DeLorme Earthmate PN-20 Waterproof Hiking GPS
by Delorme Mapping
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List Price: Our Price: $189.00 You Save: $10.95 (5%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of DeLorme Earthmate PN-20 Waterproof Hiking GPS
Customer Review: Good beginning but had a way to go.
Summary: 3 Stars
If you want user friendly with rapid sat. reception get a garmin 60csx as i have one. however if you can deal with frustration hours of trying to figure out the directions and loading in all the maps and downloaded photos and actually get it to work you have a great device that does a good job showing your location superimposed over a map or an areal photo. not bad for foresty, perhaps seach and rescue however its slow. just have a few drinks ready when you plan to get the downloads and get the external memory chip and READER. to slow when using usb cable.
cheers
Customer Review: meant for hikers
Summary: 3 Stars
I have been very happy with the Delorme products on my laptop. I have also been quite unhappy with other GPS devices like Garmin and TomTom, so I decided to try the PN-20. This is for use in a vehicle and the display on the PN-20 is too small for use in a vehicle. I have returned the PN-20 and will continue using my laptop.
Customer Review: Earthmate GPS
Summary: 3 Stars
My Earthmate GPS works great. The only thing I would change is the USB plug on the devise. It sometimes fails to make good contact and needs to be cleaned befor connection. I also would like to have control over the device odometer so I can match it up with the actual miles I have on my bike.Customer Review: Great maps and product, horrible horrible customer service
Summary: 2 Stars
Read the email thread below.
Me:
I have been unable to use my PN20 since I bought the thing. The software was not compatible with my laptop, and every time I thought I'd loaded my media card with maps they did not appear on the PN20 in the field. Furthermore, the rechargeable batteries never fully charged and so the entire device was dead within hours of turning it on. I feel that as an early-adopter, I paid the price. Would it be possible to exchange for a newer model that might not have these issues and may in fact actually serve its purpose? I've emailed before, received no responses.
Them:
Thank you for contacting Delorme Sales and Service. we are sorry but we do not offer any up-grades, or trade-in-programs. Just as one cannot trade in a digital camera or other hardware product when a newer model is released, the same is true for our GPS lineup. We appreciate your interest and please contact us if you would like additional information on the new PN-60.
If you have any further questions or issues, please reply to this email.
Me:
So what you're telling me is that after a completely unsatisfactory experience as one of your early PN-series customers and having paid full price for the device, I'll have to take the same risk all over again and spend even more money, all on the off-chance that I _might_ get a solution that actually works for me this time? Hmm. Sounds like a terrible idea. Maybe I should let others know that this is your marketing plan? Epinions maybe? Yelp? CNET? Or maybe it would just be simpler to post it on the blog I maintain for the Sierra Club. Seriously, think about it. Secondly, I don't see the comparison to a digital camera... there is hardly any software to manage and its a mainstream device, while yours is highly specialized and entirely tied to a complex and frankly user-unfriendly software package. Not that you are listening of course. This probably goes to a robot somewhere in New Delhi. I can't imagine an intelligent human being with any personal investment in the quality of your product coming up the thoughtless boilerplate response you've provided below. In any case, it gets pasted into my user review on the web. You reap what you sow.
So basically, if you are lucky enough to have a laptop that works with the device, and you manage to fudge your way through the clunky menus on the device itself to be sure you actually loaded the maps and not just the routes on the media card BEFORE you leave the house and BEFORE your janky batteries flatline, then you're well on your way to having a usable GPS. Keep in mind, however, that there are alot of solutions available now that enable you to simply load software, set up a route, and a couple of clicks and plugs later, you're on the trail happily playing with your GPS and watching yourself walk across the topo lines.
Customer Review: GPS device is decent, software isn't.
Summary: 2 Stars
I have been using Delorme software since Street Atlas 4.0 (1996) and their Earthmate GPS devices since they were released- unfortunately the software interface has barely changed since then and it's difficult to use when compared to much more intuitive mapping software like Google Maps/Earth, Microsoft Live Maps, and Mapquest. In fact after buying Street Atlas 2007 last year and a car with a GPS built in I figured I would probably never buy or need Delorme software again... but then I picked up a boat... in researching products I was back at Topo USA 7 and from both the box of the product and the Delorme website you see it mention NOAA marine charts and I thought that this was the answer I needed, when I saw it packaged with a new Earthmate color screen GPS and considered myself lucky.
I was not. the software came in and I guess I could have lived with the dated Delorme interface, but the program is a memory hog and took close to an hour to install on a decent Sony Windows XP laptop with a gig of ram. Even after being installed the software is slow and "3D" mode whatever that is causes a fatal error, which is strange as Google Earth and other 3D software work just fine. Didn't matter too much, I wasn't interested in 3D, just those NOAA charts.
Unfortunately none of the charts are included... you must setup a web account and buy and download each chart- each one costing $10 and to cover say New York waterways in general would easily cost more than the device itself. No where on the box or website did it mention you had to pay extra for these charts- which is strange since it did mention you had to pay extra for the aerial/satellite imagery.
I purchased the 1 chart I would use the most and the process was fairly straightforward after I gave them all my personal and credit card info... Of course once the time came to put the chart on the GPS I was again stuck in what seemed like a much prolonged process of Topo7 making, saving, and then transferring the data to the device, it was close to another hour.
The Earthmate GPS PN-20 is decent enough. It was able to get a lock when I turned it on in my living room near the window which was impressive. I was sad to see it used 2 AA batteries and not some sort of rechargeable. Further upsetting was the non-standard USB or miniUSB cord but a USB cable specific only to the Earthmate PN-20 so if it is lost or damaged you'll only be buying your replacement from Delorme.
Overall I gave this 2 stars as I was disappointed on all accounts- I would have skipped on this purchase knowing what I know now.