Map Quality (Looking at purchasing maps from Talkytoaster)

I have been trying to find good maps for contour lines and other features as well such as naming for creeks, glaciers, etc... Having a hard time finding something that provides these features.

These are good maps, certainly for the UK, and have much better details and contours etc. My maps are all in meters but I'm not sure if he offers feet too. However be aware that all that extra detail puts extra strain on the processor so will reduce runtimes if you use the map screen often. Also that increased detail is more cluttered on such a small screen  Personally I've stuck with the standard maps on my 945 for simplicity and runtimes. 

Internally your 945 works in meters, and so do the maps, but display in feet if that is what you select.

As an aside, the UK uses an odd mix of metric and imperial measurements. Petrol is sold in litres but fuel consumption is commonly expressed in mile per gallon. Engineering in the UK has completely switched to metric but building materials are often sold in imperial sizes so a sheet of ply could either be 1.2m by 2.4m of 4 feet by 8 feet. Not a big difference but if you are counting on the one and get the other it can mean a lot of extra work.

After some research I decided to use the http://www.openfietsmap.nl/ on my 945, certainly blows the default maps out of the water, but I also prefered this one over the http://garmin.opentopomap.org/

Between those two:

- openfietsmap has stronger colours and only half as many hight lines, which i like on such a small display as a watch

- opentopomap might be more routable on rough hiking trails, as far as I understand openfietsmap is catering towards bicyclists, so routing will not go along the really rough trails [this is not from testing, just from reading].

Compared to stock map:

Much more map features (e.g. buildings), more up-to-date. Looks much better.

I believe the TT maps offer a small region free of charge, you can install something like QMapShack and open the fietsmap, topomap and TT map in 3 separate tabs and compare the differences on your PC, then decide which one to actually use :). Sadly you cannot easily open the stock garmin map on your PC.

As for the hight lines, these should adapt to your settings on the watch - its vector graphics and can do both meters and feet. This is even mentioned in  one of the videos made by the TT creator.

I have a follow up question about Talkytoaster.  I think I may have misunderstood the website.  If I'm reading it correctly, the 1:50K Topo map for $34 is to use on Basecamp only and I wouldn't be able to to send them to my 945?  If I want to send them to my watch I have to purchase the maps and purchase a subscription? Is this correct? I emailed the company, but they are closed due to the time difference. 

I bought the Talkytoaster UK “1:50k Look n Feel” map https://shop.talkytoaster.me.uk/product/tt-150k-look-n-feel-map-for-self-install-automatic-delivery-british-isles-only-dem/ last year for my Fenix 5+. Basically you select the Automatic delivery option for the map you wish to buy and on the product page there is a drop down box to select your device (945 is on the list now). Once you’ve completed the purchase and things are verified their end, you are sent a link to download the map file. Once you’ve downloaded the file you simply copy it across to the Garmin folder on the watch.

I’ve pretty much tried maps from all of the free services and I can honestly say that the Talkytoaster maps are better. Are they worth the modest cost? For me, yes if it’s a map I use a lot; but if you’re just going somewhere for a couple of days only and won’t use the maps beyond that, then maybe you’ll be fine with the free stuff out there.

if you want to view the map in Basecamp, then you can do so whilst the 945 is plugged in to the pc/Mac (very slow) or just copy the file to any removable media or a virtual drive; Basecamp will treat a removable drive as if it’s a Garmin device and import the maps from it. I have a 128GB SD card in my laptop that I store all my map files on for easy viewing in Basecamp.

Just following up on the exact US State you are after (Washington I assume), I can see you can’t get the Automatic delivery option, so you’ll need to do the Electronic delivery method https://shop.talkytoaster.me.uk/product/single-tt-150k-look-n-feel-map-for-self-install/ which is way less expensive than the Basecamp option you were looking at. Essentially it just looks like the Electronic download option takes longer as the purchase and download link have to be prepared manually then sent on to you.

I’m just going to mess with the units settings on my Fenix 5+ to see if the contours adjust or stay as metres.

That's where I'm a little confused with the website. I don't see an "automatic" download for Washington. I understood that the "electronic" delivery is for Basecamp only. 

OK, first screen shot below is on units for elevation set to metres and the second is when set to feet.  So it seems the Talkytoaster contours are fixed to 10 metre intervals, but the numbers next to contours (revealed when you zoom in) reflect whatever the elevation unit setting is on your watch.

Hopefully that's most of your questions answered about the Talkytoaster maps, but if you want to know more there's quite a lot on their Map FAQs page https://shop.talkytoaster.me.uk/maps/map-faq/