Montana 700i keeps turning off

Exurban said:

I keep dreaming for that Unified Field Theory of glitches.

A unified field of glitches is called a 'Garmin'.

Could have sworn I posted something this morning but guess not. Anyway, yesterday I did a “full reset,” short of taking it out of the box new. Cleared everything off my iPhone like Bluetooth pairing and started over.

It has now been plugged in to the Rugged Mount and running nonstop for almost 24 hours. There were a few hours where the phone was out running errands and was not in range and I don’t know if Bluetooth was actually the issue but, so far it has gone continuously longer than any of the times it crashed. I have noticed that the notifications are more frequent than before when they seemed to be more random. I’m not certain but don’t think I fiddled with anything else to fix it other than what I’ve noted. So, fingers crossed once again.

Sometimes a full reset works miracles!

Mine did this today. End of a route and just went off on its own.? I though it was some hidden feature, I.e power off at end of route, but, no.

Well, that was too good to be true. After the reset it ran nonstop for two days powered in the cradle. Then I decided to run it on battery then charge in the cradle and then on USB. Still seemed ok. Then I intentionally shut it off and restarted. After that, and powered in the cradle, it has now crashed two more times. 

Garmin support have been utterly useless to me. They cannot make outbound calls, absolutely nothing happens between calls and I don't think emails get through to them.

Anyway, yes mine turns off sometimes when in the suction mount holder and connected to a continuous 12V supply. When I remove the device from the cradle, I am promoted whether I want the device to power down or stay on. I don't get that prompt when the device turns off on its own so I don't believe it's a power supply issue. I also noticed when using CN the map sometimes gets stuck. I need to come out of the map then go back in and it sorts itself out. I missed a motorway junction recently because the map got stuck.

It's a minor inconvenience but it would be nice to be sorted.

While I’m no doubt disappointed my 700i has been having the issue and I’ve had my own criticisms that Garmin frequently needs improvement in many areas, my experience with them on my problem has been exemplary. I described and replicated what was occurring and they very quickly got me a replacement. 

The first contact on a “chat” was a little frustrating as he didn’t seem to understand the nature of boats, that they could be completely waterproof and vibration free inside an enclosed cabin or how 12 volt wiring works. He then said he was in the “hiking department” and asked if I wanted to be transferred to the marine department. I could picture him in a cubicle in Olathe in lederhosen, mountaineering boots and trekking poles wondering why anyone would have a GPS on a boat.

Good to hear. Thank you for working through it all for the rest of us. If a fix comes out as a result, it will be because of your efforts and it will benefit us all.

All the best and thank you once again. 

It's been very interesting to find that I'm not the only one with the problem. Garmin AU's response was dissapointing and I'll reserve judgement on Garmin parent for the moment.

However we do seem to be making progress so I'll keep my fingers crossed !. I do like the 700 and not wanting to state the obvious, it would be good to have it work without issue.

I have the 750i, only used it a few times, it tuned off by itself a couple of times from new, haven't used it due to COVID in the last 6 months.  I have just done a two day trip.  The unit is always in a cradle, which is directly fitted to motorbike battery to ensure power is always on.

It turned itself off 14 times in 8 hours, by the end of the trip I couldn't get it to tune back on at all.  Only way was to remove from cradle, remove battery and put battery back in and restart.

I did a full factory reset that night hoping it would be ready for the next day.  The unit was even worse and turned off after about 20mins.  After about 2 hours of use, it wouldn't allow the inReach tracking or InReach SOS, this is the main reason I bought the GPS so I could send an SOS if needed.  The unit  was also shutting down by itself then it would try to restart by itself and fail, it would do this about 6 times, they just stay off, I couldn't even turn it on again by using the on/off button.   

There seems to be a major fault with my unit, I'll try and get support from Garmin Australia.