According to Highly Tuned Athletes owner Mr Rob Grinter all the problems I recently had with my Garmin Oregon 600 occurred because I was using OpenStreetMapping ... The maps caused the following problems which I raised with Garmin International (ignored) and Highly Tuned Athletes. Apparently my use of OpenStreetMapping was irresponsible and the cause of these issues as it seems it works fine for them at their store ... (with those same maps installed BTW). I experienced all of the below whilst riding in the South-west of Western Australia. It seems that the disclaimer at http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ where I download the maps from explains these issues. Does anyone have the disclaimer from their Garmin City Navigator or Topo maps by any chance? It would be interesting to see the wording and if it is significantly different.
Anyway just putting out there what I experienced. I have the tracks at Garmin Connect if anyone is interested in what it recorded.
1. My Garmin Oregon 600 not synchronise with either of my Garmin GSC-10 sensors despite both advertising material and the manual indicating otherwise. Those same GSC-10 sensors synchronise with Garmin Edge 810 and previously with my Garmin Edge 800 so I know the issue is not with the sensor. Interesting the Oregon 600 will synchronise with my Adidas HRM strap. I consider this critical failure as it was one the features I lead to my purchase of the unit. Any replacement or repair must have this functionality working correctly please or there is little point in replacing or repairing the unit.
2. The Oregon 600 has been inconsistent with its auto-pause function. Sometimes it will auto-pause sometimes it will not. The amount of tree coverage appears to have no influence on this. I have found that on more than one day, a day of riding could be recorded with approximately 60% being added to the day’s distance when compared to the map. I didn’t deviate from my planned route at all and hence this sort of error level is extremely concerning, more so if one is navigating and using distances as a critical navigation tool. I found the only solution to this was to physically turn off the unit whenever I stopped.
3. In contrast to the issues raised in dot point 2, I found I could be riding along when the Oregon 600 would simply go into auto-pause mode. This was a known fault in early firmware updates of the Garmin Edge 800 and which was fixed so it is staggering to see it happening again now with a much more modern unit in the Garmin range
4. I found the Oregon 600 showings speeds up to 30 to 40 km/h when I am doing 10 km/h or less and again in situations where often there was little to no tree coverage. On one day it recorded a maximum speed of 90 km/h! I was riding a loaded mountain bike on dirt trails where my average speed would have been around 10 km/h over the day.
5. The Garmin Oregon 600 route tracking gets confused following a turn in the road or trail and often then heads off showing me going well off-track and adding considerable distances to the day’s ride distance.
6. On more than one occasion it would simply just recorded me heading off into the wilds for no apparent reason;
7. My Oregon 600 regularly looses satellites even in clear tree coverage (e.g., riding in farming country). When this occurs I have to use the auto locate satellites feature to re-locate the satellites. When I do this the Oregon 600 finds the satellites within seconds. On some days this was happening up to 15 times over a six to eight hour ride. In my view this is a very serious concern as surly a company such as Garmin Limited with a history of GPS development should have such a fundamental functionality working correctly.
8. If I switch to external power source (e.g., USB battery supply) it causes the Oregon 600’s screen to change to a different display and at times simply changes the chosen the profile! It simply seems to have a mind of its own.
9. I found that a set of Duracell Ultra alkaline batteries I tried (fresh purchase) lasted no more eight hours which is well short of the claimed battery life. I was getting similar battery life times from a rechargeable batteries as well;
10. My Oregon 600 will at least once a day randomly turn off;
11. My Oregon 600 will lock up requiring the removal of the batteries to force it to restart again seemly on a random basis;
12. Tones continue to sound even though they have been turned off in the settings
13. Updating to firmware 2.8 resulted in the lost of the geocaching profile as per our email discussions.
Regards
Andrew
