Montana 650 Review warning heavy pictures ahead!

I have been debating on reviewing this due that most people may not be interested in a tough NUVI essentially, so if I have wasted your time my apologies. I had purchased a Montana 650 awhile back and have been putting it through its paces. All in all I am very happy with it, except how big it is, but due to the capabilities I will live with that. It is essentially a beefed up Nuvi/Dakota/Oregon. The screen brightness is fantastic, I finally have a bright screen that is brighter than my old Vista HCX . I have always wanted a AA Nuvi that I can run 100% off of solar with no batteries and waterproof. The GPS in this unit is blazing fast blowing away all my other Garmins and the speed of the processor is really fast. It can hold 3.5 gigs internal memory plus 32 gigs external with a total of 35.5 gigs. It has a 5 meg pix camera built in which will take pictures underwater. The pictures can be tied to the map and used as a waypoint as well. Comes with a universal plug that has adapters for most countries and a Lithium square battery if you don’t want to use 3 AA batteries. If you buy the cradle with the built in speaker, it will give you voice directions like the Nuvi else you would have to use a headset. I have loaded most of the world for maps including 24K topos all accessed on the fly without switching cards however the water maps for some reason doesn’t play well with the other maps and have to be put on a separate MicroSD card or stored on the card and moved with a phone or computer. All in all for a older guy like me who needs a big bright screen and very durable, I think it is a great improvement over its predecessors and I highly recommend .

Pros
1.Universal Batteries (AA) and can be ran 100% off solar with no batteries in unit
2.Capability of Street, topo and waterway maps of the entire world
3. 5 megapixel camera
4.3.5 gig hard drive with up to 64 gig capable, (32 gig tested)
5.Fast GPS chipset and processor (fastest lock on I have seen to date)
6.Very Bright Display and a large screen with easy to read letters
7.Wirelessly communicates with other Garmins
8.Has many operating modes including Nuvi, lots of flexibility of navigation functions
9.Waterproof and shock resistant
10.Headset capable

Cons
1.Size and weight, kind of feels like a brick
2.Have to use a external speaker or headset to hear voice navigating
3. No flash for camera but it does have a night mode for dark photos
4.Will not ply MP3’s yet, still seeing if I can find a way to do that
5.Waterway maps do not display right when used with other maps with the street/topo maps

Plenty Room for storage of other Micro sd cards if needed



100% Solar no batteries



Waterproof

Maps-Road/Topos/Waterway





Picture taking with GPS above water



Picture taking with GPS below water

Again if I've wasted your time my apologies but I definitely have a world unit that has universal batteries and I can use to drive with as well as off the beating path and the display is so bright it makes a great back up flashlight.

Thank you very much for posting the review falcon5000. Looks like a great GPS for the off road crowd.

Thank You 7point82, I am glad you liked it.

Thanks for taking time to post the review, Falcon500. Gear reviews of all kinds are always much appreciated by many here.

Nice review and great pics. Thanks for sharing. My negative for the new touch screen GPS units is you have to remove any gloves to use them. I often wear light gloves in the wilderness, Nomex flight gloves or some warmer gloves in colder weather. Removing them to touch the screen is a hassle to my way of thinking.

Great review, thank you

I have a number of geocaching buddies who are salivating over this. I don't know what type of antenna it has (patch or quad-helix), I suspect it is similar to the 78 series. The larger size makes it a cross between the Nuvi/Oregon/78 series models.

I have the 62s which is the gold standard for geocachers at the moment and it's quad-helix is the best antenna in the market. The battery options and the large screen size of the Montana will make it a great auto/hand held crossover unit but at 11.2 oz it's not for the ultralights out there.

HARD DRIVE??? Are you sure? I'm pretty sure it takes SD cards.

Great review and thanks for taking the time to post it. Have you experimented with the turn by turn voice yet? I have a 3 year old Nuvi and a loud Jeep and I can barely hear my Nuvi's speaker. I heard the latest models can play the voice through the car's radio via an FM signal but it sounds like this feature was left out of the Montana. I'd really like to hear more about the Montana's speaker if you've used it.

widget, I know what you mean with gloves and touchscreens. I haven't tried it with gloves on, I'll have to experiment with it.

Roarmeister, my bad, didn't mean a hard drive, I'm not sure what they are using for internal 3.5 gigs of memory, the external memory is a microsd card, the internal has to be some sort of flash memory.

NuggetHoarder, I use it in both my car and truck using the garmins external speaker cradle and it's pretty loud with no problem hearing it. As for a jeep without the top it may be harder to hear. It has a headset jack identical to a laptop and you can run it into a amp which will go trough your speakers or use one of those audio to FM transmitters that are real cheap and transmit it to the radio station and crank it up. This is the mount I got and the speaker is pretty loud but without the jeep top might need boosted a little. https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=89574
The turn by turn navigation is the same like the Nuvi, it gives you a boat load of different voices to use in all different languages.

And thanks all for the kind posts.

Excellent review F5K!! I like your list of pro's and con's. They sum up your thought well.

Question to you and others who might theorize ...

Do you have any idea why the GPS is so large and "brick" like?

I know they can put the GPS receiver in a tiny package, and would suspect that the display can be kept fairly small (ala smart phones), so that leads me to wonder if the size is mostly related to the battery - power needes - and needing to provide sufficient hours of operation.

I tend to wonder if the large color display has a substantial power consumption (as does my Droid 2) and thus they need to include a fairly large battery.

Just wondering.

widget, I went to the extreme today and put on Snow Ski gloves and could use the unit with no problems, I just had these big fingers but adapted very quickly.

NuggetHoarder, I was thinking about trying to make a video for you to show the audio capabilities. If I get some time I'll try and do that.

KenK, I still don't know why the big case, I have a droid as well with a camera. The unit has a external antenna port, headset port and a mini usb port, has the camera built in, a GPS antenna and a wireless antenna as well for the Garmin wireless unit transfer plus the battery pack consumes a lot of the space since it has a dual function with the 2 battery options. It is built like a tank, I would seriously doubt you will hurt this thing and in a worse case scenario, you can throw it at a charging bear and put it's eye out One thing is the chip set with this unit is phenomenal, I have never had a unit lock on to sats so quickly and coverage. I was very impressed I can turn the unit off and go a long way out and have it aquire my location so quickly.

Izzy, I saw the new etrex line up and they look good, I had considered them before buying this unit but I had gotten tired of the old joystick feature from the old HCX models, that is why I went to the Dakota a while back for the touchscreen. Plus my eyes aren't as good as they were when I was young and needed a bigger screen instead of putting glasses on to look at the screen on the etrex series. I didn't see too much improvement with the new design except for the faster chip set, screen resolution and a tougher shell. If you like that style it would be a improvement. I had wished more they had improved on the Dakota's screen brightness.

Good to know it can be worked with gloves, thanks for that. I know my HTC Incredible 2 would be a challenge with a glove on, I don't use any nav features on it though. I have my trusty old Map 60 Cx which has served me well. I also have a Nuvi 255W for the cars and it works very well. I do need to update my maps though. What am I waiting for!