7x Saphire Solar Map Observations and Questions

gregjohnson1956 over 3 years ago

My new Garmin 7X Sapphire Solar comes with the following loaded maps: Topo Active N America - 9.1 GB and Garmon sells for $59.99 if you have to buy it for other devices that don't come with it. It also comes loaded with Ski View - 222 MB. I deleted that ski file quickly in the watch using Garmin Express. It also has loads of golf course data in Course View for Europ, ME, Africa, Pacific and the Americas. That is a total of 1.1 GB of golf data. I'm not a golfer and tried to delete the golf files but could not do so in Garmin Express or Connect. It won't allow you to check those boxes for deletion. There is another thread running on that problem. Anyone know how to delete the extensive golf files? I don't want to just connect to the folder and start deleting files. Garmin needs to fix this and allow deletion of the golf files in the map control function.

Question about the 100 dollar per SD Garmin Topo Maps US that are 24K (1:24,000) geological survey maps with tons of park, trail, road and recreational data added it. They are highly detailed topo maps that back-country sportsman, hikers and workers use and they cover every inch of the area that is designated, like South Central US, North Central US, etc..... There are 6 of these for the US and that is 600 bucks worth of stuff if you buy it all. I bought two of the regions 5 years ago for a Garmin hiking device I no longer use. They are on micro SD cards and Garmin still sells them for 100 bucks each.

Question: How does Garmin Topo Active N America (that comes with the watch) compare to these 1:24,000 topo maps SD card sets? How can I load Topo South Central US 24K into my watch? It is 4 GB. North Central US is 8 GB. I want to load South Central US now and be able to load North Central when we get back up to those famous National Parks in Wyoming and Montana. How do I get them into the 7X SS?

If I get them loaded, will Garmin update them since I already paid for them 5 years ago? Are those topo 24k maps updated by Garmin once you purchase the SD card or do you have to repurchase them?

0 C.sco over 3 years ago

I don't have any experience with purchased Garmin maps, so I can't answer a lot of those questions, hopefully someone else can. But I can say for sure, just from looking at screenshots and file size, that the 24k topo maps are substantially more detailed than the standard (free on Fenix 7) topoactive maps. But I've also found the standard topoactive maps to be pretty darn good, I've never really found them to be missing any of the trails, water features, etc that I've used. I think the standard topoactive maps are a good compromise between detail and file size. As you already noticed, you cannot fit all of the North America (or even just the United States) 24k maps on the watch at once, there isn't enough space, so you'd have to add and remove them as needed.

As to loading the maps onto the watch, I've loaded 3rd party maps onto mine by simply copying and pasting the .IMG file into the Garmin folder on my watch. Not sure if that works with Garmin maps or not, but it's worth a try.