This is an overall great unit for what I use it for. I don’t use the XM or Weather functionality yet but I will in the near future when I start using it on my kayak for ocean fishing. I give it 4 stars simply because I don’t know how XM and Weather work yet. For everything else it’s 5 stars all the way. (For outdoor activity use. I wouldn’t use it for road navigation.)

I’ve used this for Geo Caching, Hiking, Hunting,and Kayaking and so far it works great. The aerial maps from Bushnell are very detailed and provide a great perspective on the land around you. The downfall is that you must purchase the maps only from Bushnell. Not a big deal overall but they are a bit tricky to download initially. Once you learn how to do it it’s not bad. The ability to customize the display and layer maps and info on top of each other is awesome. Additionally, its very comfortable in your hand and has one of the largest display screens available for a hand held GPS.

A minor inconvenience is that you must use the proprietary battery that comes with the unit rather than generic AA’s. This hasn’t been an issue for me since the battery life is quite long with the Lithium rechargable battery supplied and I haven’t been able to deplete it yet with over 8 hours of continuous use on most days. I recommend using the battery saver function of the unit if you really want to get long length out of it, it greatly improves the amount of time you have. I plan on buying an additional battery in the near future for longer trips and for ensuring I have enough juice for the weather function when I’m out in the Gulf of Mexico. They are availabe both directly from Bushnell for $44 and also on Amazon for around $34.

For Geo caching it’s a good unit once you load in the locations, however, you have to manually enter each one. If you want something specifically for Geo Caching there are other units with more specialized downloading ability and you will probably be happier with them.

Overall, I love this GPS and will be loyal to Bushnell for a long time because of it.

(If you get one you may want to ensure you get a “Gen 2″ version if it’s available. It has everything the ‘Gen 1″ does but also includes a function that shows peak fishing and hunting times.)

(Also- If you don’t need the XM or Weather functionality I’d look at the Onix 350 since it’s much less expensive but with all the other features of the 400.)
Rating: 4 / 5

[...]

Mostly there are cons about this unit:

The biggest con is that this unit uses a proprietary format for image overlays (aerial as they call it), tracks/trails and topo maps (which are open to public use in electronic form from the USGS). None of the formats is documented. Looking at the image format, it appears to be a modified JPEG EXIF format with some header information removed and some other proprietary data used at the begining of the file. There is no other software that I have found that can create or upload information to the unit besides the accompanying software, which doesn’t load popular formats for trails/tracks. This leaves you to manually input waypoints. Supposedly GPSBabel is working on the format but the last post I saw about it was months old.

Aquisition of satellites is comparatively slow to popular car GPS models

The lower cover that goes over the charging and USB ports is not attached. I lost it after two days. Is the unit weather proof now?

The unit shipped with the ear phone cover/insert out of the jack and I have not been able to get it in the jack. Weather proof?? It is attached to the casing though, wonder why they didn’t do it for the charging/usb ports.

The charging port uses some sort of proprietary connector rather than some standard DC connector. It cannot be charged from the USB port. So, solar charging without an inverter is not an option (that I am aware of certainly).

The electronic compass doesn’t seem to work at all. If you turn around in place, the compass needle will turn in all sorts of directions.

The USB rate is incredibly slow. It took maybe a half hour to load the firmware update. Interestingly, a portion (part 1 of 2) of the firmware available on their website is older than my unit’s firmware.

When you “safely remove hardware” in windows, the unit still thinks its connected and leaves up a do not disconnect screen. If you try to shut the unit off at this point, it just gets hung with a “shutting down” message. So far, the only thing I can do is remove the power cord and battery to get it back into normal operating mode.

The software is horrendous.. It amazes me when someone can design a fairly complicated piece of equipment and then put out such horrible software which is comparatively simple to implement. If you can’t make good software, at least publish the file specs so others can create useful software for the device. In this case the bean counters were obviously intent on selling maps rather than a quality device and software. The help menu only has a typical “About..” item. There are folders for overlays, topos and trails but no menu option to add any of those items. The only thing you can do is manually enter way points.

The only good point I can speak to at this point is that the battery seems to last fairly long and the device itself is easy to use. I had it on in GPS mode, no XM, no other power saving, with backlight on and it stayed on most of the day. I suspect it will work significantly longer in the “Safe Track” mode. Although, I have tried it in safe track and found that, at least in a car, when the unit is turned on, it still takes some time to figure out where it is. I thought the whole point of Safe Track mode was that it was supposed to stay aquired without using much battery.

My only hope is that myself or someone at GPSBabel will be able to bring out the true capability of this hardware.

Rating: 1 / 5

I am thoroughly disappointed with this product. The software for use with a PC is difficult to use and understand, and instructions are not helpful. To make this unit useable, you must purchase and download maps- well, my unit goes into a coma and will not respond at all unless I remove the battery. It does show position well, but is hard to navigate with the controls. About all I can get it to do is show me an aerial photo of the Washington monument. It is huge. All of the efforts they took to make it waterproof were a waste because the headphone jack and data port openings have near useless and ineffective caps. After having owned a Garmin etrex legend, it would be hard to imagine a more cumbersome, difficult to use, USELESS and expensive piece of garbage. In addition to making a great Ping Pong paddle, I think it would be a great target for sighting in a rifle.
Rating: 1 / 5

This unit may or may not end up being useful, but the getting started curve is way too high.

First, it is not Mac compatible. If you plug the USB port into a Mac, it won’t recognize or mount it. The internal memory is an SD card, so you could probably plug it into an outboard SD card reader; I haven’t tried that, not having a reader handy. The product box and literature doesn’t say “PC Only” anywhere that I saw.

Second, the map download interface is clumsy and simply doesn’t work. You outline a map area, save it to some kind of browser pseudo-folder, drag that into a download box, and click download. Nothing happens. You then read the on-line help, which says to turn off popup blocking. Do it all again, and you’ll get a popup telling you to please select some sort of directory first. (And it suggests the wrong one, if you’re running Vista or WIn7.) And that’s it. Poof. No download, no files, no place to select directories, nothing. (This is using Firefox, I refuse to use IE for simple web browsing.) And, just to piss you off, the “Contact Us” emailer from the downloader page produces a “no such email address” message after you’ve typed in your message and clicked send.

The unit itself seems a bit slow, and responds erratically to the arrow buttons; sometimes the left and right buttons don’t seem to work. The battery life seems poor, I ran it down halfway just playing with it for an hour.

So far, it’s been a dud.
Rating: 2 / 5

I thought it was a great idea and I bought it to use on my boat in Lake Winnepausakee so it can guide me while cruising and I can listen to the satellite radio BUT I was faced with the following problems:

1-It took me 3 trials to activate the XM radio, after that it could never update the weather data. The radio reception was erratic eventhough I was using it in the middle of the lake,no buildings or trees blocking?

2- The software does not work with Vista,I kept going in circles and I had to use my old XP computer

3- I could not download any of the maps I was going in circles and I had to contact the support service, they were very helpful but they discovered that the unit was defective and they asked me to send it back to be fixed.

So far I dont have a functional unit to give a real review the only thing positive was the support technician who was very helpful.
Rating: 1 / 5