Montana 700 Map Nightmare

Yes, Garmin really dropped the ball here, like they have with most of their current outdoor handheld devices. memory is super cheap now, and 32GB should be the absolute minimum installed on the device itself. But they are still skimping on memory with only 16GB on the high-end models, and still 8GB or less on the lower end units.

I cannot see City Navigator in my installed Maps list and when I try to put maps on an SD card the device does not read the card. Pretty poor attempt for something which these days should be so easy to do.

I found that when I updated one of the maps that came with the device, it used up nearly all remaining free space. It was like the old map hadn't deleted. When I tried to update another map, there was not enough space.

After a few days of messing around, a load of free space suddenly appeared then I was able to update the second map.

Unfortunately, I cannot remember which maps and I don't know what caused the free space to be available. I was playing around with JaWa Device Manager and moving maps to the SD card, then back and that seemed to sort it.

www.javawa.nl/jdm_en.html

All the best.

Two weeks on and Garmin have still not resolved the issue - appalling customer service and don't appear to have a clue how to resolve the issue. They sell the unit with a hard drive of 16g and release map updates of 15GB and wonder why the unit won't work! One person tells you one thing and another something different. One agent insisted the pre-installed maps could be loaded to a SD card when their own site says this is not possible as the maps are "locked to the device"   

Two weeks on and Garmin have still not resolved the issue - appalling customer service and don't appear to have a clue how to resolve the issue. They sell the unit with a hard drive of 16g and release map updates of 15GB and wonder why the unit won't work! One person tells you one thing and another something different. One agent insisted the pre-installed maps could be loaded to a SD card when their own site says this is not possible as the maps are "locked to the device". Garmin don't give a dam about their customers after they have go your money - avoid these units and Garmin devices altogether is my advice   

Garmin support is rubbish. No follow-up, nothing happening between calls, none of my emails have been replied to, seem to ask the same generic questions many days after they are supposed to be investigating an issues, problems with sales and ordering system and product awareness is poor. Garmin customer support is the worst I ever experienced. Really, really bad.

I am very pleased with my 700i. It's a great device but the overall experience has been let down on multiple occasions by support.

Agreed, internal storage capacity is poor. There's no reason why it can't be significantly more.

I wish I had seen this in the Forum before I decided to buy the device, I had a Garmin Montana 650 which died due to design flaws of the powerswitch, It cracked and rain came in. The polymer they used was probably not designed to last more than 5 years. I do regret now that I bought the 700i, the backend (garmin express) was not updated to work with this device, and yes, there is not enough on board memory, stingy Garmin, they don't think future proof yet, and haven't done that for als long as I use their products (Since Street Pilot III)

Add a cheap 32G SD card and the device seems to see all memory as one. Works fir me. I’ve lots of maps installed. 

THere is a difference between onboard or SD memory, On board memory is faster, So when hiking a topo map on SD is okay, But driving long and far using CN it can sometimes be slow on updating the screen. So I prefer to have CN installed on the device and Topo on the SD. If I however want to tinker with waypoints in basecamp on the topo maps (installed on SD) I do get errors. Tried with several class10 SD cards. However If i move the same maps to the device after moving the cn maps to the SD the topo maps work again with no errors. So it would be a great advantage to have more onboard memory, opposed to juggeling for hours moving maps to and from SD cards. no matter what the price of sd cards is. 

8 Weeks now and still no resolution. Garmin don't give a hoot about their customers or if their products are fit for purpose. Will NEVER buy another Garmin product

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