Montana 700 keeps turning off

The gps III was a great unit.  As another long time Garmin user you will probably not be surprised with my personal assessment of what’s going to happen regarding this issue.  This unit has been out for about three years, and still has these issues.  Given the recent sales on the unit and its age, I figured it has at most one more year before it’s EOL, probably less.  They have not figured out the problem and the last I heard back from tech support was an email about a month ago.  They don’t have a clue, despite being given logs showing at least part of the issue, which is an out of memory error.

If you don’t mind me asking, how many maps do you have on the SD card and what size is the SD card you have installed?

I am within manufacture specs, but right at the tail end as I own a bunch of the old Topo 24k disks and made separate img files of the entire US.  I found if I change half the img files to .bak so the unit doesn’t load them into memory, it no longer instantly shuts off when trying to enter multi addresses into route planner.  It doesn’t matter which image files I rename just doesn’t like the fact that I have near the maximum map segments, and only is happy with about half the advertised max limitations in map segments.  I also noticed that once I get about 2/3 max map segments, the units slows down to a crawl when trying to do address searches.  All of this plus the error logs leads me to a very obvious conclusion… this unit has been manufactured with hardware that either originally out of box or after system updates, can’t handle the advertised specs  it’s capable of handling.  While it’s entirely possible Garmin got lazy and didn’t actually verify those specs, estimated them, or lied, it’s more likely that system updates (OS updates) required more resources than the original OS was designed to use, thus taking more resources (ram) than was originally used, and now the OS needs more now to run than it originally did.

Think of it like a computer that was designed for Windows 7 and has now been upgraded to Windows 11.  It may run the OS, but due to the fact PCs around the time of windows 7 had far less ram, and the new OS takes more, there is less available for actual use of tasking.  This is my guess at what’s happening, at least with part of the problems with this unit.  The random shots are something else, I’m referring to the device getting slow and everything shutting off every time entering address which has been reported by other users here and on other forums.

Your issue sounds like the other issue that all of us are having which is the device randomly shutting off while just sitting there on a table.  As I stated above and to Garmin tech support, that has nothing to do with a loose wire and enough of us are having the problem it’s not batch related.

I’ve seen several people posting elsewhere who are hardware engineers. They think it has to do with the antenna, which apparently the one used in this device has a known bug that causes units to shut off.  From what I’ve heard it’s a known issue with this particular part in Garmin knows about it.  If that is true, it just goes to show that they’re trying to kick the can down the road until the next generation comes out.  My guess is, if you complain enough, when that happens, they will just give you a replacement unit, but that doesn’t compensate those of us who dealt with it all this time nor does it deal with the accessories we bought, including one shot maps.

Just a warning, for all of you will have the regular 700 and decided to buy the city navigator maps: Garman is now saying they don’t come with any updates, so the date you buy it is the only version you get and any subsequent downloads will be the same old maps, not the updated ones.  This is contrary to what they told us when they decided not to allow people to buy maps, and use them on multiple units.  The excuse at the time was that the maps now have lifetime updates for one single unit, which is why they can’t allow us to use them on more than one device we own.  Looks like that was more corporate nonsense and lies.  As I told Garmin, I’m just filing a lawsuit in small claims court to get this resolved.  I paid $100 for city navigator and it doesn’t get any updates?  No where did it say that and I have screen shots of the website.  

This company has gotten terrible over the past few years, and it’s time for consumers to take action. I contacted my attorney general and have been requested to write up a summary of what’s going on including the evidence I collected, screen shots, former press releases, Garmin employee forum replies, and all of the complaints people are having here on the forums and elsewhere on other forums regarding the problem.

They sold us a lemon and they know it; now they are just kicking the can down the road.  This unit is not cheap it’s over $500. These people are insane if they think we are not going to force them to address the issue with something that cost more than most cell phones and does far less.  For the price and size of this unit, it’s ridiculous how primitive it is and yet it’s still can’t do what they advertised.  It’s completely unreliable, and ironically they were so cheap, they put the oldest USB port (not usb c) on a device made in 2021.  Furthermore it can’t get L5 ("multi band” as they can’t be bothered to use the technical terms with their consumers as apparently they think we’re all stupid) signals so it’s less accurate than some of their watches.  The entire thing is an outdated disaster.  It was under speced the moment it came out and now they’re just selling something they know shouldn’t be on the market.  They planned obsolescenced this device so hard it was outdated before it was released.

I hate to say it, but the only way you’re going to get any sort of relief is to go to court in small claims.  It’s cheep and you don’t need legal representation, just a brain and all the very prevalent evidence scattered across the internet about this unit.  Three years is enough time to fix a problem or admit that it can’t be fixed.  

Can you imagine people buying cars from a dealer and not only immediately having these problems, but three years later, still having the things randomly shut off while people are driving, sitting at a light, etc?  The dealer and manufacturer would be sued to oblivion; no one would buy their cars anymore.  Furthermore, these are life safety devices, especially the inreech models.  The only reason why there hasn’t been pushback is because handheld gps is not a mass buy product, and this one is such a giant overpriced brick it’s a niche product.  If there was many as many of these on the market as there were iPhones, this problem would’ve been solved already, by Garmin or by a flurry of attorney generals filing lawsuits.  The only way we’re going to get this solved is through the courts.  If they can’t fix it in three years or admit defeat, you know, it’s never going to get fixed.  Even if they do fix it, three years is enough.  How many people have sat around with the device they bought that doesn’t work right for three years?  How many people waste their time with RMAs?  How much downtime where you don’t get to use the device because it’s being sent back to Garman?

This company treats its customers like crap now, and it’s time for the courts to get involved.