June 3, 2021

The Garmin 66i

I just purchased a Garmin "GPSmap 66i" at the recent REI anniversary sale, paying $450 for it. I originally intended to buy an Inreach Explorer+, but they were out of stock and that nudged me in this direction. I figured I would get the 66i in hand, do a bunch of reading, then decide whether to keep the 66i or return and exchange it for the Explorer+.

My decision is to keep it. The Pros and Cons are as follows:

I was misled and told that it contained 24K maps for the entire US and this strongly influenced my initial decision. This is not true. It is preloaded with what appear to be fairly mediocre maps, perhaps 100K, of the entire US. The 24K maps are sold for $100 per region and I would need to buy two regions (West and Southwest) to have maps for both Arizona and California, spending $200 in the process.

Another point of confusion was a sticker on the box that said "made for iPhone/iPod". This is entirely misleading (and probably Apple pays Garmin to put it on there). There are not separate iPhone versus android versions of the 66i as this label might suggest. The necessary apps are available for android as well as iphone, so this label can be safely ignored by android users like myself.

I have lots of other notes on my decision elsewhere. It does boil down to your own priorities and budget. The following reviews are excellent. The REI review is succint and very good. The Hiker Guy review is much longer, but very much worth watching more than once.

Overview

The 66i is a 8.5 ounce device with a 1.5 by 2.5 inch color screen (240x400 pixel). Price is $600. Battery life is 35 hours when configured with 10 minute tracking intervals.

It can store 10000 waypoints, 250 routes (250 points per route), 250 tracks, with 20000 logged points, 250 saved gpx tracks and 300 saved fit activities. The Garmin 66i was released in June of 2019. So I am buying it 2 years after the release and some of the bugs I have read about have been fixed.

There is a learning curve with a GPS device like this, so you should expect to spend a few days learning how everything works.

The Screen

It has a 240x400 pixel color screen, 1.5 by 2.5 inch.

Compare this to my ancient Samsung S4 phone that I have been using as a GPS. The S4 has a 1080 by 1920 pixel screen (1080p), 2.5 by 4.5 inches by my measurement. That is about 4.5 times as many pixels measured in either direction, and about 20 times as many pixels overall.

In other words, using the 66i will be like looking through a knothole compared to my phone.

Interface

Some reviews complain about the "clunky" interface, but those are people who are spoiled by the high resolution touch screen on their smartphone. I am entirely happy with the rugged button driven interface on the 66i and I am especially pleased that it does not have a touch screen. Another comment on the interface is that it will be familiar to Garmin users coming from other units. They ought to be able to just pick it up, find buttons where they expect them and use it without much of a learning curve. Additionally, the interface is less dependent on fine motor skills, and ought to be more useful when stressed, cold, or wearing gloves.

Charging

I have had the unit for several months now, and just made the following pleasant discovery. When you connect the unit to a USB cable to charge it, the unit turns itself on and you get no useful indication of charging activity. So, turn it off. When you do this you get an icon of the battery with a charge percent below it. Just what I always wanted and was wishing for.

Tips and discoveries

Old hands with Garmin devices will find this silly perhaps, but here are some things I am learning and perhaps somewhat surprised by in my first few days with the 66i.

The "page" button cycles through various major screens and is quite handy. What is even more handy about it (and somewhat surprising) is when you see the screen you want, you just stop and wait a couple of seconds and it switches to that screen. No need to push enter.

To set a waypoint, there is a dedicated "mark" button -- I spent 5 minutes looking through menus trying to discover how to set a waypoint. Also if the map is not centered at your current location, they waypoint will be set wherever the map is centered.

The find button has sent me on a variety of wild goose chases. I get the message, "This route may take a long time to calculate, consider adding via points". I wonder what the heck is going on (it is trying to generate turn by turn directions to get me somewhere apparently). You can cancel this by selecting "FIND" and then selecting "STOP Navigation" in the menu that appears. You can get into this same darned navigation mode by doing other things, like hitting "Go" when you are looking at a way point.

So, if I have moved on the map away from the current location, how do I get it to center the map again on my present position? They call this "pan mode" and there should be a white panning pointer along with a "dashboard" showing the distance and bearing from where you actually are to the point you have panned to. Just type "quit" to cancel all this and get back to the "normal" view with your current location at the center.

The device seems hell bent on starting to record activity. I go to Setup, Recording, and turn off "Auto Start". I also have to go to Recording Controls, stop and delete the current activity because of course it is busy recording by default.

To delete a recorded activity, find and select it (go to it so you see all the summary data) then hit menu and delete will be one of the options.

There is a "secret" feature. If the device is on and you briefly press the power button you will get (for a short while) a display that shows backlight level and battery life. It also has a "lock keys" option, and indicates if Wifi and blue tooth are on. With other units (like the 64) this was the only way to check battery status, but the 66i nicely shows battery status in the top left of the map screen.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's backpacking pages / tom@mmto.org