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Garmin Rino 530HCx Reviews |
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Ride Review (5/5) | Sep 4, 2007 | M. Russell | Larkspur CO US |
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Pros: It’s smaller than it appears in the pictures EXCELLENT display in all light levels Excellent sound quality on the headset. Excellent satellite reception! Excellent Battery Life! Cons: Cheap, clip-on adapter required to charge batteries with either the 120 VAC wall charger or the 12V Car Adapter. On/Off switch is hard to get at and is impossible to use with gloves. The controls on the front get pressed when the unit is inserted in an enclosed case. The battery sticks out the back side quite a bit Menu access required for changing the volume or squelch settings. Choice of tones not very robust. (Too many useless tones, not enough useful tones. i.e. A Standard “Ring” Tone.) I miss the Satellite Page and the Navigation Page. (You must now go to the Main Page and select the appropriate Icon.) I spent four days riding dirt bikes with the Rino 530 HCx in the Rocky Mountains. The unit is shorter and narrower, but is much thicker than it appears in the pictures. The display is excellent and easily adjustable for a variety of lighting conditions and it even switches day/night modes automatically. Satellite reception is phenomenal! I live in a 2-story log home and had up to 8 satellites at once from my basement and I had strong signals from 10 satellites in an area surrounded by trees in the mountains! I never had the opportunity to test the radio range, but the clarity is impressive. After four days of camping and riding, the battery was still half full. I used the GPS about 4 hours each day but only used the FRS/GMRS radio a handful of times. I also love the ability to store Tracks onto the memory card, then clear the track stored in the GPS, itself, before the start of a new ride. I loaded all of the MapSource 24K Topo data for all of Colorado and Utah. All of this data, combined with the stored tracks from 3 days of riding, left 93% of the memory on the 2GB microSD card still free! One thing I miss from my eTrex Legend, was the ability to have the Satellite page and the Navigation page as listed “Pages” on the menu. To access either of these on the 530, you must first go to the Main Menu page then click on the desired icon. I used the Ultimate GPS Case tie-wrapped onto the front of my chest protector, but inserting the 530 into the case causes one or more of the controls on the front of the unit to be pressed. The controls need to be a little more recessed or protected. The power switch, on the other hand, (which also functions as the display adjustment) is recessed between the antennas and a little hard to get to. It proved to be impossible to operate with riding gloves on. The satellite reception capabilities, the display quality, the radio clarity and strength, and the 2GB of memory make this a winner! I will be ordering more of them for the remainder of my family. |
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