Garmin Montana

Thanks for posting the 'navigating' tip; I will give that a try.

I agree with the positives - very good sunlight display, reasonably robust package, great mount, good size, can take raster maps (with a lot of work). Some downsides are the touch is difficult to use in motion, it's not a good street unit - software is better suited for off-road, and it has a fair bit more position error than most units in the price class I've touched.

You might also want to try your tracks in black on the Montana. They are very visible that way.


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I agree. I don't think there's any kind of light sensor in the Montana.


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I sure don't know. I could be wrong.

AFAICT there's no visible light sensor on my nuvi either. That nuvi would switch to night mode when the screen got too dirty and cleaning just the screen would turn it back to day mode. Pic shows nuvi just after noon with day/night set to "auto". OTOH, I cannot get the nuvi to switch from night to day mode with any amount of artificial light. (It's dark as I write this.)



I'll try some things with my Montana today to learn more.

Didn't notice that when it changed it was coincidentally exactly the same times the unit computes for sunset and sunrise, eh?

HUH? I've been creating tracks on my Montana since the day I bought it 7 years ago.
You can create a track, save a track, change color of that track, make that track visible, and trakback it, as well as save it to BaseCamp for future use.

He probably meant from scratch, as you would create a route, not by letting the device record the track.

At least that was my understanding.


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I don't usually have sunrise and sunset times as a display field.

The nuvi would display the night mode at mid-day. Since Garmins often share features I thought they might share this one too.

Here's how to check: put your Montana in the fridge. Is the backlight on? [emoji12]

But seriously, take it to a dark place and I'm sure you won't see any automatic brightness changes. The only thing that can change the brightness automatically is sunset/sunrise changes if you have display set to auto.

Brightness can vary if you put the Montana on a powered mount, though.


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I was going to put it in bright sun and put welding filters over much of the screen to see if it would dim. Not feasible with heavy clouds today.

I do believe I'm wrong though. When the backlight goes out, the screen is so blank that I doubt any amount of sun would make it readable.

I have no idea how the nuvi changes brightness depending on how dirty the screen is, but it does it somehow.

Oh. Now why would anyone who had BaseCamp want to do that?

I thought he was describing the Montana's capabilities.


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Exactly.

As to why I would want the unit to be able to create a track? Simple: I don't travel with a computer and can't use Basecamp on my tablet. So any routes I create while on the road are done right on the Montana. It would be nice to be able to turn those routes into tracks also, but AFAIK it can't be done on the unit.

..................shu

Really? Before I had my new VStrom wired up with the Rugged Mount I was running my Montana with the backlight turned off and in sunlight, it was very easy to read.



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Ah, yes. I see a huge difference between turning down the backlight and "backlight timeout" which seems to do much more than turn off the backlight.

Again, really? There should be no difference between setting the backlight to low and having it turn itself down after a certain interval.

There's nothing in the display which changes, imho. It's just a trick of the light.


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+1. I am evolving towards the same situation. I have always carried a notebook on long trips and occasionally used it to create new tracks during the trip. I recently decided I wanted a backup gps and decided to check out the smart phone route. After a couple of months of playing with the thing, I have decided the smart phone will serve well as a backup gps and will do everything I could do with my notebook except make new tracks from routes.

I have not found a smart phone app that will do this either.

I am leaning towards not carrying the notebook anymore and if I need to make changes during a trip, I will do it with routes on the Montana. I do this sometimes anyway if I need to make a change in the middle of day's ride. I will also load all the other tracks I already have in the vicinity of a current ride onto the Montana, so I could easily switch to one of these.

Really.

Turn down the backlight to 0 and I can still see the map in modest light and see it clearly outside (overcast) both on just battery power.

Wait 1 minute for the backlight timeout, and there is simply nothing visible. The screen is just plain gray. (Again, on battery power.)

Is there another timeout that I haven't found? The only one I see is in Setup then Display and is clearly labeled "backlight timeout".

Cabelas'a currently has the Garmin Montana 610t Camo on sale for $369.99, with pre-installed 100K Topo maps.

http://www.cabelas.com/product/Garm...VgbjACh3Qag_iEAYYASABEgJAjvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I just purchased this unit, but I got a price match from TheGPSStore.com, which allowed me to avoid the Idaho sales tax. Thanks once again to everyone who replied with the helpful information.