GPSMAP H1 series first impressions and bugs

Just received my GPSMAP H1 series device and have been playing around with it for a bit. Software version is 3.04.

The UI has improved over the 66 and 67 series in my opinion, it is much more intuitive. Touch screen works well (not tested in rain yet), and the device is quite responsive.

I did already notice some issues though:

  • When you have the dashboard enabled on the Map app, and you move the cursor on the map, the dashboard disappears (which is fine). However if you press Quit to exit cursor mode, the dashboard doesn't reappear. You have to move to a different app or the home screen and return to the Map app to get the dashboard to appear again, or pan the map and press the re-center icon.
  • When previewing a course on the map with the map full screen, it is not possible to zoom in or out by a pinching gesture on the touch screen but only via the + or - buttons or via the zoom controls on screen. The pinching gesture does work on the Map app.
  • When you load a course with course points and go to the map app, the course points are shown as expected. If you now stop navigation and return to the home screen with the Map glance on it, the map glance will still show the course points but not the course line. The course points are cleared when you go the map app again and return to the home screen.
  • In dark mode the Outdoor Maps+ buildings layer in combination with the TopoActive map is not visible in urban areas. The two colours are too much alike.
  • When you move through the item types in the Saved app (ie between all, courses, waypoints, activities), often the Waypoints list is not loaded when switching to the Waypoints tab.

I'll report these to support, but hopefully others can confirm these issues as well.

And for feature requests, it would be nice to be able to sort in the Saved app, like you can in the Explore app.

  • Hi,

    Oh yes ... I can confirm and may I add other ones;

    - Mentioned earlier, Barometric plot not possible.

    I discovered on my GPSMap H1 a very important issue (for me personally) ... In comparison with my other unit (GPSMap 66sr), the H1 is not able to plot a (history) graph of 'Ambient Pressure' or 'Barometric Pressure'. If you look at the option 'Plot Type' on the H1 you simply don't have these two options!
    When starting a hike or when you are hiking you want to know what the barometer pressure is doing, especially when you hike in a foreign country. Simply only see what the current Ambient Pressure or Barometric Pressure is, is not what you want when going on a long hike ...

    - A selected map (unselect other maps) with a chosen Profile, will not stay when you switch your Profile.

    For example; (my maps are OFM maps like OFM Benelux and OFM Europe, City Navigator NTU and of course already installed by Garmin, Topo Active)

    When you choose Hike profile and select a certain topo map with it, while deselecting others, works fine.

    But now you switch to lets say, Bike profile. Works fine and with the Bike profile you also select a certain map while deselecting others.

    Now you go back to your Hike profile; your map selection is gone within this profile and ALL maps seems to be selected, or sometimes some maps are selected.

    The same happened with your Bike profile when you select this profile; your map preference is gone but suddenly all, or sometimes some, maps are selected.



    Regards,

    RWvdK
    =====

  • Some more issues that I found:

    • Barometer Glance is part of the default ABC Home Screen, but shows no data and tapping it opens the Altimeter app instead. So it seems the Barometer app is missing.
    • When you open the Connect IQ app to show installed apps, the layout is messed up because the app icons are too large.
    • When using the device in Satellite Demo mode, there is no option to set the location. Previous devices had the option to select a place on the map, accessible from the options menu of the satellite page. This option is missing in the options menu of the Satellite app, and I couldn't find any other place where to configure this.
    • Touch screen gesture controls on the map preview when selecting a navigation destination and previewing the course are not available or unreliable. It is either not possible at all to pan or zoom with gestures, or panning works and zooming works very unreliable.
    • When the display is configured to never timeout, and the backlight is configured to turn off after a certain amount of time, a press on the touch screen when the backlight is off also registers as a button press. This is inconvenient when you just want to tap the screen to turn the backlight on again. 
  • Thank you for sharing your findings.

    1. I have also noticed that some of the elements of the Dashboard do not react to touch. I will have to reboot the device to get  functionality back. This happens regularly.

    2. However, for me, the most surprising finding is that the H1 i Plus is way less accurate than my GPSMAP 67i or even my eTrex Solar. Both of my older devices consistently show an accuracy of about 6 feet in most conditions, whereas the new H1 i Plua only shows about 16 feet in the same conditions. In optimal conditions with a clear view of the sky, it reaches about 8 feet. I really hope that this gets fixed in a firmware update.

    Have any of you had the same experience?

  • I've done only one hike (more a walk) with my device, and I noticed too that accuracy on the satellite app didn't go lower dan 2.1m (7 ft), but mostly it was around 2.4m (8ft). And that's only when moving. If I stand still, accuracy almost instantly goes up to between 3m (10ft) and 3.4m (11ft). This was in heavy cloud conditions, so maybe that played a role.

    And I also noticed  that I don't get many satellite bars for GPS, Galileo or BeiDou, around 8 or so, sometimes a bit more sometimes a bit less. I'd need to do a comparison with my GPSMAP 67 to see what the actual differences are. 

    On the other hand the activity recording seemed to be fine with no large outliers, but again, this would need further testing.

  • The GPSMAP H1 series has an upgraded GNSS receiver as compared to the GPSMAP 67i or previous other devices. We will have an upcoming maintenance release that will correct the reported accuracy number, as there is not an issue with the actual accuracy of the device.

  • Thanks for the heads-up . Good that this issue with displayed accuracy is being fixed.

    What surprises me is that this (together with the issue that RINEX data when enabled is not written to the device) looks like a repeat of the release of the GPSMAP 67...

  • That is really great news. Thank you, Garmin-Chris. 

  • Nie dziala kasowanie aktywnosci,nie dziala ustawienia np.podswietlenia czasu ekranu.