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I bought Oregon 400C. I have Topo 2008 and many other Garmin maps on micro SD cards. No matter which Garmin Oregon you pick this model offers all you need in a mapping hand held GPS device. Fast, convenient with its touch screen interface and it is very compact. The only con is the relatively low battery life but with charged 2700+ mAh NiMH or Lithium batteries in particular you can use it for 2-3 days. Compared to the Garmin Colorado this device has much better battery life, smaller profile, and much, much better user interface. If you need a reliable, easy to use and powerful hand held GPS don't look further. Buy it!

I've owned about 6 GPSr's since my first loaf-sized Lowrance Eagle. Almost all of them have been Magellans, but since my XP PC fatally crashed and Magellan doesn't offer a driver for Vista Home Premium (why not? I suppose that since the Triton series is so bad they're giving up) I went ahead and bought an Oregon 400t. It is by far the best GPS that I have ever used! The size is good, the graphics magnificent, and the operation is intuitive (if you're familiar with GPS operation). (I can't speak about a learning curve -- sorry.) The touchscreen is responsive, fun to use, and much less error-prone than buttons. The maps are clean and easy to read. Pan and zoom is very easy, and different features appear at appropriate scales.

The PC interface is error-free, and the firmware upgrade process is a no-brainer. The GPSr and micro-SD card both show up as drives, so you can do anything that you want with them. (There is a warning not to delete the maps.)

Cons: the minor roads are blue (contrary to cartographic convention), but it's easy to adjust to seeing them. Hard to read in sunlight? It's a silly point raised by pampered people.

Summary: The Oregon 400t sets the new standard; it is way ahead of the previous generation of GPSRs. It's quite expensive, but you get what you pay for.

I bought a Colorado 400c in April and loved it, then I saw this a month ago and fell in lust. I accidentaly immediatly ran over my Colorodo with my car (I had bought a protection plan) and it was replaced with the Oregon 400c. This is an absoulutly outstanding product. The touch screen is responcive, readable and bright. I belong to a sail club in Boston for boats 25-45' so carrying my own charting gps from boat to boat is (for me) manditory. Boston Harbor is loaded with rocks, shoals, flats, shallows, narrow channels and tides ranging 10-12' and now that I have a month of use behind it I can't find anything to fault. It's better than the commercial systems on the ferries I drive. I could vote to make this mandatory on all small boats.

I just broke this unit in on an ocean sailboat race from Miami to Fort Lauderdale and back.

I never attempted to use the unit like Mr. Warriner. That would be kind of like watching a movie on a cell phone. I don't get that either. Instead, I charted my course using Nobeltec Visual Navigation Suite on my PC and transferred the waypoints into the Oregon 400c. To Mr. Warriner's credit however, you have to specify "On the Trail" to find support for the 400c on Garmin's website. It's nowhere to be found under "On the Water".

I liked the user interface, loved the touch screen, and tolerated the often hard to read display. Battery performance was good yielding eight hours on a pair of NiMH batteries with backlight maxed and WAAS on. I liked the carabineer, the robust battery compartment locking mechanism and much larger than usual rubber seal. The unit looks tough . . . like you could use it for a hockey puck. Didn't try that. I am in Miami after all. However, it did get sea splashed and rained on for two days with no ill effects.

What I did not like was the speed readout. We were on a 32 foot Evelyn averaging seven knots in about three foot confused seas. The speed readout was all over the lot easily ranging a knot higher or lower than actual from one second to the next. To form and educated guess of actual speed over the ground, you had to watch the readout for ten or twenty seconds and guestimate an average in your head.

If there was any way to "damp" or short-term average these readings in the GPS's own brain, it was not apparent in the skimpy instruction manual nor on Garmin's website which has always been quite user hostile. I can't say that I have ever noticed this feature on a Garmin but none of my other three Garmin GPS's have ever exhibited this extreme twitchiness. My Simrad chartplotter allows you to exactly specify the short-term averaging that goes into the displayed speed output.

Until Garmin supplies a fix that is more intelligent than, for instance, "turn off WAAS" I would probably buy a different handheld chart plotter for sailboat racing.

By the way, we took top honors in the race. Little or no credit to Garmin this time out. It's tough trying to be all things to all people.

This unit might be OK for short trips where you already know where you are going, the touch screen is cool and handy and the chart details are fine.

However, if you want Marine features, read on.

My first clue was the word "Chart" does not appear anywhere in the menu system. That is because this unit is really an outdoor map unit that was adapted for marine use.

Sadly, that means that there are missing features for mariners the most important being chartplotting. Chartplotting is where you drop a series of waypoints on to a chart, make sure there are no obstructions in the way, collectively they are strung together to create a route. It is all done on the chart so you can see details of your route. You can't create a route in one step on the chart with the Oregon or Colorado series of Garmin Handheld GPS Units.

With the Oregon, first you need to create a series of waypoints, each which should be named so they make sense as to their location. Then go to your menu system and choose another page that contains the list of waypoints, but not where they are on your chart. Choose a series of waypoints to string together as a route and then you can go back to the Map (their name not mine) and inspect your route on the chart to make sure you don't hit anything.

If that is not enough to convince you, go ahead and buy it. It is a nice toy.

Here is what I suggest instead: NOTE: not as fun as a touch screen but functional and almost 1/2 the price: Lowrance iFinder H20 C GPS (Blue) and NP-USA NAUTIC PATH MAP CHART