Automotive GPS vs Handheld and bad eyes?

[tvanwho]

I have several handheld GPS units and I guess my Garmin 60cs is my favorite, EXCEPT my eyes are having a tough time focusing on the small screens and staying in focus.Heck, I see a blurry spot in the center of my vision for 1/2 hour after fooling with this thing? My eye doctor sees nothing wrong with me, must be old age? I am 52. So, I was thinking I would look to get an automotive GPS like a Garmin 760 or 360 with a 4 inch screen?
So, I need to know if the car GPS can be used with batteries and can it be used to hike overland and thru woods? Can topo maps be loaded into these things? I don't see the blurry spot with a 4 inch screen and they are about small enough to slide into a large shirt pocket. My friends Garmin 750 acquired the satellites in a few seconds with no large protruding antenna, altho it was warmed beforehand. My 60CS takes several minutes and won't work under heavy tree cover or in narrow creek valleys. Will the automotive unit still have user settable waypoints, breadcrumb trails, ability to enter in coodinates, and a Goto function? I am gettin tired of bringing tons of road maps with me too or fergetting to bring them and driving in circles in the back country.
Any suggestions guys? I figger I will wait til Xmas or therabouts to get a great price,hopefully well under $300 for a Garmin 760 with Bluetooth phone ability or something similar ?
Thanks-

Tom

 

[Andrew Kalinowski]

Automotive receivers are very limited in their off road capabilities. Most of them do not even record tracks (bread crumb trails). Even that they do display topo maps and such, most Garmin models can not do by compass navigation and do not have waypoints as you know it. Definitely not the lower end ones. You do need a Nuvi 700 or higher series to get some of these features. Because features do vary a lot from one model to another, I suggest that you download manuals for the units you may be interested in and see if they do have the functions You want. What I found is that most of the time I do most of my in the woods navigation just visually checking my position on the receiver and eyeballing my progress. For that a Nuvi is perfect. That is most of the time not the times when I do need an accurate distance and compass direction to a waypoint and there, 60 CS does the work way better than any of the Nuvis can.

 

[leesumm]

I have a Lowrance XOG which is by their terms a "cross over" GPS I bought it mainly to use in the woods. I looked at several hand helds and they had no detail at all . The XOG has unbelievable detail , for a GPS at under $200 I live in a National Forest area and wanted something I could load maps into and get detail for ATV rideing and hunting, I dont have to with this unit. But , if I want Tick size detail I can go to a site for Lowrance called Map Select and custom make my own map and download to the computer and then put on a card and insert into the XOG and use that map, I can choose topo, satellite and another view I cant remember what but I have used the satellite view download to investigate some buildings in the Forest area that cant be seen from anything else and these map downloads are very reasonable , like $5 per grid . So check it out , I use the XOG daily as a truck driver and the detail is unbelievable
Uu