Good Stuff!

The Garmin 60 CSx is a great GPS. There are plenty of reviews that attest to this and I love it too! The unit is very well designed and the weak points would not be noticed by typical users. That said, below are some of the less appealing details of this unit.

The User Interface is clumsy at best. There are a lot of short cut features that are really nice, like dropping flags. The search functions are very clumsy, but within that limitation pretty well designed.

There is a bug in the software that trashes the repeat key feature if you are pressing a button when the unit does an automatic map update; requiring a reboot to get the scroll function to adequately work again.

The unit is overall very resilient. I have powered it off and on a variety of times, even when it is likely that there is a FLASH update in process and it seems to manage well.

The unit can operate for about 30 hours on a couple of 2,000 ma NiMH batteries (backlight on in the PM when needed).

The screen is not big enough. More pixels in the same space would be nice, but a larger screen with better resolution would be great (my eyes are not what they once were ;^)

The map data is another issue.

It seems that the v7 US map does not have complete navigation information on side streets. I was 200 feet from a house and asked for the route and the unit directed back to the highway and come in again, passing its current location.

The latest marine map v8.5 seems to not like working with the v7 street guide. If they are not compatible, Garmin should allow for a switch from marine to street mode.

Many of the points of interest listed are not where they say or do not exist at all. They need to confirm the map data before a major release. What they consider a point of interest is also debatable. It would be great if there were a Google/Yhaoo bridge for points of interest. Being able to pull down a whole city worth of data and edit what is loaded would be nice.

Garmin support is hard to get through to. I called for almost an hour and have sent three EMails... with no response (the PC software got into a security funk, which I resolved by hacking on the registry... ick). They have not clearly said what size uSD chips are supported. I'd be glad to drop in a 1 or 2 GB chip, if they say it does not have problems.

Runnig a 256 MB chip is enough to load the entire US east coast as well as several sections of the marine maps.

The upload facility is nice, as it allows for the saving and updating of state. The PC management software is clumsy and if the file format was described it would be nice to be able to edit them with a text editor.

The external electrical interfaces are very well designed, even over designed, given the need for physical electrical connection. For a marine unit this is not ideal. There are methods of communicating power and information to that do not require physical contact; via induction. It would be great if Garmin would champion this necessary technology.

Taking power from the USB port is a nice touch. It would be great if they allowed a trickle charge of the batteries from the USB. Not much, just enough to keep them topped off, against a need for internal use (like when the boat hits a rock in the middle of the night and you NEED a GPS that works reliably (yes keep a set of lithium batteries nearby, but that may not be good enough in an emergency).

This review has been written after more than 6 months of experiecne with the unit, traveling all over the US east coast.