Garmin GPS Receiver

The GPSMAP76CS continues the evolution of Garmin’s GPSMAP line of GPS receivers. It is well-suited for walking, car navigation and casual marine use. I already own a GPSMAP76S. The major advances of the 76CS are:

(1) Color TFT screen – makes it so easy to see your maps and data; it’s bright and sharp, easy to read in any light. The variable-level backlight is great in low-light situations. The night-time color scheme is pretty cool, too. You can have the receiver automatically switch between day/night color schemes at sunrise/sunset, or manually select the mode. There are several alternate color schemes for day or night-time use.

(2) Point-to-point automatic routing – works very well. There are two audio-visual prompts for each turn, one about a minute before, and again (with a different tone sequence) about 10 seconds before the turn. You can choose from several different tone sequences, but I’m happy with the defaults. The prompts display a zoomed-in view of the intersection (great for tricky interchange exits and ramps). If you miss a turn, it re-calculates your route to get you to the next point, or your destination. Generally it uses the most major roads available for routing. For areas that I know well, I may take a local road that I know will get me where I’m going sooner. When driving in unfamiliar territory, I rely on the route it calculates for the most part. Apparently, you can select variations on the routing algorithm on the “follow roads options” page: Car/Motorcycle (the one I use), Truck, Bus, Emergency, Taxi, Delivery, Pedestrian and Bicycle. I haven’t tried any of the other routing options yet. Overall, I would give the routing capability 4 stars.

(3) Customizable page sequence – in my other Garmin GPS receivers, you can cycle through the main pages forwards or backwards, but you can’t change the sequence. The 76CS lets you add, remove, or move individual pages within the sequence. I put the pages I use most often next to each other; I like this feature.

(4) Recent Finds page – a new feature and real time-saver when I want to go to a place that I’ve looked up before. I use this page so often, I added it to my main page sequence. However, I discovered you can bring up the Recent Finds page by pressing the Find button twice.

(5) More memory – 115 MB stores detailed map data from optional Mapsource CD ROM sets. I was able to load all of North Carolina and about half of South Carolina and Virginia from the North America City Select database. This is nearly 5 times the memory of the 76S!

(6) USB connection – my old 76S (with serial connection) takes the better part of an hour to load a full 24MB map set from the Mapsource CD ROMS. The USB connection on the 76CS makes loading the full 115MB much quicker. Also, loading waypoints, routes and tracks between the receiver and PC is way faster now.

Garmin periodically updates their GPS receivers’ software, and you can easily download the updates from the Garmin website. They have already posted an update to the GSPMAP76CS (version 3.40 was released June 8, 2004).

Quibbles: as mentioned in another review, you can’t customize the data fields display to show small data fields three-across, as you can with the 76S. Admittedly, the small data fields on the 76S are hard to read while driving; I would consider this a minor setback for the 76CS. One can still display up to 4 data fields in large or medium size as an option on several of the pages, much like the 76S.

One feature of the 76S that I like is the ability to show the name of the upcoming cross-street (when lock-on-roads is enabled). This is a useful feature when you’re just cruising around an unfamiliar part of a city. At first, I thought this was missing from the new 76CS, but I discovered that when the map has guidance text turned on all the time (instead of only when the unit is actively navigating) then when not navigating, the text area displays the upcoming street name. Another great feature of the 76S which carried over to the 76CS: graphic editing of a route. When the “use map” option is selecting while editing a route, move the pointing arrow to touch a route segment. The segment then appears as a dotted line, and if you press the Enter key, acts like a tight rubber band attached to the panning arrow. One can then move the panning arrow to any other map feature (for example an intersection) and press Enter to add an intermediate route point. I’ve found Garmin’s manuals provide a good introduction to basic operation, but may not cover all the features. However, I’ve found the 76CS operation to be fairly intuitive.

Now for the major gripe: to enter text or numbers, Garmin has reverted to the character matrix format (found, for example, on the Etrex Vista), where you move the cursor about a grid of letters and numbers, press Enter to select that character, then move the cursor to the next character, etc. Finally, you move the cursor to the “OK” spot on the grid and press Enter. On the 76S there’s no character grid, you just cursor left to clear a field, cursor up to advance the current letter or down to move back through the character set, then cursor right to select the next character, etc. I found this method fairly intuitive and much easier to use on the fly. Hopefully, Garmin will fix this in a future software update.

As with the GPSMAP76S, the sensors are a useful feature, particularly while walking. The compass can be used for getting a bearing while standing still, and the barometric altimeter provides useful information for those of us who just have to know, “how high (or low) are we?”. If you don’t need these features, the GPSMAP76C should work just as well at a lower price. Garmin’s GPSMAP60C / 60CS have the same color screen and similar software, but only 56 MB of memory in a smaller unit. Nearly all Garmin GPS receivers have rugged, waterproof cases, but I prefer the 76-series size and flat shape. They even float!

If you’re looking for a general-purpose, easy-to-read, easy-to-use mapping GPS receiver, you need look no further than the GPSMAP76CS (or GPSMAP76C without compass and altimeter). Garmin got it right with this one!

The Garmin 76CS is a major improvement over the Garmin 76S, which I also own. (See my review of the 76S on Amazon.com.) Not that the 76S is bad; it’s a fine unit. But the 76CS is better in significant ways.

Specifically:

1. The batteries last much longer, despite the more sophisticated color display. I haven’t managed to get the battery power to drop below 75% yet. In addition, the 76CS allows you to specify whether you’re using NiMH or NiCad batteries.

2. The color display is much easier to read than the grayscale on the 76S. The main reason I bought the 76CS is that I found the 76S’s grayscale display difficult to read in national forests using the Mapsource topographical maps, because the background (green) shows up as a solid gray.

3. The display automatically changes its color scheme after dark, and the default nighttime display is dazzling. It’s eerie to be riding my mountain bike after dark, push a button to light up the nighttime display, and feel like I’m reading the data panel of a modern jet.

4. The antenna is much more powerful. With the 76S, I would regularly receive no-satellite-reception messages when I went under tree canopies. This rarely happens with the 76CS.

So why four stars rather than five, given that I gave the 76S five stars when I reviewed it a couple of years ago? It’s because I’m now better acquainted with the quirks of these units, and Garmin hasn’t fixed all of them. Here are a few:

1. The compass is always demanding that you hold the unit level even when you’re sure that you are. It is extremely finicky.

2. I can’t tell whether elevation readings are coming from GPS triangulation or the air pressure barometer. When it says “elevation,” what is it measuring against?

3. The follow-the-road navigation feature operates anomalously in this area. Recently, on a drive from Oakland to Sacramento, it kept urging me to exit on, e.g., a side street in Vallejo and a couple of freeway junctions that wouldn’t take you to Sacramento. In the Oakland-Walnut Creek area, it seems to think that Calif. Hwy. 24 is Mt. Diablo Blvd. and that Calif. Hwy. 13, the Warren Fwy., is Warren Blvd. Hwy. 24 was built around 1960. And I wonder if the Warren Fwy. was known as Warren Blvd. 40 years ago.

4. The trip data page won’t display maximum elevation. I believe you can still get maximum elevation, but if so, you have to go to another page.

Despite these reservations, I can highly recommend the Garmin GPSMAP 76CS. It is a wonderful GPS receiver.

I have had this super gps for about 2 weeks. This is not for the faint at heart. The unit is PACKED full of items you may or may not ever use. The unit is definitely trying to be all things to all people.

This is not an exceedingly intuitive device, but after a couple of weeks I have most of it figured out. Plan on a fair amount of time, even to learn the basics. I wouldn’t recommend a wilderness adventure on the first day.

That being said, it is a wonderful mapping gps. I am a biologist, and needed it be able to stand up to field abuse at sea and on land. It performs VERY well in setting up routes, waypoints and tracking. I also decided to get the City Select software, which then turns into an car navigating gps. Very slick, easy to use, and big enough to read.

The software add-ons are quite expensive, so bear this in mind in your purchase price. You can not do road navigation unless you have the City Select or equivalent. I purchased the “Auto-Nav” kit, with an auto holder and dc power cord that attaches to the cigarette lighter. This also includes the City Select software, and the package was a great deal, just a bit more then the CD alone.

I am writing this to hopefully prevent others from spending the kind of money I have in finding what I firmly believe to be an amazing piece of gear. I have purchased the following GPS items over the past 2 years:
1) ALK Co-Pilot Live Laptop v7 (4 stars) – good for street navigation. It gets somewhat confused on which road you are on when close and parallel). NOTE: I did not have a WAAS enabled receiver.
2) Delorme Earthmate with Street Atlas 2004 software – (1 star – software was awful).
3) ALK Co-Pilot Live Laptop v8 (4 stars) same problem as above. I went to website to purchase WAAS receiver and decided ALK was charging too much given what I had already paid for the software. This led me to GARMIN…
4) First purchased the GPS 18 OEM (a WAAS USB receiver for a laptop). I had intended to use it with ALK software, only to find out that Garmin and ALK don’t “talk to each other, i.e. Garmin uses proprietary language for this (USB (vs. serial)) receiver.
5) Purchased another GPS 18 WITH the MapSource City Select v6 software (now I have a receiver in my wife’s car as well).
MapSource Software comments: This software has a “Windows” type interface (compared to ALK which has it’s own screen layout – very good I might add) that enables you to get into the data. I find it more to my liking, but I am a bit of a computer person (not quite a geek, but an accomplished user).
6) Purchased Garmin US Topo because I wanted to go backpacking and was interested in reviewing the layout. (I don’t think ALK has this and I am not sure about Delorme).
7) Of course, now I wanted to be able to carry this excellent info with me, which led me to the GPSMap 76CS. After reviewing the various models, I decided to go with the larger memory model. Of coarse, since I was in sooo deep, I purchased the car power supply, the car mount, the bike mount, and case. This is getting way too expensive!
Having laid out my trip info on computer, was ready to move it to the 76CS, when I was told the City Select maps were locked! Since I had already registered my 2 USB (GPS 18s) receivers and the software will only unlock two at a time, I was forced to spend another $139 to unlock the 76CS. Now to the experience:

This unit does it all! The navigation on the road is as good if not better than using the PC – something that amazed me since the screen is so much smaller. This wasn’t the reason I purchased it, but I will no longer have to connect my PC in the car!!! I can’t say enough about the navigation and software.
I went for a 5 mile hike on the Appalachian Trail and had preloaded the TOPO maps as well. Worked like a charm. I had put in a few waypoints in case the trail was difficult to find (and it was in some areas) and I am really glad I did. I used the “TrackBack” function (for testing only) and it worked to perfection. Once home, I downloaded my hike into my computer and could review all of my hike, seeing the climb in elevation changes graphically, etc. Again, the combination of software and hardware is EXTREMELY powerful.

Pros:
1) Does it all. Great reception. Powerful software built-in. Rugged design. Changeable batteries.
Cons: 1) Price of all of this – hopefully someone will read this and realize the best way to go. In my opinion, you can’t go wrong with the 76CS. Remember, the CitySelect software will unlock 2 units. After that you need to purchase another code.
2) As others have said, the software on the 76CS is not intuitive. If you hit menu again within submenus, many times there are additional options. But it really does cover everything. Good luck!

Well, I was going on a day hike so that provided a good excuse to buy one of these things. We were going through old growth forest on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. We were not on a maintained trail and wanted to explore a small lake we had seen on satellite photos. The GPSMap 76CS performed as expected. I lost the satellite signals a number of times in the forest but I think this was because I held the unit incorrectly. This unit has a quad helical antenna and should be held in the vertical plane when signals are weak.

Being able to download the National Park Topos helped place us anytime we could get a signal. We were working very hard scrambling up a steep hill and being able to show all parties where we were and where our destination was helped diffuse the “this is taking too long, let’s head back” syndrome. The batteries held up fine with a lot of use during one day. I did find that the size/weight was a bit much if you’re trying to travel light. After I got back I had second thoughts about the wisdom of buying this unit primarily for hiking because of the size and weight. I looked at the Geko and color eTrex units and concluded that for hiking, the new color eTrex Vista C would probably have been a better choice for me. The Geko can’t download topos, the screen is tiny and the AAA batteries don’t last long enough.

Anyway, the compass and altimeter features on the GPSMap 76CS worked well too. The memory on this unit is total overkill. I downloaded all the Mapsource topos for the Puget Sound area and a number of topos for the Olympic National Park and adjacent forest from the US Topo 24K CD. That took 5 meg of the unit’s 125 meg of memory. Yes, I know this unit is more of a marine unit or car unit so it was my mistake. If a marine application is what you are looking for, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. If you want to go hiking, get the eTrex Vista C.

I got the gpsmap 76cs just in time for a trip to Alaska. So far the unit is great. It acquires satellites faster than my old gpsmap 76, which is a much appreciated improvement. The new screen is great. Clearly readable without backlight in many different lighting conditions. The color is does not make the screen look washed out or illegible as with other units I have seen.

The new operating system is quite good though I have a few quibbles. The unit will not display as many data fields in certain views as the old operating system but it is also less cluttered. I have also always wondered why Garmin does not include GPS elevation as a data field choice. The lack of an SD card slot is mildly annoying but 115 mb with a USB port is a big improvement.

I would recommend this unit to anyone who is looking for a high quality color GPS. It is also worth noting the Garmin is really good about providing free updates to operating software.

This is the first gps unit I have bought, and it does most everything I hoped it would. I can load up both the city select maps and the topographic maps at the same time (you do have to pick which one to view, though, since it only displays one at a time) so I can navigate over the roads to a national park, then switch to the topographic map & go hiking.

Getting the 76 with its 115MB of memory was definitely a good idea–I took a trip of several hundred miles including a couple of major urban areas and I needed about 70MB to put in full detail maps of everything along my route.

Another thing I like is the AA batteries. One set lasts about a day and a half for me (a day being 10-12 hrs of continuous use), so if I am camping I just take a few extra sets and swap batteries when they get low (I don’t know what you do with rechargables when there is no electricity!)

A pleasant surprise was the sunlight-readable color display–it really is readable in direct sunlight! (unlike my cell phone’s color display)

It did take me several hours of playing around & a couple of test runs before I got familiar with it, but in the end it became pretty easy to use.

Let me say up front that I bought the 76cs almost exclusively for marine navigation. It is a great little GPS for that purpose and I’m sure it’s equally good for hiking. There are a lot better choices for auto navigation but I’m totally happy with it for my purpose.

I was initially quite skeptical that a handheld’s small screen real estate could be useful as a chart plotter. Nonetheless, I purchased and installed the Blue Chart Americas CD and activated the Caribbean charts. After 2 weeks of constant use sailing in the Windward Islands, I’m astounded at how well it works.

With the ‘declutter’ mode engaged, the screens show an appropriate level of detail and the display has excellent visibility in direct sun. Although the backlight is adequate for viewing in bright conditions under a boat’s bimini, I found that I actually preferred to hold it out in the direct sunlight. I particularly like the ability to customize the paging sequence and the autozoom feature is handy as well.

There is nothing intuitive about the interface but after I got over the learning curve, I was surprised how quickly I could get to the info I needed. Entering lat/lon waypoints is never going to be fun without a keyboard, but is certainly manageable. If you plan ahead, you can enter them on a PC and download them.

A storage card slot would be nice but the entire Caribbean chart set used less than 1/4 of the available memory and on the plus side the unit really is waterproof. The battery life is about as advertised and you can really stretch it by turning it off and on as you need it because it gets a fix in about 15 seconds if you haven’t moved too far.

Highly recommended!

I purchased the Garwin 76CS, then soon afterward purchased both MapSource ‘Bluechart’ and MapSource ‘City Navigator’. The 76CS seems to be in perfect working order, however, once I installed both MapSource programs and unlocked them, either the MapSource programs or my computer will not recognize the GPS unit. I have tried to update the drivers to no end, and I am still having no luck. I have spent around 4 hours on the phone with someone in Garmin’s technical department; this has not solved my problem.
If anyone has had a simular problem with getting MapSource to recognize the GPS 76CS unit, [...]Thanks.
KA

If your on the road or in the boat, this is the GPS for you. Has been Great. The only thing better would be Voice Navigation in the car but it does beep when a turn is coming. Highly recommend the device. The magnetic compass keeps you pointed in the right direction even when at idle.