Garmin Montana 650t, US Topo

I spent opening weekend of hunting season in Montana, with the Garmin Montana 650t, and I couldn't be more satisfied. My first GPS was a Garmin GPS 3, which was top of the line in it's day. I found it to be unreliable in tree cover, difficult to see with it's small B&W display, and poor battery life. The 650t had none of these problems. It never lost reception, the large color display with adjustable backlite is easy to see, and battery power was good for two days hunting. I didn't find the larger size to be any problem. I can read the display without my reading glasses, that's wonderful. All the functions are touch screen and that works very well. I bought the 25K topo map from Garmin and a 25K topo/landowners map from <...>. Zooming in my home address, the map had me and all my neighbors listed. In the field, this map shows the hunting districts and property owners. I'm a little disappointed that neither the Garmin or the HuntingGPS topo maps show meadows and clearings, like a real topo map will. I would suggest buying one or the other. For my purposes, the HuntingGPS Maps version is best. I really like being able to replace the battery pack with spare AA cells, that I can carry in my pack. I found that the compass works fine. I was able to download the real owners manual from Garmin, and found it good enough. You will need to download the free Basecamp software from Garmin, and create an account with Dashboard, to register your device. I found my Forerunner 205 and Nuvi already on the device list. Neat. So, while I'm still learning to use the 650t, I'm very happy with it so far. There are many YouTube videos that I have found useful. I made good use of entering waypoints and editing the descriptions, which is easy. My favorite waypoint is TRUCK. There's no more welcome site, when you clear the forest, than seeing that TRUCK. It was a plunge to spend over $600 on this GPS, plus another $200 on maps. But, I'm glad I did it.

I owned the montana 600 and used it for around 6 hunts in southern california. I purchased the hunting maps app from huntingmaps for garmin and I had a BLAST with the 600 over the last 6 months. It has never failed me. I do very intense hunts ALONE, and I have come to rely on the tenaciousnous of the montana. Its totally rugged. The only issue was that i was using my cell phone to take pictures at the same time as carrying the garmin, and then i wanted to be able to geotag different pictures, So i bought this one with the camera and its awesome! Your pictures are 5 mp which is the same as my verizon android phone and they are attached to the route you are one so its seemless, Love it! Yeah there are some things that are annoying on this, but any hunter would be wise to explore this platform. combined with google earth, huntingmaps blm chip and some luck you are looking at an essential piece of gear here!

I am a Garmin fan, always have been but Garmin out did themselves with this product. Locks up quickly,is great under heavy cover and very user friendly. I use mine on an ATV most of the time and have purchased the power adaptor so I cannot speak about the Battery life as mine is plugged in most of the time. The only thing I will advise is do the Updates! I have never had any trouble with mine but I have read some reviews where people have. The Garmin Updates will cure all the Bugs!

Overall, I love this device. But it is a total bitch to navigate to a particular place unless you have the coordinates. It should have a "Home" function, but it doesn't. Great for !00% off roading. Not so useful for paved roads other than the "footprints" it leaves. For its high cost, this product needs some refinement.

I am a brand new owner of the Garmin Montana 650t. I have spent the last few days learning most of the functions and most of the menu items available on this device. I took it for a field test today and found a few geocaches. Everything worked very well. This machine is a huge jump in technical capability from my previous machine which was a Garmin Etrex C. I love the fact that there is only one button on the Montana and that is the On\Off button. Every thing else is controlled by the touch screen via icon and/or menu selection. The Montana display is analogous to the iPhone 5 but it is much more intuitive, and much easier to use. I will update this review as I gain experience with it in the field. Right now I expect nothing but great things from this device. The one complaint I do have, and its a big one, has nothing to do with the Garmin. It has to do with the poor method of packing and shipping I have been experiencing with Amazon in the last year. For example, multiple items are placed in a large box without proper packing material like bubble wrap. The items are left to tumble and roll around in the big box as it gets handled, tossed, jostled, and dropped during shipping. This is not the type of packing that has been typical of Amazon. In addition I have not received a packing slip in the last several orders I have received from Amazon. I'm not sure what is going on at Amazon but there must have been a change in their packing and delivery policy and procedures, and it has not been for the better. ****************************** Its now about week and a half later and I have a much better feeling for the Garmin Montana 650t. I now have a grasp on the good and bad news associated with this device. Fortunately the good news far outweighs the bad news. The good news: I took it out on a cache hunt in the Granite Mountains of Prescott Az and easily found 20 cache hides. The bearing indicator and the distance to/from were extremely accurate. The Trip Computer worked very well and as far as I can tell it was accurate. The camera is simple to use seems to work very well. For spur of the moment photos all you do is use your finger to press the "camera" icon. Just like a normal digital camera the display comes up showing you what the lens sees. Then all you have to do is point an shoot. You take a photo by pressing the photo button, this causes the camera to auto focus. Releasing the button causes the camera to take the picture. The whole operation is probably faster than taking a photo with a modern digital camera. Before the hunt, I had downloaded the coordinates for 22 cache locations. At the trail head I used my finger to select the icon/menu items in sequence "Geocaching" --> "Find a GeoCache" --> and then I selected from a menu of "un-found" caches the first cache on the trail. From then on, when I found a cache I would use my finger to select the icon/menu items "Geocaching" --> "Log a Cache" --> "Find the Next Nearest". The found cache was automatically logged and then removed from my "un-found" caches list and placed into a "caches found" list, and the Montana pointed me in the direction of the next closest cache. This hunt lasted almost 7 hours. During this time I had my display set on max brightness. I got a low battery message at the end of 7 hours. It had discharged down to 3%. I'm thinking that the "up to 16 hours of battery life" in the specifications really means if you running it in its most efficient mode. No problem I just carry three NiCads with me for backup. This was so easy compared to my old Garmin Etrex Vista C. I haven't even scratched the surface of what this machine can do but I know that the user interface is very simple. A couple of finger presses and you have accomplished what you needed to do. Would I purchase this GPS again. The answer is yes. I would purchase this GPS again in a heart beat. The Bad News: The user manual is over simplistic and does not get into any details of operation. Its printed in a large font text sort of like a children's book. Its a great document to read when learning how to use the device but it offers no details or answers to serious questions that might arise after you become familiar with it. In addition the Base Camp Software which runs on your computer, looks to be a very nice tool, and I'm sure it is after you learn how to use it. However the documentation for Base Camp is poor. Learning how to use it is going to be a very difficult sequence of trial and error. Kind of like, "click this or that menu item and see what it does and if it will help me get out of the quagmire I'm in without having to exit the application and start all over again". I looked on Amazon for any books written on Base Camp. I found one that had poor ratings so I'm not going to purchase it. One other bad news item, but one that I can live with is when I got back from the hunt, I connected the Montana to my computer to upload my photos. For some reason the Montana would not communicate with my computer. Both Windows 7 and Geocaching.com could not recognize that the device was connected via the USB port. I went through all the typical first responses like down loading Garmin drivers, and down loading Windows Updates, which did not help. Then I remembered a couple of reviews from users that mentioned that sometimes the Montana software gets lost and it tends to not work on one or more functions. The solution was to remove the battery to reset the device and then replace the battery. I tried this and sure enough everything worked well again. So there is still a software or hardware glitch in this new machine that can cause it to misbehave. The solution for now is to reset it by removing the battery. This has only happened one time in approximately 20 hours of operation so I am not too concerned just yet. The long term solution is for Garmin to add a hardware or software "power on reset" or POR so that the hardware is reset every time the the device is turned on. This is a very basic function within the engineering industry for all electronic gizmos and systems, and it should have been designed in from day one. I bet a software upgrade would eliminate this problem. Who knows, perhaps there is an upgrade available now and I don't know about it.

I have used several GPSers in the past. This is by far the best one I have ever had. I am very impressed with the accuracy and how quick it locks-on satellites. The reception is amazing. I can receive strong signals in dense forest and even in basements. I loaded Garmin's City Navigator and use it as an automobile GPS as well as the topo map GPS in the outdoors. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a do it all GPS. 5 stars definitely.

I guess I am quite disappointed with this unit for several reasons considering how much I paid for. .I purchased this unit for the large screen and the waterproof camera features and I hoped it had other more advanced features than my old DeLorme PN unit. I use this unit mostly for Geocaching and I am out almost every day, so I would hope the gpx files I load into the unit would be available when I need them, but many times when I'm in the woods several miles from home many of the files that I loaded don't appear. Other times part of the information that is expose to be loaded with the GPX file is missing and therefore that is useless to me. Another problem that keeps reoccurring is when I select the camera app, the unit freezes up and I have to remove the battery to reset it. I also experienced the screen changing magnification when exposed to bright sunlight for awhile. All these problems happen sporadically.. I started loading the GPX files directly to internal memory and that improved the file issue somewhat, but not entirely. I can't except that.because you can only delete these files while attached to a computer and since the unit is expose to accept a Micro SD card I expect it to work. I know I am going to have to return this to Garmin before long, because all these problems are becoming quite annoying. I'm glad I didn't sell my old GPS. After using this unit for less than 9 months,I noticed that the touch screen was loosing sensitivity in the bottom right of the scree. Then after a short time I seen what appeared to be the screen separating from the frame and then I had no touch screen control at all. I called Garmin customer service and explained the problem to them. The Garmin rep asked me to send him a photo of the screen and in a short time informed me that this must be physical damage and their warranty will not cover it. This unit was marketed for outdoor sports thus I expected it to hold up to the normal bumps that occur while hiking,kayaking and the geocaching, but I guess I was wrong. I am extremely disappointed in this unit but much more disappointed with the Gamin company. If this is their most expensive hand-held I hate to see what their lower price ones are like. This unit has experienced no more abuse than any other equipment that I carry while hiking to include a camera that isn't designed for hiking, so I didn't expect to to fail in such a short time. I can't vouch for the other Garmin units, but if this is an example of their customer support and warranty, I don't every plan to find out.

we all use touch screen devices these days and I am a computer science major. This device is a pain in the butt. I do search and rescue on horse back. it is difficult to maneuver to the correct screen with slightest touch it jumps around. for some reason the trip odometer resets itself to 79 miles without my even accessing the function which of course looses all my data. the instructions are poor they assume too much knowledge of their nomenclature and do not completely tell you how to do change something. not the worst instructions I ever read but close. I guess I could go on and on but you get the idea. I used the 60 csx for years and liked it. guess I am going to buy the 62.

Very satisfied!

Great GPS but lacks an attachment point to hang it from a backpack or belt while hiking.