29th 2009 7:37PM]

@jdude4

They took the map out of Pokemon Red

[rkevwill Posted Dec 29th 2009 10:45PM]

@jdude4

Obviously, you know nothing about gps devices. The map shown is a topo map, that shows elevations, trails, etc. NOT your route to the nearest bowling alley.

[Sea Urchin Posted Dec 30th 2009 1:27AM]

@jdude4 That is exactly what serial killers are into.

[Tom20 Posted Dec 29th 2009 7:19PM]

Whats the word for opposite-of-sleek? Sure its not made by Nickelodeon?

[bigisland Posted Dec 29th 2009 7:57PM]

@Tom20
lol. if you're concerned with how "sleek" your GPS is, i think you just outed yourself as "not the target audience for outdoor gear"...

[M C Posted Dec 29th 2009 7:24PM]

This is the EXACT same device as the Oregon 300 so far as I can tell, with the exception that the compass in the Oregon 450 offers tilt compensation where the compass in the 300 does not.

The only other update may be one to the UI, but I would expect that to be available as a firmware update for the 300 anyway.

However, REI (at least the store near me) just put the 300 out at $100 off, so at least this may help lower prices.

[Comment Posted Dec 29th 2009 7:46PM]

Looks like... a pad...

[mikeweezer Posted Dec 29th 2009 7:54PM]

Hasn't Garmin figured out their products are obsolete? Time to find a new business plan or sell.

[Whiternoise Posted Dec 29th 2009 8:42PM]

@mikeweezer Are they?

Garmin are also one of few companies that make decent handheld GPSs. The common argument is "oh, but my phone does it" - yeah, it does, but it rapes your batteries doing it. You simply don't get 16 hours battery life from a G1 or an iPhone in GPS mode. This isn't just a gimmick like finding the nearest hotel or fast food store either, the people who buy handhelds are outdoor types (like myself) who want to go hiking without needing to take maps with them and want reliable navigation.

This also has base maps and elevation data built in (or added with cards). If you're in the middle of a trail, at sea or at 25,000ft you might not get a signal on your phone which means no maps.

Garmin sell devices for very specific markets. They are the major caterers for Aviation GPS devices and that's still a massive seller for them - there are few rivals to the G1000 for consumer glass cockpits. They sell marine GPS's too and similarly make a fair amount from that.

The only market where they are likely to struggle is turn-by-turn, a market that is now rather saturated with devices and there are more established companies like TomTom.

I agree with the interface though, it looks a bit cartoony. You can buy Ordinance Survey GPSs here in the UK, but they're pretty expensive.

[travistb Posted Dec 29th 2009 10:29PM]

@Whiternoise

Dude, they are getting their arses kicked in aviation by all the upstart handheld providers there, and it is only a matter of time before competitors start kicking them off their g1000 positions with the next best thing

Marine is a tiny not so profitable market for them

Auto OEM has crap margins

And they are getting creamed on mobile devices and their attempt to get into phones makes us all LOrespectiveA'sO !

Do you work for them ? sheesh

[rkevwill Posted Dec 29th 2009 10:48PM]

@Whiternoise

Agreed, and high fives to the comment. One more thing, where you might be using this type of GPS, you very well may have no cell coverage, therefore, no maps on most if all of the phones. Not to mention, topo. Pure gps devices need NO cell coverage, as you obviously know.

[Tams Posted Dec 30th 2009 9:36AM]

@Whiternoise Very well said. The GPSs Garmin and other similar manufacturers (I don't know any, but I'm sure there are some) produce devices that are specifically designed for their purpose. The non sleek shape for example, is mainly due to having to make the device durable, unlike pretty much every mobile phone. The markets Garmin work are probably very profitable for their size. Aerial navigation isn't cheap at all.

[UKJeeper Posted Dec 30th 2009 11:11AM]

@Whiternoise

I'm using Viewranger (www.viewranger.com) on my Samsung i8910 phone. I don't agree that it 'rapes the battery', I've had a good 8 hours plus constant use of the GPS and Topo software while out hiking. Similar results on my Nokia E90 previously.

I also use Memory-Map on my Winmo devices (Qtek 9100 and a Touch Pro 2) with acceptable battery life.

OK, not the claimed 16 hours of a standalone device, but then i don't have the ability to go 16 hours of walking either! I walk approximately 50 miles per week, spread over every other day plus a longer one at weekends.

I do have a spare battery (the i8910 has a 1500MaH battery), plus 2 small but powerful portable chargers (2800MaH and 3400MaH), assuming i will be miles from anywhere. More than enough power for at least a couple of days without mains power. At a cost much less than a standalone, single purpose GPS unit.

As you are also from the UK, you'll know that most rambling/hiking trips often result in either a pub lunch or supper. Often with friendly landlords and 3 pin sockets. Similarly, you can't walk in any direction in the UK without eventually bumping into a rural church, equipped with a 3 pin socket and a charity collection box (for contributing to their electric bill).

So my phone doesn't 'rape it's battery', or have a lack of power options. On to the software.

Viewranger's maps are kept on the device. Both 1:25,000 and 1:50,000 scales are available. If you have a lack of storage, you can just store the maps that you think you will need. If it turns out you need any others (and didn't bring them with you on an external media), you can download them from the web. (you'll have 3g web access. a) because you're in the UK, b) because you didn't wander into somewhere wild that didn't have 3g coverage without having a map first, right?)

Once the maps are stored, you don't NEED any sort of phone coverage, the GPS chip will work fine by itself (10-15 second lock time from cold on mine). However, IF you are somewhere with a signal, Viewranger can upload your position every X minutes to a website. So if you don't come back, people can find you from your last position (try it, go to http://www.viewranger.com/portal/vrbuddybeacon.php. user name 'ukjeeper', password '5859'. The push pin is my last reported position).

You can import/export GPX, LOC, etc files, add waypoint's, track your routes, import routes, take geotagged pictures. In fact, there's nothing you can't do (as far as i know) with a good topo map software like Viewranger (on Symbian) or Memory-Map (on Windows Mobile) that you can do with a standalone, single purpose GPS device. In fact there's a lot more you CAN do.

As to resilience, i haven't (yet) killed a phone out there. The Samsung is essentially a slab of toughened glass and rainwater runs off the side (while it's in my hand) then it goes back in my waterproof pocket. The E90 got damp on several occasions, but didn't die. The Touch Pro 2 is another slab with few places for rainwater to sneak in. As with any other electronic device if i want more protection there are plenty of bags, cases, options out there.

I'm not discounting standalone GPS unit's. I just think that modern smartphones, with good software (like Viewranger or Memory-Map) do everything a single purpose device can do, plus more besides (power issues notwithstanding as that is easily rectified).

BTW, your comment about going out without maps is troubling. No-one should go out without a real, physical map to back up an electronic aid. The more remote the trip, the more this is important.

[Plexus Posted Dec 29th 2009 8:24PM]

Since I discovered hat the Co-Pilot GPS installed on my HTC HD2 is faster and more precise than my TomTom I stopped to carry it with me, short afterwords I discovered that the OVI maps installed on the Nokia N97 I got from my employer is even better than that.
HTC's Hero offers 4 or 5 totally free GPS services the best of which in my opinion are Nav4all and AugSatNav, but they are a bit slower than OVI on the N97 (after all firmwares , updates, 2.0 ROM and factory hardware fixes)
For the outdoor type all these devices offer a lot more functions or installable apps than a dedicated device and if you use an android device the free apps for outdoorsy freaks are in the 100s.
For those who need GPS just for driving, now nearly all cars come with infotainement systems that are quickly taking the place once occupied by the car radio / stereo.
If you own Garmin or TomTom stock it's high time to unload it.

[RafterManFMJ Posted Dec 29th 2009 8:49PM]

@Plexus

Was typing something similar when I read your post - great summation. Who needs this? Really? For 399? Really?

From late Oct. till now, Garmin went from 40 to 30 dollars; overpricing like this will be the death-knell for Garmin. You cannot make huge revenue by trying to squirm into ever-narrowing niches...

they should make a singular product that does its job flawlessly with great battery life, and charge a small premium with it, knowing that if they are not competing with free now, they soon will be.

[rkevwill Posted Dec 29th 2009 10:52PM]

@Plexus

And all of the devices you mentioned, need cell coverage to continually download the maps. Try navigating in North Dakota, when you are on back roads, without cell coverage. Only phones that have complete mapsets downloaded to the card or internal memory, have the pure GPS advantage that standalone GPS devices have. Otherwise, you only have maps from where your last cell reception was.

[dennisheadley Posted Dec 29th 2009 11:01PM]

@Plexus

People that constantly talk about the demise of dedicated GPS units in favor of cellular phones are missing the point. I know a whole lot of people personally that do not have cellular phones and will never get one as there is no need for the expense when they only talk on the phone two or three times a month.

Many people get up every day, go to work and come home to their family without ever having to call them and talk to them just to let them know they are ten minutes away and whats for dinner. I use my phone quite a bit for work, but my personal phone gets mainly used for talking to the wife and teenage son about things that could wait till later when we could talk face to face. Like reminding him to do his chores, when he doesn't go to bed until six hours after I get home. So why call at all? Because people that have cellular phones always look for reasons to make use of something that has such a high monthly bill.

People talked about the demise of Garmin and Tom Tom when the Google application was announced. Yet for this Christmas the third highest selling gadget was a GPS unit. I would be willing to bet that out of say 30 to 40 different units that Garmin offers, they probably have at least 3 models that have sold more units in 2009 than all the android phones combined. And that is just Garmin alone. You factor in all the different companies that make GPS units these days and it will be a very, very long time before cellular phones replace dedicated units.

Same with new car infotainment systems replacing them. Whats the percentage of the driving public in the US that buys a new car each year? I would guess 5% or less myself but maybe the numbers would surprise me.

[ciacciojon Posted Dec 29th 2009 8:35PM]

Lol @ Engadget. This device has been around for a hot minute now. Check out some cycling forums. Everyone got one for christmas because it syncs up with the heart monitor and and cadence sensor, no problems.

[lisat2 Posted Dec 29th 2009 9:34PM]

Hmm- Outdoorsey, Adventure types indeed. We just bought a Garmin 75c for mostly marine and secondary terrain use. I wonder if users of this will be forced to go thru the "orthorectification hell" of multiple map downloadings as we were --with little guidance and a totally byzantine interface all the way...as though people who venture out on the sea and the land using GPS were some niche species....

[dennisheadley Posted Dec 29th 2009 11:03PM]

Meant to say the third highest selling gadget on Amazon.

[Joseph Mama Posted Dec 29th 2009 11:25PM]

Pretty sure Garmin is not going anywhere fast. I can think of one hiking product, the GPSMap 60CSX, which is more or less a benchmark of what a unit should be capable of doing.

Yes, the 60CSx is now FIVE years old but it is still selling for $285-$300 brand new and people are gobbling them up.

Garmin is naturally trying to branch out into touchscreen devices with the Oregon series. However, their core navigation products are second to none.

And for the record, I use my TomTom for car navigation, my 60CSx for hiking and Geocaching, and my Blackberry (with a dedicated GPS chip, no less) for communicating.

[jsjohnson Posted Dec 30th 2009 9:03AM]

I have both a Garmin GPS-V and Co-Pilot on my Touch Pro. I can say without hesitation that there are certain areas where phone GPS software just doesn't match handhelds. I can't do track logs like I can with my Garmin, even if I could, I doubt I'd be able to dictate the "popcorn" increments like I can with my GPS-V. When I make a waypoint on my Garmin, I can select from dozens of icons to give a general idea of what the waypoint is without looking it up. I can then upload all my track logs, individually or as a group, to my PC for use with Google Earth, DeLorme, etc. where I can tag them, review them, and recall them back into the GPS at any time. As was said before, I can get many hours of operation on my GPS-V without having to worry about batteries, and even if they do die, I need only throw in a few AA's to get going again. I also have a lot more flexibility in determining which "widgets" to show onscreen.

Why Garmin can't take the best of what they do on dedicated handhelds and port that to phones is the real mystery here. When you can make the same margins, and not have to produce, ship, and store the hardware, why would Garmin (and Tom Tom) pretty much give up on the phone market?

[UKJeeper Posted Dec 30th 2009 11:23AM]

@jsjohnson

You might want to read my reply above (the really long one!). Then look at Memory-Map for Winmo. The only things you might still finding lacking on a phone/topo solution would be power (addressed above) and individual waypoint icons (though i haven't looked at the newer versions of Memory-Map recently).