Foretrex 601

[fuaran]

Great to see Garmin have announced a new version of the Foretrex. I was worried that it had been scrapped in favour of the Fenix.
I like my old Foretrex 401, I think it is a rather underrated model. Its a nice size, handy to strap to a rucksack, or on your handlebars, a lot neater than an Etrex etc.

New one claims 48 hours battery life, from 2 AAAs. Or 1 week in UltraTrac mode. So plenty for most audax, or even a week touring.
It can use GPS, Glonass, and Galileo - the first Garmin with Galileo support?
Plus the usual Bluetooth stuff for uploading to Garmin Connect and phone notifications. And it seems better support for bike speed or cadence sensors - an annoyance with the 401.

Only thing I'm not sure about is the memory for tracks. It says '10,000 points', which seems a bit limiting for longer trips, or recording 1 point per second. Don't know if there is any option for more saved / archived tracks.

There's also a Foretrex 701, seems the only difference is some sort of 'ballistics' calculations, designed for long-range shooting at stuff, it costs £300 more.

I think I will be buying a 601 shortly.

[Kim]

Good to see the mono reflective LCD is alive and well.  I always found those easier to read.

Doesn't look like it can do full mapping, though, which would seem like a major disadvantage for cycling (unless used purely for logging).  Fine for supplementing paper-map-based navigation, of course, which is all you need for hiking.

Impressive battery life.   

[Samuel D]

I don’t think Garmin has any intention of doing this, but I’d love to see a monochrome device with support for full maps. The benefits of (anaemic, low-contrast, limited) colour as used on the eTrex 20, for example, are not worth the hit on battery life and legibility with the backlight off.

[frankly frankie]

Ironically, when Garmin used to have a mono map model (an early Etrex) they introduced their first colour screen version (Etrex Legend C) and at that time the colour model featured greatly improved battery runtime.  Of course, it wasn't the screen that made the difference, but the entire new chipset.

[Samuel D]

Yeah.

Also, the specified battery life flatters the devices with poor legibility, because with those devices you’re forced to use the backlight in more lighting conditions, reducing the real-world battery life.

To be fair, the eTrex 20’s legibility with the backlight off is a lot better than any of the Edge models I’ve tried (which are poor to begin with and worse after your greasy thumb has marred the touchscreen).

[Kim]

Ironically, when Garmin used to have a mono map model (an early Etrex) they introduced their first colour screen version (Etrex Legend C) and at that time the colour model featured greatly improved battery runtime.  Of course, it wasn't the screen that made the difference, but the entire new chipset.

I've still got a Legend somewhere.  Of course the limiting factor on that one is the awesome 24*meg* of map memory, the RS232 serial interface, and only really liking Garmin's sparse, unroutable maps from the early noughties.  You're likely to lose patience with it well before the feeble but relatively power-hungry GPS chipset gets a chance to be annoying.

To its credit, it never suffered from rubber band failure, unlike my yellow eTrex and Vista HCx.  And the screen was readable under street lighting.