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Recent reviews for this item: DrDan, February 4, 2012 I initially bought this unit to serve as a chartplotter for
my sailboat. I have the unit mounted on a 4" RAM arm that
is bolted to the top of the binnacle. This allows me to
rotate the unit very easily to port or starboard so that I
can see the unit when holding the wheel from the windward
side of the boat. The unit is relatively bright, very
sturdy, and has withstood quite a bit of rain and salt
water splashing. I wired the mount into my sailboat's
instrument system (Nexus NX2 system) via the NMEA network
and it works flawlessly, even when repeatedly disconnected
and reconnected.
More recently, I bought a second mount to use it in auto-
mode on my motorcyle. At first I thought it would be too
big and heavy but it turns out that a large screen is great
on the bike, as it is easy to view in a quick glance
(lengthy GPS-viewing is not advisable on a motorcycle!)
Overall, very pleased that I didn't have to buy another
(expensive) waterproof GPS to use on my motorcyle. Wanderer, October 31, 2011 I have used this unit on my boat a few times and have been
able to feel quite comfortable in some very tricky areas.
Easy to use with a good size screen. Looking forward to
using it on my snowmobile this winter. André, September 1, 2011 This GPSMAP is my first one, thus I am learning. It is a bit
awkward as it is a new way to think for me but I am getting
there. I find exchanging information with a computer using
Mapsource a bit complicated using the SD card. This process is
not well explained in the Owners Manual. This being said I
think that the GPSMAP 640 does the job very well. Doug, September 2, 2009 Purchased this GPS to be used for bike and sailing.
First on the Bike.
With a RAM mount GPS worked very well. Good visibility and
the touchscreen worked well with gloves. Routing on GPS for
trips took a little while to figure out. If you want the
scenic routes you had to be pretty specific on which towns
you were going through to get you on the right roads. You
be useful if you could choose via different highways or add
a scenic routing option. Additionally some of the POI were
out of date. Will try to add some of the Garmin optional
POI products and see if that works. Overall very good unit
when purchased for both auto and marine uses. (I say this
because of the price)
For Marine.
I haven't purchased any of the G2 Vision cards yet so my
charting information was pretty basic. Overall the unit is
a decent chartplotter with decent maps. Routing on the unit
itself was good although to get a detailed route with the
correct waypoints you need to spend quite a lot of time
zooming in to avoid obstacles and to make all the course
corrections. I'm not sure how the scrolling function could
be improved but it did get irritating. I am very interested
to see the smart routing features that are part of the G2
card upgrade.
The GPS does provide quick start-up and accurate information
when up and running. The information that the unit provides
in its dashboard is very good.
The mounts that come with the unit are great if you are
going to permanently mount it in your boat but I bought a
portable GPS in order to take it on charters. It would be
nice to have a snap-in mount that didn't have a plug coming
out of it.
Another issue I had with that the manual for the GPS said
the portable GPS was ideally meant to be permanently mounted
in order for it to be plugged in. Battery life on the GPS
was pretty good at 8 hours but the comment in the manual
irritated me. I felt like returning the GPS before I even
used it. A pretty easy solution is to buy another battery
if you are going over 8 hours which I frequently do.
Despite my irritations as described above it is a solid GPS
and I was pretty happy with it overall for biking and
sailing. The software needs some fine tuning and they need
to improve the available mounts. Looking forward to trying
the upgraded G2 Vision cards.
