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Customer Reviews and Ratings for Garmin Foretrex 301 |
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100% of our reviewers recommend this item.
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The Cat
Wainwright
Nov 22, 2011
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EVERYBODY MUST HAVE ONE
Pros: easy use
Cons: none
Very good product for the price, had too beat by other companies. Product is user friendly
Recommend? YES
13 viewers found this helpful.
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Jay
Ontario
Sep 8, 2011
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GARMIN FORETREX 301
Awesome gps very user friendly. Has everything you need. The fact that it allows you to have your hands free for other things is great
Recommend? YES
12 viewers found this helpful.
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BALIAS , OLIVIER
ABYMES, GUADELOUPE
Aug 23, 2011
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FORETREX 301
It's a very good product and the delivery is very fast!
Recommend? YES
21 viewers found this helpful.
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spjinseattle
Seattle, WA
Jul 20, 2011
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NICE LITTLE GPS
Pros: small and powerful
Cons: no basemap
I use this unit as a secondary GPS when navigating via GPS on a dual-sport motorcycle off-road. My main unit, a Garmin HCx, follows tracks and when needed gives me a nice basemap. I use the Foretrex to follow a route, giving me a compass heading & bearing, name of the next waypoint, and distance-to-next. This set-up works very well.
Recommend? YES
76 viewers found this helpful.
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Jim
Vallejo, CA
May 26, 2011
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"DIRT BOAT" GPS
Pros: /rugged and handy
Cons: none
I use my Foretrex 301 to navigate my "dirt boat"....which is a small land yacht with a mast and sail, powered by the wind. It has wheels and I run it on dry lake beds. I have no suspension, so vibration can be severe, and the 301 just eats it up. I am primarily concerned with the speedometer, odometer and highest speed reached and am quite pleased with the convenience of my 301. We are also having an event similar to geocache where we navigate to a position, get a new set of coordinates and go there, and then go to a third point. Navigation is accurate and handy, as it requires both hands for me to sail my "boat"....and hang on.... /This is a great gps.
I have owned over 20 gps' over the years and currently own four units, all specialized for different uses. You guys are my number one supplier, as you have the best prices and the best customer care that I could imagine. Please keep up the great work....you get ALL of my gps business.
Jim Spiva Vallejo, CA
Recommend? YES
58 viewers found this helpful.
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odoitau
Quesnel, BC
Apr 4, 2011
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GOOD VALUE
Pros: works on linux systems
I picked this up as a replacement for my old eTrex, and I'm very happy with it. The interface is basically the same, but the improved antenna is superb (no more signal loss). This unit is very versatile and portable you can wear it on your wrist and not even notice. Battery life isn't the 18hours quoted in the specs, but a pair of NiMH AAA batteries will last for a day outdoors.
I especially like the fact that I can connect the unit to my Linux computer and still access the data (the Foretrex provides data to the computer through a built-in mass-storage device.) It also means I can use the Garmin Connect service without having to run Windows.
Recommend? YES
72 viewers found this helpful.
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Luc
Montreal, QC
Mar 28, 2011
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NICE GPS
I'm using this GPS for windsurfing. Mainly for speed reading, distance, track... Lightweight and waterproof! More information on this little thing than what I really need. All this for the price of a watch!
Recommend? YES
94 viewers found this helpful.
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Spyke555
Montreal, QC, Canada
Dec 29, 2010
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GREAT FOR SAR WORK
Pros: replacable batteries, wrist mounted, tiny unit
Cons: no accuracy value in configurable fields, aaas
Used this GPS for Search and Rescue work and it is a great performer. The fact that it is wrist mounted means I can get the info I need at a glance and don't have to tie up a hand. Makes taking note on maps and notepads SO much easier!
I did considered the Foretrex 401 for a while but based on my past experience with another Garmin model which had the compass and barometric pressure sensor I passed on these and saved some bucks.
Have seen many reviews mentionning issues with the wrist strap extender and have found this to be invaluable for wearing the unit on my wrist over clothing. The basic strap is great if you are mounting the unit to your bare wrist, but put on a jacket and you end up with an uncomfortably small amount of velcro securing a critical piece of kit. The trick with the wrist strap extender is to realise that once installed you can wrap the "male" velcro of the extender all the way to the "female" velcro of the original strap. Much more secure!
Love the fact that this takes regular batteries. Would have prefered AA style batteries compared to the AAA used here, but then that would have made the unit bigger / heavier. So the slightly less common and a little more expensive AAAs are a necessary evil. Battery life is dramatically shortened by backlight use, so do make sure you turn that off when not needed and keep spare batteries handy.
Only real dissapointment with this unit is that the accuracy value can not be displayed in any of the confirurable fields. Instead you need to navigate to the GPS status screen via the menu. This is a critical piece of info in my opinion and I now need to dig through menus to read it. On the bright side this is a very sensitive unit and your rarely need to worry about reception.
This unit does not have build-in maps capability, so it is best used in combonation with a paper map. These offer more detail than the digital maps on GPS units. Even though my previous GPS had the digital maps loaded, I'd find myself favouring the paper maps anyway. The "map" view, once populated with waypoints and tracks does a decent job of keeping your oriented. This does mean that you're not getting street routing capabilities either, but then if that's what you're looking for better get a dedicated unit for that which will do more than just beep at you when it'is time to turn...
By far though my favourite feature is the bearing and distance displays for next waypoint. This combined with a real compass makes very quick work of getting from point to point. I did find that the unit would not automatically switch to the next waypoint on a planed route. I needed to manually tell the unit which waypoint I wanted to go to next. May have been operator error, or maybe the waypoints were a little off from where I was on the trail (planned the route on a map that did not show the trails) but a few clicks later we were back on our way.
Oh and the waypoint projection is limited to 100m increments, so if you're looking to go to 250m from your current location you need to project to 300m and stop short. Not ideal but workable, and most people will rarely use this feature anyway.
Overall thought this is a very good, no nonsence GPS reciever. So far I've used 90% of the features built into the unit, and can easily see myself making use of all of them eventually. This means you're getting exactly what you need with no additional fluff or gadgets getting in the way or complicating the unit. Bang for the buck you really can't go wrong here.
Recommend? YES
126 viewers found this helpful.
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eos4life
Montreal, QC
Sep 22, 2010
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GREATGPS FOR WINDSURFING AND KITESURFING
Pros: small, no more charging batteries.
Cons: water tight battery cover unsure over time.
I had the previous generation (Foretrex 201). This one is as good if not better. Smaller, regualr batteries so you are never stock without being able to use it. You do have to keep spare batteries around though -) It is also smaller. I use mine to check the max speed and challenge my buddies. I use the trip odometer to see how many miles iI logged in my session. My only concern is the battery cover. I hope it will retain his water tight property.
Recommend? YES
90 viewers found this helpful.
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Bill
Des Moines, IA
Jun 7, 2010
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I LIKE IT.
I am into sailing, like to race, and need a knot meter that displays to a tenth of a knot, This works great for that pupose. I don't wear it myself, but give it to my crew and just ask for speed when I need it. I had an earlier model of the same unit, but misplaced it. I believe this model is slightly smaller than the earlier version. I like the fact that it uses batteries and does not require and external power source to recharge.
Recommend? YES
116 viewers found this helpful.
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Larry
NC
May 14, 2010
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GARMIN DROPS THE BALL AGAIN
Pros: many
Cons: can only display time-of-day to the nearest minute
I have used the Foretrex 201 for years, so I looked forward to a successor with a high sensitivity receiver. However, there was one small but inexcusable problem with the 201 that has been repeated in the 301/401 models: It is impossible to display time-of-day to the nearest second. I contacted Garmin several times about this problem with the 201, but their software updates never addressed it. Now they have exported this deficiency to their latest model. Sure, space is limited in the quarter-screen fields, but HH:MM:SS will fit in the half-screen fields. Garmin displays HH:MM:SS in the full-width fields in the 72 series GPS, and HH:MM in the smaller fields, so why not in the Foretrex Series?
Garmin had the foresight to include a count-down timer for sailboat class racing, but apparently forgot that in a handicapped pursuit race, your start time is given to the nearest second. The count down timer is no help in this case unless you can synchronize it to an accurate time-of- day source, like a GPS that will display HH:MM:SS.
Even though it would be a simple programming change, Garmin support tells me they will probably never fix this shortcoming unless they get a lot of complaints. They don't seem to think there is any valid reason to need the time to the nearest second.
Recommend? YES
136 viewers found this helpful.
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Rick Lepine
Edmonton, AB
Jan 15, 2010
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FORETREX 301 AWESOME TOOL FOR OUTDOOR
Pros: handfree, fairly user friendly, great reception
Cons: bulky, uncomfortable wrist strap
There are but very minor issues with this item so I'll mention them first:
Wrist strap design - It should be free flowing on the strap underneath the 301 and not attached to a separate piece. At the point where it attach, the material is reinforced and not flexible, Thus not allowing a good fit. A bit more a material could be allowed to better wrap. The extender it comes with is only practical for mounting the 301 to a larger object than a human wrist.
Solution: Once purchasing the 301 remove the wrist band and attach your own design.
As for the functionality of the 301, I used it in -45C temp (w/windchill) exposure for a period of 7 hours consecutively and it performed better than my Dakota 20.
Excellent Reception in deep valleys, and thick forest (Spruces) coverage. Accuracy achieved to ground zero was under 3 feet (1m).
Recommend? YES
236 viewers found this helpful.
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