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81 of 83 humans found the following review helpful.
How to Use Garmin BaseCamp; Review of Garmin Topo US 24K
By William R. Drake
HOW TO USE GARMIN BASECAMP WITH GPS TOPO MAPS (SOME BASICS); A REVIEW OF GARMIN TOPO U.S. 24K WEST & OTHER GARMIN BASECAMP MAPS
2/26/10
91 of 94 people found the following review helpful.
Great new product!
By David H. Bailey
I'll cut to the bottom line: As far as I may see, this is the best topographic mapping product available.
It's better than computer maps from DeLorme, National Geographic or other vendors, and much better than Garmin's earlier "MapSource" product. Maps displayed on one's PC or Mac (I've tried it on a Mac) are visually compelling, with very high solution and near-perfect accuracy. There is likewise an magnificent user interface -- you may browse, zoom, rotate or tilt to your heart's content. Even better, these high-resolution maps (unlike anything from other vendors) may be downloaded directly into your Garmin handheld. Most recent Garmin models are supported.
Today while out hiking I was astonished at the detail and solution on my handheld -- 40 ft topo lines make a enormous divergence when settling whether the hill in front of you is a mountain or a molehill.
The only downside I have noticed is that there aren't very a good deal of hiking trails indicated on the maps. But it's always a good idea to obtain a local trail map if one is available. Drivable roads near where I live are all there, and as far as I may see there are no faults of labeling or placement. This is a big relief, because numerous other productions I have seen are loaded with errors.
P.S. (7 Aug 2010). With galore recent software fixes (both to my Garmin 60 Csx firmware, and also updates to the "BaseCamp" and "MapInstall" software, I have been capable to download almost the entire mapset (California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington), except for a few panes in eastern Nevada, onto a single 4 Gbyte microSD HD card in my Garmin 60 Csx handheld. It works wonderfully. How did I ever live without it?
35 of 35 persons found the following review helpful.
Lacks detail
By E. L. Green
For fun, take a paper or digitized paper topo of Panamint City (Surprise Canyon, Inyo County, CA, the Ballarat quad) and look at the level of detail on that map -- all the mines, roads, springs, and so forth. Then take this product and pull up the same area. You'll see that it's missing most of the details, even though both are supposed to be 1:24K maps. And what detail there is, is most times wrong -- for example, they put Ballarat into the middle of Panamint Dry Lake!
On the plus side, the latest version works fine on MacOS Snow Leopard, and programs my Garmin 60csx and Garmin Nuvi 200 just fine. It's even a routable map, not similar to older versions of the software which required you to turn off the topo map to route. But really, Garmin's maps are just plain pathetic equated to the real thing. Even even even though Delorme's PN-40 irritates me because of it is little screen, short battery life, and lack of a belt clip (not to mention that I have to boot into Windows to run their clunky software), I'm still going to be carrying it on my upcoming trip because the digitized paper topos that you may load into the PN-40 have so much more detail than the pathetic maps that Garmin provides.
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