Garmin GPSMAP 64 Series Thread

You’re being a bit hard on Garmin aren’t you ?

The basic 64 is a good gps. The 64S and the other variants with ANT+ and Bluetooth are great, but they could have been awesome if they had a better external power source. Using batteries gets tedious, and usb power is unreliable.

I have an eTrex Touch 35. iI's very similar in functions and capabilities to the 64S. I only ever use it handheld or on my bicycle, but it's perfect for that, especially when it's linked by Bt to my phone and giving me Smart Notifications, and tracking me online like a Spot tracker, without the cost.

Nope.
Maybe a little hard on your assesment.
Couple of the best features of the 60 were the 12v plug, buttons and overall durability. It was unfortunate that Garmin eliminated the heavy duty plug especially on a unit which is noticeably more power hungry the the 60 was. I'm not saying the 64s is a bad unit, just not "brilliant".

Maybe someone can help me here. I've been reading and searching and it seems this is an ongoing issue on many garmins. I got a new 64st one week back and use it for hiking. I use tracks set to auto archive daily. I do a lot of hiking and enjoy keeping track of total mileage as I just trashed a delorme unit that had 12,500 miles of hiking on it.
The problem is if I do for example a 5 mile hike, everything is great, it will archive fine. However if I do a 5 mile hike, then drive to another location and then hike another 5 miles later in the day, instead of registering the 10 miles, it registers the 10 miles plus the distance I transported the unit while turned off. I don't care much except the main odometer increments this additional mileage. I save the track after the first hike, reset track, trip odometer ect, then at start of second hike the additional mileage from the drive is immediately added to the second track as well as the main trip odometer. I can reset track and trip data again and that track will work fine, however the drive distance is still forever added to the main odometer. I guess I can't do two tracks from two different starting locations in a single day? So far this thing says I've hiked over 100 miles this week, when in reality it's closer to 70.

I suspect Garmin's thinking is to make it impossible to loose part of a day's trip. I have no in-gps solution to this. Frequently though I download and slice/dice my track logs to clean them up.

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That is a weird feature, having tracking recording (when track log is selected to record) even when the unit is powered off. First time I noted that, I too thought maybe something wrong. It must chew thru a bit more battery, so I normally leave track log selected off until I really need it.

Thanks for the ideas. I think leaving tracks off unless I think I'm going to get lost will probably work best with any luck. I'm pretty basic in skills on these things.

I tried a variety of different things again, and see tracks are utterly useless on this thing. Yesterday I hiked 11 miles, everything tracked perfect I thought as at turn on this morning it said 11 miles, then 10 seconds later it said 24 miles completely fricking up all the speed averages as well as adding another 14 stupid miles to the odometer. Now I figure the odometer is 35 miles high. I'll walk 35 miles in the next few days without the unit to get back somewhere reasonably close to correct odometer and try again I guess. Very disappointing as the tracks worked great on my Delorme for over 12,000 miles.

I was learning how to use my GPSMAP64 unit doing local geocache hunting... discovered mine wasn't pointing me to a selected waypoint with a trackline. Dunno if I'd accidentally changed a critical setting or what, but re-setting the unit back to default settings fixed that.

I got in the habit of saving and clearing my tracks on my 62S after a day's hike. You can then retrieve most of the data in Basecamp.

Don't know if this is what happened to you but if you turn the unit off in one place and then turn it on in another place without clearing the track, it will think you jumped from one place to the next and screw up all the totals and averages.

Drew

Thanks much. I tried again and found you are correct. If I hike, then clear the track before turning off the unit it works fine.
Edit: Must clear track after hike at power down before going to another location, if you go to another location, must clear track again after power up before proceding. Best bet, every power up clear track, every power down clear track. Fail to do both will result in drive miles being added to odometer.
I "think" I have it now. Keep trying, keep failing. Edit: this doesn't work. Another failure. Will try something else.

Back from two weeks in East Africa. I purchased the Garmin Topo Light and used it in my 64SC for Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and, less successfully, in Tanzania. The latter was devoid of geographical reference points which made anything other than the easting and northing problematic. I could always track back without difficulty. The Uganda and Rwanda tracks were perfect with the unit including all the built-up areas for local navigation. The unit was especially effective for the flying segments of which there were many.

I'm still fighting mine. I walked 3 miles, cleared the track and trip, drove 9 miles, turned on the unit, cleared the track and trip, walked 2 miles, cleared again, then 9 miles home. This moring before 5 seconds had elapsed after turn on, despite all this clearing, it added another 18 miles to the odometer due to both ways drive, and the trip odometer said I was averaging 250mph for that time since last reset. I've about had it with this piece of crap for hiking and using tracking. I guess turning off tracking is about the only way to use this thing if ever transported from A to B between hikes. Useless.

I can't believe they offer a product like this. For example lets say I have a motorcycle, ride around the neighborhood a couple miles, then put it in the back of a truck and drive 500 miles away, then ride a couple miles. Put it back in the truck and drive 500 miles back home. Presto, at turn on the trip stats as well as tho odometer that can't be reset read 1004 miles. What garbage.

Don't blame the product for your inability to use it.

I'm still trying. Seems silly to have it made the way it works. Who wants tracking miles and miles added to the odometer while the unit is turned off?

For anyone using a gps on batteries, these Ikea Ladda Rechargeables are a real bargain.



$8.99 Cad for a pack of 4 AA. I bought two for our eTrex Touch 35s.


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I'm still fighting this unit. I "think" if I act fast, at powerup, the track and trip data can be reset before miles are added to the odometer when the unit is moved from A to B. At this point I'm at near 100% out of optiions. My old Delorme worked fine. This thing is great other than adding miles you didn't do. Some guys say just write your miles on paper, some say just turn off tracking. For sure this thing is a great unit in all regards other than this stupid tracking.

Getting to where you turn tracking ON/OFF is only a few clicks into the set up. I don't get the big deal, just takes a few seconds and button pushes to get there. Although multipurpose, if Garmin's primary target customer is the avid backcountry hiker, having it record a track while power is off maybe isn't a dumb thing. Easy to forget to power your unit back on. I think Garmin just expects that you'll get competent with BaseCamp and learn how to edit a downloaded track. Steep learning curve with this stuff.

Trust me, I've tried turning off tracking. If I do a hike with tracking on it works perfect of course, then I'm done hiking I turn off tracking, turn off the unit, drive home. Even with tracking off, the moment I turn on the unit and move more than 5ft the odometer and trip data instantly jump up adding the miles the unit was moved from A to B while off. It doesn't matter that the tracking was turned off or not. This is a big deal to me as I like to keep a running tally of how far I hike each year.