What to buy

Do I buy the new Quest or a Legend C, I do a lot of hill walking. Or do I get a SP111 ( can't afford a 2610 ), or do I get the Motorrad Navigator that Jim is trying to sell?

Any cfonstructive comments from people that hace use dthese would be greatly appreciated.

You will find the SP III to be quite heavy if you plan to carry it around while hill walking, and the SP 26xx family does not have any form of battery power.

If your vision is good, and you don't mind the small screen, the Quest is probably the best all-round solution for the requirements you specify (hill walking plus implied motorcycle riding).

I have not seen a Quest or heard any reports from anyone who has used one on a motorcycle, so you will have to do your own due diligence to make sure the product is suitable for motorcycle use. Not all Garmin GPSRs are - the iQue being a good example.

Note that there is a difference between the basemap in the Quest and the basemap in the Legend C (see this thread: Basemap Differences). This may or may not be of concern to you, depending on what cartography you plan to load into the GPSR. The cartography you load in from a CD will take precedence over the basemap. It appears that the Legend C does not come with any cartography. If, however, you already own appropriate cartography on a CD, then the basemap issue is moot.

PanEuropean

madmikey said:

Do I buy the new Quest or a Legend C, I do a lot of hill walking. Or do I get a SP111 ( can't afford a 2610 ), or do I get the Motorrad Navigator that Jim is trying to sell?

Any cfonstructive comments from people that hace use dthese would be greatly appreciated.

Click to expand...

Whatever you buy, don't buy neither SP3+ nor 2610. They are too expensive and full of limitations. Look instead at the more modern 276C.

The Quest is nice indeed but not suitable for paneuropean travel due to the very limited internal map memory.

HMR:

Not sure I'd agree with you about the 276 being 'more modern' than the SP 26xx - they are both pretty much the same generation. They are designed for different purposes - the SP 26xx is intended for pure automotive use (hence the lack of batteries), the 276 is primarily a marine GPSR but it has automotive capabilities.

The 276 is limited to 256 megs of memory, because it uses a small proprietary Garmin chip, the European version of the Quest ships with 243 megs of built in memory - that's pretty much the same amount, in my books.

The key issue that has to be considered in MadMikey's case is that he wants a GPSR that is suitable for hill walking. This pretty much rules out most of the 'heavy' ones - hence, my suggestion that he investigate the Quest. The 276 is a bit lighter than the SP III, but it's still too heavy to carry around in your pocket for any extended period of time.

PanEuropean

The Quest has only WGS84 and lat/long (ddd mm.mmm) whereas the GPSmap 276C supports multiple datums and grids which is very useful if you are using Topo maps.

276C is really a bit heavy for regular handheld use tho.