Customer Reviews:
 Love the Colorado 400t September 22, 2008
I really like this thing a lot. It had some issues at first, battery life being the main one, but I started using the quick charging Energizers and have had no problems since. Another problem is with it shutting down intermittently when the batteries become weak (this is my notice to change the batteries), it does tell you when the batteries are weak and it only shuts down occasionally. I have recently downloaded a firmware update for it which has fixed a lot of these things.
I especially like the Geocache features it comes with. I can log my visit to a cache and it now lets me put comments in for the individual caches. That is a great feature!
I highly recommend this unit for all uses. I have the City Navigator NT 2008 on it as well and this thing will take me anywhere I want to go. I love taking it hiking, fishing, ATVing, on the road, etc. It is very versatile.
 The best all around gps! September 11, 2008
Very easy to figure out to use. I think this gps is the best all around gps for all conditions, on the road and off the road. If you just want a driving gps, get a Tomtom, for trails and the road this is the ticket! Very good for Iraq! Get the SD card fot Iraqi streets when you get to Iraq. They are available there, not here.
Colorado 400t August 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was concerned with the accuracy issue of this GPSr. I emailed Garmin customer service with my concerns and they assured me that it would not be a problem. I basically wanted some sort of correspondence for proof just in case their was an issue. Then the price became an issue. I tried to order the unit through an online camera shop for a price around 400.00 and found out that what they were selling me was a Japanese (no english installed) no warranty, no topo maps installed unit. How can it be a 400T without Topo maps? Anyway, I went to amazon for a higher price but a more comfortable transaction.
This product is pricey, but I believe that it is well priced for what you get. It hasn't disappointed me yet as far as the accuracy goes. Base maps are preloaded but streetmaps are not. These are separate and will run around 100.00. I went with the SD card street maps and glad I did. This leaves the memory free for geocaches. I was able to load 400 caches along a route and made an insignificant dent in the 256MB memory. Map cards are a no hassle PNP operation. I have been told by Garmin Cust. service, that if you want to have the same maps on your PC Mapsource software (which comes with the unit) as your gps, then you should buy the DVD mapset. With this configuration you can upload the wanted maps onto the unit itself or a seperate memory card. The WAAS works wonders in dense foliage. The external antenna is a must if you are using in the car. Screen protection is a must if you aren't storing it in a case. Screen brightness is not as bad as I was expecting. I usually don't have to turn on the backlight unless It is dark of course or if I am in the shade. Only problem with screen brightness is that you have to reset it after every reboot, as it won't store the setting in memory. Shaded relief maps are nice to have and the topo features are great to have as well. If it wasn't for battery consumption I would have gave it a higher rating.
This unit will go through batteries very fast. For lightweight backpacking you might want to buy lithium batteries, a whole lot of them. Do consider buying rechargeable batteries and the car charger with alkaline spares as I have already found myself hunting down batteries instead of caches. Easy .GPX file transfer with www.geocaching.com and a windows machine but not a linux machine that I know of.
Overall, this is a must for a geocacher
After nearly ten years of service my eTrex can finally take a rest.
One last thing. Phone calls to Garmin customer service are not fun. Expect a 30min wait time before you get to talk to anyone. I am rating their product not their customer service.
 Garmin Colorado 400t - Is Garmin for Dummies... August 17, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's ergonomical, simple to use (thus the dummies part), inaccurate due to a more inferior chipset designed by Garmin (rather than the SirfIII), does not play well with Google Earth, although it is possible with some additional software and alot of technical know-how to export track data to Google Earth! The screen is unacceptable...Poorly lit, you cannot even see it in the dark well! I'm not sure how you are supposed to use it hiking on a highly sunlit trail! This is a major, major flaw! For that flaw alone, I would shave off 2 points! I hate the simple childproof interface...It's not sophisticated enough for serious GPS users, especially on topo! You cannot find roads, addresses or heck, even navigate manually to a waypoint! It's ridiculous...I mean if I want to see the location of a waypoint on the topo map, I just cannot do that, cause it takes you back to your original location by default! I also want to be able to get distances between points! No you cannot do that either...What the heck can you do with it? I mean yeah, this simple minded individuals out there that want to follow the cursor around a JPEG bitmap image of a topo map think this is great, but for the rest of us, we want a little more bang for the buck...Weird enough, the competitor Magelan, uses National Geographic topo maps which offer way more resolution than the basemaps in Colorado or even the latest Garmin touchscreen model Oregon! I can go on and on about this unit! It's slow to acquire signal, slow to start up and try loading geocaches in it and at times they become scattered POI's that are unmanageable. They will show up on the map, yes, but scattered on the map without a management list. I find their software to be at best retarded and without extensive capabilities. I find Google Earth better at keeping your POI's and tracks, etc. than this device! To be honest for $600 + you would expect much much more! You get a simple device that has predefined functionality and no custom features! I find that unacceptable this day and age! I returned mine to the store and got a refund - restocking fee! Perhaps many of those people that find this great in the beginning will have later on decided to probably return theirs! It's just not worth it given the available featureset until they come up with next gen beyond this simplistic, yet dummyproof design! BAD GARMIN!!!
Nice unit August 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have not used this much, but so far it is quite good. I got the extra street map and after a little config. It works great for driving directions. There is a nice mount for my motorcycle and car for this unit and I look forward to many off road jeep trips, national park trips and camping trips. It also suggests local attractions with the add on software which is really nice if you don't know the area.
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