The GPSMAP 76CSx is is a high quality unit, built very rugged to ensure its compliance to the IPX7 standard, which among other things means that it is waterproof. Looks and feels good, and acquires quickly. The display is somewhat too small to take advantage of installed maps.
Tested hardware and software
The test was done using a Garmin GPSMAP 76CSx bought off the shelf, with an Atlantic/European basemap. To get decent map coverage the Mapsource City Navigator Europe maps were added. In order to test its usefulness in a car, a car kit was used.
The GPSMAP 76CSx has undergone a burn-in test, in which it was operating 16 hours a day. It has been exposed to and operated in heavy rain and cold as far North as The North Cape in Norway.
The Basics
The Garmin GPSMAP 76CSx comes with a 128Mb transflash/micro-SD memory card for instaling maps. It has a color screen and through the use of memory cards the ability to increase the map space to whatever capacity micro-SD/transflash cards come in. It is necessary to use a 4Gb card for all the City Navigator Europe version 9 maps, and it fits on the 4Gb card together with the necessary route indexing data needed for navigation. Be advised that loading all of Europe onto the 4Gb memory card takes several hours. The GPSMAP 76CSx has a maximum map set size limit of 1024, but it is currently not an issue, as all of Europe is made up of a total of 600 maps. It needs 2 AA size batteries.
Pros
The ability of the SIRF III chip in the GPSMAP 76CSx to find and use available GPS satellites is impressive. It seems better at picking up the satellite radio signals than previous Garmin units.
The GPSMAP 76CSx is rugged. It is obviously built to be able to handle nature, and not just nature at its best.
The GPSMAP 76CSx conforms to the IPX7 standard, which means that it can be held at 1 meter water depth for 30 minutes without problems.
The GPSMAP 76CSx swims. If dropped in water it doesn't sink.
The use of micro-SD memory cards makes it very easy to upgrade to a higher map capacity. The unit is currently being tested using a 4Gb memory card, and the increased memory size doesn't seem to make the unit slower.
There is not much maintenance of the unit - a damp cloth will usually do the trick.
The built-in USB 2.0 interface makes map updating much faster than you normally see in NMEA-compliant GPS receivers. This does not mean that you won't have to wait - loading a 512Mb memory card with maps can take an hour.
Garmin offers a pc webupdater program which checks for firmware updates to the unit as well as the SIRF chip when the Garmin is connected to the pc, and the pc is connected to the Internet. Updates fix issues with the unit so it's important to get the new upgrades as they come.
The GPSMAP 76CSx has a setup option to distinguish between the use of Alkaline batteries or NiMH rechargeable accumulators. NiMH accumulators are routinely used in this test and are recommended to cut operating costs.
Cons
The rocker used to choose options in menus is too imprecise - you frequently end up with wrong choices and have to go back and try again. This is a serious unit weakness.
The screen is too small considering the unit size, especially when using it in a car for navigation. The gps does all the right things with map scale resizing according to car speed, but at anything above town speeds the map gets so small that it is useless.
The physical size is a bit too large to be really practical for outdoor handheld use. It fits in a shirt pocket, but it fills it out completely. It is light compared to its size, and the large volume may have be chosen to make it buoyant.
The basemap is too coarse and imprecise to be of any real use, and you need to buy a Mapsource map product to be able to get useable maps for the unit. You should include the cost of the map product like The Mapsource City Navigator 9 when doing a price comparison with other GPS'es.
The unit backlight went out at one point, then turned on and off periodically and now stays off completely, even though the settings are for it to be on all the time. This means that it is effectively useless after sunset. After some weeks a replacement unit came back instead, which is fine, but the 2Gb Micro-SD memory card that was in the faulty unit has still not come back.
When using the GPSMAP 76CSx to do car navigation, it can give some strange directions that make no sense if you know the area. It doesn't help to create a route in the pc software and then download it to the unit - it's only the waypoints and route via's that get transferred, and the unit itself that does the calculations that are actually used to decide the directions. Apparently Garmin knows of the problem but when questioned simply replies that the "Unit operates according to specifications".
The 76CSx has a problem with memory cards which are not of the standard type. If you eg. try to use a Sandisk Ultra or Extreme memory card in the unit, then the card gets destroyed. You can only use the regular, slow types of memory cards. This was discovered both through personal experiences and confirmed by user group feedback. Fortunately the new 4Gb Micro-SD card works when the latest firmware update is installed.
Experiences
I brought the unit along to Greece, more specifically Athens, Attica and Peloponnese, and it was a real help getting around in a country with streetsigns written in an unfamiliar alphabet. The Mapsource City Navigator 9 maps are not that complete in Greece - the main road between the highway and the Oracle of Delphi used by the locals simply wasn't on it.
When driving through a tunnel without a clear view to the sky and satellite lock is lost, the 76CSx had periodical problems reacquiring after returning outside the tunnel. Instead it stated that satellite signals were weak, and this didn't change until you pressed menu and "New location", to let it begin a new acquisition. A recent firmware update has corrected this problem.
The 76CSx has been brought on an 11 day cruise up and down the Norwegian coast with Hurtigruten, and it was directly exposed to heavy downpour under force 6 winds or more on the Beaufort scale in the Trollfjord and Lofoten area twice. This presented the unit with no problems whatsoever. The display is lower than the top surface of the unit, so you need to manually wipe rain off of it, or turn it around and let the water run off occasionally. The Mapsource City Navigator map coverage of the Norwegian coastal region between Bergen and the Russian border at Kirkenes is excellent. It was kept on and working in the cabin with an external antenna attached and power supplied through its USB interface from a laptop (0.3A at 12V, power consumption of 3.6 Watt/hour with WAAS turned on).
The Garmin does well in strong heat. When going to and around in Paris, France during a heatwave, a PDA mounted next to the Garmin stopped working because of the intense heat, while the Garmin GPSMAP 76CSx kept working throughout.
Conclusion
The Garmin GPSMAP 76CSx is a high quality GPS receiver. It gives you a location quickly after power on, and is rugged. It is also going longer on a pair of batteries than you normally see in handheld units. The screen could/should be larger to make map reading reasonably possible, and the rocker should be more precise in its operation. The use of micro-SD/transflash memory cards for maps (the "x" in its model name) rather than the 115Mb in the 76CS model, gives it an even better map capacity. It doesn't seem to be slower with a 4Gb card with the complete European maps and navigational indexes loaded than it is with the supplied 128Mb card.
Being written by Hans-Henrik T. Ohlsen
Last update September 16, 2007