In a nutshell, so far so good.

I think back to the first weeks (or months?) after the releases of the Garmin Colorado and Oregon and I never would have left home without a backup GPS.   This past week I traveled many miles with my Garmin Oregon 550t by car, by boat and on foot and, for the most part, it worked flawlessly.  No backup necessary.

There are a few minor issues I’ve run across:

  • Compass calibration failures and a couple of times the compass has just started spinning, requiring a reset.  This is probably the most serious issue.
  • When you get near the maximum limit of 5000 geocaches, some caches aren’t previewed properly on the map page.
  • Minor autorouting and autoroute recalculation issues.
  • Small issues in the Route Planner building routes.

I’m slowly adding these to the Issues List on the Oregon wiki.  If you search the Issues List for “[x50]” you’ll find all of the bugs associated with the Oregon 550 and 550t.

Aside from the new features I noted in my first impressions post the GPS has functioned and behaved like an Oregon 400t, it has all of the same features and most of the same flaws as its predecessor.

The camera and geotagging support has been working superbly.  Several people have asked about macro shots and shutter lag.  I’ve been able to focus on objects within 2″-3″ and get very clear photos.  I’ve posted some more untouched images in the album below.   The shutter lag is good, probably in the 300ms-500ms range if auto-focus has been activated and you are only releasing the shutter, you’ll see closer to 1 to 2 seconds of lag if you haven’t already set the auto-focus.

Integrated geotagging is much more handy than I ever imagined.  It comes down to this:  every time I used to mark a waypoint, I now take a picture instead.  Over the course of the weekend I used geotagging to share the location of a trailhead with a friend, show a perspective homebuyer a photo (with embedded location) of a house for sale which included the realtor’s contact information, capture the damage to a geocache container to remind myself which cache it was based on the geotagged location and archive images containing the coordinates and clues for a multi-cache.  I’ve geotagged using ExpertGPS and other tools by time correlating my photos with my GPS tracks but the convenience of having the geotagging done by the GPS and available in the field is what makes this a feature I will continue to depend on regularly.   I still have not been able to test the photo upload to myGarmin but Garmin tells me this should be ready on their site very soon.

The camera does draw down batteries quickly.  I’ve noticed that my battery life is significantly lower with camera use than without.   I’ve run a head to head battery test between the 400t and 550t with the compasses and camera disabled and the two have identical battery life — around 10 hours on 2700mAh batteries.  Again I think this points the fact that electrically these GPSs are almost identical except for the compass, accelerometer and camera.

As far as the screen is concerned I do have a slight preference for the glossy 550t screen over the 400t’s matte screen.   It takes a little more adjustment to see around the reflections but once you do it is easier to read.   If you have seen a Colorado, I find the 550t very similar to that unit’s non-touchscreen display.

For the most part GPS reception works the same as the Oregon x00, and given that they share the same ST Cartesio chipset and antenna design that is not too surprising.   If I hold them side-by-side they lock the same satellites with the same signal strength and the Oregon 550t has the same WAAS issues as the 400t.   Receiver performance under tree cover continues to be the Achilles heel of the Oregon product line, in my opinion.  If Garmin uses the same receiver on the Dakota, which I’m guessing they will, I hope they will have the incentive to work out their problems with the Cartesio since it impacts so many products in their outdoor GPS line.

UserDataSync has been both a useful feature and an annoyance.   Neither BaseCamp nor ExpertGPS seem to deal with the changes completely.  I haven’t tried the newest version of Mapsource but I would expect similar results.  BaseCamp opens every gpx file on the 550 when it connects which is a really bad idea if you have a 5000 geocache gpx file loaded.  BaseCamp also does not open and display the current tracklog automatically but it seems to deal with waypoints, routes and saved tracks pretty well.  Photo integration is not available in BaseCamp either.

As for UserDataSync this is how it works in more detail:

  • Waypoints created on the device are put in daily waypoint files in \Garmin\GPX.   Changes made to the waypoints in these files using BaseCamp or any other software will be reflected on the unit after the next boot.
  • Routes and Saved Tracks created on the unit work exactly the same except each route or track is put in its own file.   Edits to these files also show up on the GPS.
  • The current tracklog is saved in \Garmin\GPX\Current\current.gpx (like the Oregon x00), but routes and waypoints no longer show up there.  This is a “read-0nly” copy of the tracklog, editing it has no effect on the tracklog in the 550.
  • Software like Mapsource, BaseCamp and ExpertGPS can be used to place routes, geocaches, tracks and waypoints in gpx files under \Garmin\GPX.   These objects show up on the handheld and can be edited or deleted (except for geocaches).  Changes made on the handheld are visible in the original gpx file once in mass storage mode again.

The synchronization feature is nice except you end up with a lot of files in \Garmin\GPX and finding anything without the help of a software program is time consuming.  Archiving data for a trip can involve searching and saving data out of three or four different files rather than one.  My suggestion to Garmin is to make current.gpx backward compatible with the current generation of x00 Oregon’s at least for the purposes of getting waypoints, tracks and routes off the device so that you only need to look in one file.   I haven’t found any issues with UserDataSync yet, but I’m guessing that there will be confusion and issues around how all of this works especially given the complexity of synchronization software and the fact that the mapping software, including Garmin’s own, does not support it yet.

Support for 5000 geocaches was another major attraction for me since that gives me almost a 50 mile radius that covers my normal travels during the course of a week.   I thought it was working flawlessly until I started previewing the last several hundred geocaches in the file and they started showing up on the map in places that were over 5000 miles away.   This issue has been submitted to Garmin and they are looking into it.   How big is that 5000 geocache file?   About 27MB with 5 logs per cache and it took the 550t about 1.5 minutes to digest the file on the first boot after loading the file.  Subsequent reboots are fast, 16 seconds, which is identical to my 400t.

After nearly a week of use I’m happy to be able to recommend the Garmin Oregon 550t without having to worry much about any major issues like the original Oregon and Colorado.  The new Oregon is not bug free but I think most people will find that it does nearly as well as the Oregon 300 and 400 and after a software release or two it will be on par with the older models.    If you are already considering an Oregon, Colorado or Delorme PN-40 I would suggest taking a look.  It does come at a hefty price tag but there is value in the additional features, particularly the 3.2MP camera with integrated geotagging.

I still have a few more items I’d like to test like battery life and USB transfer rates once I get the time, but I’m expecting a Dakota soon so the 550t will probably sit for a few days while I work on developing some impressions of the Dakota. If you’re a 550 owner you can keep tabs over at the Oregon wiki on the Issues List and Versions page. I’ll be sending out notices as new software releases become available and moderating discussions on the 550t.

If you do decide to take the plunge only a few retailers are shipping the 550 right now, but GPSNow comes highly recommended because of their excellent customer service.  REI is also listing the 550 and 550t as in stock and you can’t beat their return policy. Amazon is advertising a 7/20 ship date for the 550t and the 550.

Related posts:

  1. Garmin Oregon 550t – A (Geotagged) Picture is Worth A Thousand Words
  2. Leaked: Camera Equipped Garmin Oregon 550
  3. Garmin Oregon 550 and 550t Announced
  4. Garmin Oregon x50 Software 2.3 Available
  5. Garmin Oregon 550t and Dakota 20 Reviews — In German