Garmin Oregon 400c – Touch the great outdoors
Form Factor – the Garmin Oregon 400c has a color touch screen. It easily fits in, and can be manipulated, with one hand. The screen has the same typical brightness as other Garmin handhelds. Not spectacular but hardly shabby. The screen is not affected by Polarized Glasses as many of these screens are when rotated. The Oregon 400c GPS receiver also comes with a nice Caribiner clip to attach it to a belt loop or whatever. The clip is removable. The bottom of the Garmin Oregon 400c has a rubber flap to protect the USB port. Inside the unit (when the batteries are removed) there is room for a Micro SD card.
Interface – This is where Garmin does things so well – they make it easy. The touchscreen is incredibly intuitive and easy to operate. For example, the databoxes in the upper corners of the chart screen – to change what they display just click on the box and make your selection. To scroll around the Map just drag your finger across the screen. To move around the menu just swipe your finger across the screen like an iPhone. It really is awesome. 
With a touchscreen unit only the buttons that actually do anything at any given time are visible, so it makes knowing what to click at any given time quite intuitive.
Features – The feature set is through the roof for the Garmin Oregon 400c GPS. Changing between modes, or profiles as Garmin calls it, is super easy and can be done with a couple of screen taps. Scrolling around on the screen is done by dragging across the screen with your fingertip. Zooming is done by the transparent + and – button. Every screen has a little X or back arrow on the bottom left to move to the previous page or menu. Making waypoints is simple. Just tap on the screen where you want it, then confirm it as a waypoint. Once you save the waypoint you can edit it. The edit features are extensive – you can change name, symbol, depth, comments and more. While editing text a keyboard pops up with the whole alphabet, so editing a name or comments takes seconds.Routing is nice and easy too. You simply tap on Routes and either select a current route or build a new one. Building a new one requires the various waypoints to already be designated, then you pick among those waypoints to build the route. All very intuitive Garmin’s Where To feature now makes an appearance on this unit, the Garmin Oregon 400c. This feature has been very popular on the auto and larger marine units. Basically, after tapping the Where To button you can choose a route, or choose a waypoint, or choose a point of interest like a Marina. Once selected the Oregon 400c GPS will make that the active route or destination.
Compass – This unit actually has a built in compass. You hold the unit level while in Compass mode and a magnetic compass actually appears and finds North. Awesome little piece of redundancy.
Tides – the Garmin Oregon 400c GPS receiver has Tide Data built in for the whole USA, as well as Sunrise and Sunset, and Moon Phases. The area calculation tool basically stand at the edge of a section of land you want to measure, hit the start button then walk the perimeter of the land. Once back to your original position you hit the Calculate button and it will spit out the total acres. Pretty neat, this GPS has raised the bar. Garmin has done it again. Definitely highly recommended to anybody looking for a handheld.
