SatMap. Yet another GPS Brand

[photohiker]

You might have picked up that I am doing some walking in Scotland this year, and I've been beavering away to get ready - I've got to do all my own planning including route, stops, food and gear (and travel) for a 2 week ~300km walk across the highlands. One of the things on my to do list is to sort out what GPS and mapping I will be taking with me. That investigation has led me to the conclusion that if I want to have good UK mapping on my GPS, my current Vista Hcx won't cut it. You can get good mapping for more recent Garmins though - the Oregon and the Dakota. Whilst checking these out, I came across another brand that looks to be gaining traction with hikers (hillwalkers) in the UK: The SatMap 'Active 10'

The unit itself is a toughened case, weather resistant PDA style gadget sporting a 3.5" screen and good, current GPS hardware (Sirfstar III) It has been designed from the ground up as an off-road sports GPS, no on road auto-routing capability is present. Battery options include AA or lithium polymer 2700mAh powerpack, as well as 12v/240v. Users are reporting several trail-days battery life out of the LiPol battery. Weight is 175g + batteries. The unit has been on the market for around 3 years and the software and hardware appears to be stable. The manufacturer offers hardware upgrades and repairs for older units that may have had an accident or that need hardware features that have been added to more current models. The front screen is replaceable, so when you scratch it, you can order a new screen and make it like new again. The 'plus' model which comes with the LiPol battery option costs UKP378 ($660) which is in the ballpark of the higher spec Garmins.

Of course, hardware is no good if it doesn't have decent mapping, and this is something of a 2-edged sword in the UK, because they have excellent state-controlled mapping which is available for the SatMap in 1:25k and 1:50k (for the whole country) which by all accounts works brilliantly. It also costs a lot. For instance the whole of the UK at 1:50k costs about UKP200.00 ($350) I haven't looked what the whole of the UK at 25k:1 is, but it would be a lot... Better to just buy what you really need I guess. One of the interesting map options for me is the custom trail maps. You can send in a GPX of your intended route and they will cut a stripmap for the Active 10, 6km wide at 1:25k and 12km wide 1:50k. Costs are far more reasonable, 300km costs UKP78.00 They also offer a custom map service where you send in your map data and they will activate it for your Active 10 - you cannot add non-SatMap maps to the unit yourself.

Prices here are list, and include VAT. My experience is that you can get the VAT off stuff from the UK, and it usually costs about the same as the freight. You can also often do better than list if you keep your eyes open.

On the whole, it appears to have an interesting feature set, and offers a pretty good alternative to the other players in the market. I'm especially impressed with the repair upgrade options, and the availability of custom options with mapping. I've ordered one to try out. If it goes well, I will take it to Scotland, after that depending on how well it performs I may keep it and put Aussie mapping on it, or sell it on ebay.uk.

And yes, I will still be taking paper maps and compass with me to Scotland...

[Ent]

Hi Michael

Look forward to the reports and your experiences.

Cheers Brett

[MJD]

I came across these the other day while surfing the web. They look quite interesting. However, I can't find anything on making or using your own maps. The good news is that there was mention (on an Australian bicycle site) that these might be coming to Australia once the company works out how to cope with each state having its own "mapping department". I did download the manual for a look and would be interested to hear how you get on with one of these.

Another new entry to this market is the Memory-Map Adventurer 2800. Only comes with a rechargeable battery but is quite small.

[MJD]

There's a bit of a comparision of the SATMAP, the Adventurer and some Garmin models at:

http://www.escape2.co.uk/info/OS-mapping-GPS-s2009.pdf

[photohiker]

I came across these the other day while surfing the web. They look quite interesting. However, I can't find anything on making or using your own maps. The good news is that there was mention (on an Australian bicycle site) that these might be coming to Australia once the company works out how to cope with each state having its own "mapping department". I did download the manual for a look and would be interested to hear how you get on with one of these.

Another new entry to this market is the Memory-Map Adventurer 2800. Only comes with a rechargeable battery but is quite small.

The reason you cannot find anything on using or making your own maps is that there is none. Maps are locked to the SD Card at the factory. No idea if that status will change in the future, but my communications with the custom map department has revealed that they are investigating a downloadable map capability for things like openstreetmap. They will load your maps onto a SD card for you (for a fee) and I am looking at having this done for my local area with maps I already own so that I am accustomed to the unit before I get on the trail in Scotland.

I too have heard that Satmap have plans afoot to make the unit available here.

Whilst the Satmap may work out very well for Australia depending on mapping at release, the other unit that should be considered alongside it, especially if you wish to use your own mapping, is the TwoNav Aventura. Very similar specs but with more hardware facilities and a touch screen. It's dearer up front ($A999.00) but will come with useful maps pre-loaded and take just about any map. (think handheld OziExplorer type device) No UK mapping and patchy availability at the moment put me off it for my trip, but it's a solid contender for a do-it-all GPS in Australia.

Michael

[scrub master]

I lashed out and invested in a DeLorme PN-40 about 8 months ago - http://shop.delorme.com/OA_HTML/DELibeCCtdItemDetail.jsp?item=29388&section=10461 and the results have been nothing short of amazing. A word of caution though, as with any of these mapping GPS units, it's only as good as the data (maps) you have available. Being solely aimed at the US market, ALL of the data available from DeLorme only covers the US and Canada, but you do have the ability to make your own maps with their Xmap software. With my job, I am lucky to have access to the tasmap 1:25000 maps on DVD as well as detailed vector data covering the whole of the state which I have crunched onto the unit. As I said the results are truly amazing and I'm sure MJD, Ollster, SWTAS and a few others will back me up on this

Just as an aside, if you have the software to do it , this site has a lot of useful data which can be crunched onto Garmin mapping capable units - http://www.mapcruzin.com/