Am I crazy or is the 66i U.I. clunky?

I came from Explorer +, and I know you have both. I could do without the horizontal menu, but at least the buttons on the 66i have some words instead of all symbols.

If you're going to work with Tracks (GPX), I've found the clunkiest thing to be that you have to convert a Recording from either an Activity file (FIT) or Archived Track (restricted GPX), in order to have a "normal" Track. If one is just going to work with Activity files, that's not an issue, though. 

6324585 said:

Page/Quit buttons for scrolling horizontal menu? Terrible.  There's a perfectly good Directional pad right in the middle of the unit.

The layout has a track record in extreme environments and has been maintained consistent across models for decades. 

We use 76CSx & 78sc for open ocean kayaking and from the get go the interface has been functional & intuitive. There is no way I could use the rocker button with cold gloved hands, and particularly instantly between paddle strokes and waves. One button press between compass, chart or trip data is simple and effective, it just plain works.

At the pointy end interface consistency is also important, you want actions to be reflex. For example quickly doing something on my partners device in the other boat. I'm glad 66i is same and one of the reasons I bought it.

If you are in a coffee shop playing with it there's no doubt personal nuances and quirks come out but that's not why I bought mine. 

BTW "plus & minus" is the common term, and is left to right if you look at the layout.

yes, it is all normal for people who used garmin toys for decades. I agree that this might be sometimes strange for newcomers, but for people who used similar garmin devices it is fine that the handling does not change too much.

It takes some time, but then it gets easy and one gets used to this soon.

The Garmin UI is an evolution of more than 20 years of real world field testing and user input. Firmware updates frequently add new features and refine operation. With each new model, major improvements are often implemented.

You are just going to have to learn how the tool works. You always want to be smarter than the tool in your hand!

You clearly are very new to the world of Garmin Outdoor navigators! Let me help you understand some of what you are seeing...

6324585 said:

-   Page/Quit buttons for scrolling horizontal menu? Terrible.  There's a perfectly good Directional pad right in the middle of the unit.

That 'horizontal menu' is the 'Page Ribbon', and it is a user configurable series of shortcuts to the 'Pages' the user wants access to most often. This is why the 'Page' button loops through them, one at a time. To make it easier to go back one or more 'Pages' in the 'Page Ribbon', Garmin also configured the 'Quit' button to loop through them backwards.

6324585 said:

-  Hitting Quit on the Main Menu brings up the horizontal menu?  Redundant. 

As mentioned above, the Page and Quit button always scroll or loop through the pages configured in the Page Ribbon, providing the user a quick and easy single button method of moving between frequently used pages.

6324585 said:

- Menu button should take you to home-screen/ Main Menu regardless of what screen you're on.

This would prevent the user from accessing all the additional unique options available for each Page. One press opens the options for the actively displayed page, two presses takes you back to the Main Menu. There was a time when the user was only able to access all options from the Option Menu, which required many more inconvenient button presses. The current system works very well.

6324585 said:

- Using the Menu Button to open an "options menu" while scrolling through the Main Menu isn't wrong, but isn't very intuitive.  My first thought is Menu = back to Main Menu.

Pressing the Menu button while the Main Menu is displayed opens an options to change the order of the icons in the Main Menu. Very convenient for users that like to configure the device for a specific activity.

6324585 said:

- Plus and Minus buttons should be the other way around.  We read left to right, and are (mostly) right handed, so the instinct is to use the right thumb for the "more important" of the two options.

The "+" and "-" buttons used to be the "IN" and "OUT" buttons, respectively. So, originally, 'IN' was on the left, and 'OUT' was on the right. Would have been silly to have them the other way around. And now the are '+' in place of 'IN', and '-' in place of 'OUT'. Make perfect sense. They still perform the same functions, so why would Garmin confuse everyone by swapping them around?

6324585 said:

- I probably would have made "quit" = "back"

On some devices, that button is labeled 'Back'. Fun!

6324585 said:

- "Page" button could have been an "options" button as on the Main Menu it acts as a Pg Dn substitute.

As stated at the top of this post, the Page button always loops through the Pages configured in the Page Ribbon. The 'Menu' button is sued for 'Options'.

I found this page because I was so frustrated with the user interface, that I had to Google why it’s so bad — coming from an iPhone it feels like being teleported back the 90’s and every time I use it, it makes me want to scream at it and throw it out the window. And it’s not just the device itself. The numerous iPhone apps are just as crappy. Why, Garmin? Why is it so hard to make an app worthy of the 21st century? God, I want my money back.

Would you like some cheese to go with all that wine? Or just a box of tissue?

there are reasons why it is as it is.  If you want a GPS device with touch screen and look an feel like smartphone, you can have it, even Garmin sells such devices.

66i is done this way because most users want to have it this way. For example, I did a test with some SAR people who are using 62s/64s devices for their work. I have on 66i in general 3 icons in a row on the menu. But for those people I had to create a profile with larger icons and two icons in a row and arrange all so it did finally look similar and had similar functions as the old 62s. This was the only way they accepted it as a tool.

Reason is, that they are not using the devices sometimes for months and then they go on mission and have to operate all efficiently.

Continuity is here very important.

And yes, many of us are also not happy abt everything how the associated phone apps are designed, many of us do avoid those apps if possible. But each of those apps is for entirely different group of users. Depending of what they actually want to do with it. With 66i, you have even a choice of phone apps you could use.

But it could be also that you did not find any of the functions or did not find how to set up certain things. In such case just complaining 'all is bad', you can ask specific questions and some experienced users here will be pleased to help you.