Item Description
Manufacturer's Description
Garmin Foretrex 401
The Foretrex® 401 is ideal if you want to get active with out acquiring lost. Whether or not you happen to be on a leisurely hike or a far more extreme adventure, Foretrex enables your hands to be no cost to focus on the path ahead whilst ensuring you make it to your destination.
The Foretrex 401 is rugged and lighter than a great number of watches as well as waterproof. It capabilities an electronic compass, a barometric altimeter and a USB interface. You can even wirelessly share routes, tracks and waypoints between units. It also incorporates a trip laptop, sunrise/sunset and hunting and fishing data and can connect to your Computer. When it is time to head back, merely turn on the TracBack® function, and Foretrex will retrace your path back to exactly where you started. With Foretrex, you can often find your way back.
Awesome for a assortment of activites
The Foretrex 401 is an uncomplicated-to-use wrist-mounted high-sensitivity GPS navigator. It is excellent for active adventures that demand you to keep both hands cost-free such as hiking, skiing, camping, and it is even utilised by the military.
Navigate with ease
The Foretrex 401 can shop up to 500 waypoints and 20 routes so you can navigate from point to point and chronicle your journey as you go. The dual-position readout means you can view your current place in many formats, such as latitude/longitude and an alternate position format of your selection so you'll at all times know where you are.
Navigates with ease
The electronic compass helps you get your bearings and points you towards your destination, even when you are standing still. And the barometric altimeter offers precise elevation readings - ideal if you happen to be out hiking in the hills.
Retrace Your MethodsNo matter where your adventure takes you, you'll under no circumstances be concerned about finding lost with the Foretrex 401. Foretrex keeps track of your path and displays it as a dotted trail on the screen. Just turn on Foretrex's TracBack® feature, and you can retrace your path back to exactly where you started. You can save locations in memory as waypoints, so you can normally obtain your way back to any crucial location, like your campsite or car. And with up to 17 hours of battery life and replaceable AAA batteries, you'll by no means worry about producing it back.
Track Your DataForetrex 401 lets you create and shop routes to all of your favored places and supplies other beneficial specifics, such as a trip pc, sunrise/sunset times and hunting and fishing specifics. To keep track of your trip, connect your Foretrex to your Pc or Mac with USB to shop your waypoints, routes and tracks on your computer.
Share information wirelessly
Waypoints, routes and tracks can be shared wirelessly with certain Foretrex, Oregon and Colarado devices with no require for a laptop or computer. You can also connect Foretrex to your laptop with USB.
Extra accessories
For even extra data, connect Foretrex 401 to a wireless accessory, such as a Garmin heart rate monitor and/or cadence sensor, so you can see how difficult you're working on your trip. You can even clip it on your bike with the optional bike mount.
Box Contains
By : Garmin
List Price :
Price : £128.00
You Save : £51.99 (29%)
Product Details
- Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 13.5 x 13.7 cm ; 86 g
- Boxed-product Weight: 454 g
- Delivery Destinations: Visit the Delivery Destinations Help page to see where this item can be delivered.Find out more about our Delivery Rates and Returns Policy
- Item model number: 010-00777-00
- ASIN: B002EOSQII
- Date first available at Amazon.co.uk: 7 July 2009
Garmin Foretrex 401 GPS Watch
Technical Details
- High-sensitivity GPS receiver for improved performance and reception
- Unit-to-unit wireless data transfer capabilities for waypoints, routes and tracks
- Electronic compass and barometric
- USB interface
- Waterproof standard: IEC 60529 IPX7
- Rugged, lightweight
Costumer Reviews
This is my initial walking/trekking GPS and I am normally especially pleased with it. I'm glad I opted for a wrist worn device, rather than a portable brick, even if it does lack colour and mapping. For me a significant element of the enjoyment of trekking is the exploration and navigation and I want to use the Foretrex as a companion to a traditional map and compass. I don't feel prepared for a Satmap Active however and anyway, I've observed the price of the maps!
The GPS sensitivity is really good and in the open the Foretrex typically reports a position accuracy of 3m. Before setting off I set it down in the open for a couple of minutes, so as to get wonderful satellite locks.
As opposed to some men and women I have no difficulty with the length of the Velcro strap. Perhaps I have a thin wrist or Garmin have merely created it for the European rather than American physique! It is not uncomfortable to wear and the pins holding the strap are quite possibly additional robust than they appear. It is not exactly a fashion statement, but then it is not supposed to be.
I purchased the Foretrex 401 instead the 301 as I thought I'd like the ability to link to a heart rate monitor (see update beneath). The electronic compass, altitude and barometer functions are interesting extras but, if I'm honest, up to now I could have managed without them. I'm sure the altimeter and barometer would be more useful in the mountains than in the Suffolk countryside! I also regarded as the Garmin Forerunner series. Some of the Forerunners are really cute but they are intended even more for fitness coaching than navigation and the lack of an OS grid reference was the show stopper for me.
I acquire that it is vital to manually calibrate the altimeter at the begin of each and every trip as it takes about an hour for the auto calibration to take effect. I so wish that the altimeter calibration function had been a lot easier to access, perhaps from the Elevation page. When calibrated, I've found the altimeter to be surprisingly correct (within a couple of metres), at least at walking speed when weather conditions are stable. If there had been rapid adjustments in barometric pressure it would most likely take a whilst for the automobile calibration to adjust. I'd like the barometric pressure to be shown as well as the altitude on the Elevation page and I'd also like to have a barometric pressure log, to help monitor climate alterations.
You can not use the Foretrex to replace a standard compass. The electronic compass demands to be calibrated just about every time you alter batteries. Even with cautious calibration (I sit it as level as potential on an workplace chair and slowly rotate the chair twice!) it is typically quite a few degrees out and a lot much more than that if it isn't held perfectly level. Any error in the compass bearing impacts the bearing pointer and if you're not careful it could send you seriously off course. At this value I certainly feel Garmin should use a 3 axis sensor.
If you suspect the electronic compass is out of calibration you are much better off turning it off and working with the GPS derived compass, as long as you are moving. I now display the bearing to subsequent waypoint field on the compass page and then sight this bearing utilizing a traditional compass - it's a lot far more accurate. It is also valuable to monitor the bearing if your intention is head in a straight line to the next waypoint. In this case the bearing field really should stay continuous. If the bearing decreases you're moving too far to the right, if it increases you are moving too far to the left (the reverse if you're taking a back bearing).
I'm utilizing Eneloop rechargeable batteries which give me adequate life for two or 3 decent walks - in all probability about 15 hours with the compass on. I've noticed that some men and women report battery life as low as 4 hours. If you use these batteries it's necessary to ensure you set the battery solution in the technique setup to NiMH, otherwise the Foretrex will likely give you a premature indication of the battery becoming empty.
When navigating a route I'd like there to be an optional beep alert as the subsequent waypoint is approached. There is only a beep when approaching the final destination.
For a casual walk I do not constantly want to do a lot of route preparing. To prepare a route with all the waypoints and download them to the Foretex appears to take as long as the walk itself! Rather, I like to use a paper map and compass and use the Foretrex as a track logger and navigational assistant. For this I'd genuinely like to be in a position to mark waypoints on my route (which you can do) and have data fields for distance from last waypoint, bearing from final waypoint and perhaps time from final waypoint. I was genuinely surprised that these information fields are not out there.
The addition of a thermometer might be beneficial, even though it would almost certainly be difficult for it to measure ambient air temperature accurately.
Not having utilized a Garmin GPS ahead of it took me a whilst to understand some of the selections settings. The owner's manual is extremely terse. It does not even mention all the solutions and those it does mention it does not explain fully. For instance, it would have helped to understand how automobile route leg transitions perform (at some point I located a description of this over the internet).
There is no application software package supplied with the unit and you are left to uncover for your self how to acquire BaseCamp and link into Google Earth. I enter waypoints in Google Earth and export them as KML files. I then convert them to GPX. Uploading walked tracks to Google Earth is terrific, even though the existing version of Google Earth appears to reduce the number of track points. This degrades the path accuracy and reduces the total track lengths slightly.
A couple of ideas about building and navigating routes. It appears that when setting the Foretrex to start navigating a route it ignores the 1st waypoint in the route. Bearing this in mind I define the very first waypoint as my starting point. I've found Foretrex to be pretty intelligent and if you enable navigation in the middle of a route it understands exactly where you are on the route and navigates you to the appropriate subsequent waypoint (I envision it would have difficulty understanding what you want to do on routes that wind back tightly on themselves). For a circular walk define the initial and last waypoints to be the same, eg WP00, otherwise when you commence to navigate a route Foretrex could quickly declare you have arrived at your destination! When you start the circular route navigation you'll then be asked if you want to Stick to to WP00 or if you want to Adhere to to WP00, which is not pretty valuable. Pick the second alternative if you want to adhere to a route from the 1st waypoints to the final waypoints on the route.
Overall I do like the Foretrex 401. There are some added functions I'd like, the manual could certainly be a lot greater and it will need to be supplied with at least some application software package. Having said that, it ticks all the major boxes and functions nicely, while the compass is a bit iffy. I do believe that it's expensive for what it is and I really feel it should be about half the cost - i.e. around £100 list, £70 discounted but then I guess it is very a specialist marketplace.
four stars does seem a bit mean and if Garmin had been to address a few points I'd be happy to rate it five stars.
28 June 2011 - Update
I nowadays received the Garmin Premium Heart Rate Monitor and have just reviewed it. Whilst it appears to do the job of measuring heart rate the software program assistance for the Foretrex 401 is quite dire. I've discovered that the heart rate data is only saved correctly in the ACTIVE LOG tracks and not in saved track data. Then if you use Garmin Connect to upload the activities you have to manually upload the Present.gpx file otherwise it doesn't contain the heart rate information. On leading of this you can't use BaseCamp to edit the ACTIVE LOG tracks if you want to preserve the heart rate information. It is all rather unfriendly and severely limits the usefulness of the heart rate monitor. I get the impression that Garmin don't want to help the crossover industry among navigation and fitness coaching.
27 July 2011 - Update
I lately removed the strap for the initially time in order to clean it. I then observed that the two lugs that house the nut inserts for the strap screws were badly cracked. It looked as if they'd soon split totally and the strap would detach. This could be a weakness in what is supposed to be a robust case design. Has any one else observed this challenge? To their credit Garmin promptly replaced my Foretrex with a new unit. I just hope the exact same thing does not happen once again next year.
I bought the 401 a month ago.
Due to the fact got out of the box put the batteries and I was amazed of how painless to operate it was.
Really good controls to operate when operating or walking with a single hand.
Excellent fit in your wrist little sufficient to have it in your wrist but large sufficient screen to stick to yourtraks, and bignumber quick to read.
Quite painless to download or upload traks from web-sites like wikilok or gpsies.
You will require quite possibly an accesory plan like very easy gps (you can download zero cost from the net into your computer)
Batteries last actually significantly more than 15 hours.
So a great piece of gear especially usefull for walking in the hills operating, cycling,geocatching,and so on.etc.
And even indoors at household the signal is especially beneficial.
I would recomend it.
Garmin Foretrex 401 GPS Watch
No comments:
Post a Comment