10 excuses to buy a Gpsmap 62s

Here's a short list of excuses to justify that toy you always wanted...

• The Battery Contrary to popular belief, the iPad/2 is not the only device with 10hrs of battery life. The Gpsmap 62s chugs along for 15hrs on a pair of NiMH AA cells. Really. Now, can your Nuvi do that? Besides, you can always pop into a store and pick up alkaline cells for those rare emergencies.
• MCX Connector The Gpsmap 62s has an MCX connector for external antennas. You won't find this on an Oregon nor a Dakota. And only the older discontinued Nuvis have them. It's great for those who have fancy windshield solar films that block out more stuff than it should. You can stick the antenna on the car roof. The best thing about it is that the amplified antennas like the Gilsson are available for a very reasonable USD$25.
• IPX 7 Is your iPhone waterproof? Well, mine isn't. Whip out the Gpsmap 62s when everyone else is packing away their iPhones. It's true you can waterproof your phone by tucking it into a Ziplock bag. But then, you'll loose The Touch. And by the way, if you're into iPhones and trails or hobby mapping projects, check out Motion-X GPS.
• The Stubby It's different. There's an antenna sticking out of the casing! How cool is that. You can tell all your friends that it has a quadrifilar helix antenna. It'll pick up signals from satellite close to the horizon that patch antennas cannot see. Of course you may also want to downplay the fact that you might end up with more multipath interference in urban canyons.
• Buttons It's got BUTTONS! Did I mention it's different? Buttons are great for some things but I wish it had voice commands for when you need to key in addresses.
• The Display It's got a retro 65k colour transflective LCD screen with a purposeful 160x240 pixels. Unbelievably low tech by today's standards. But wait till you mount it on your bicycle and ride into the high noon sun. Your trusty Gpsmap 62s display will your maps in full glory with the backlight OFF while the others just fade away. No contest.
• Custom Maps and Bird's Eye imagery. It's like having cached Google Satellite maps overlaid on your Garmin maps. About time. It's available on Oregon and Dakota GPSRs too. Not supported on Nuvis.
• Barometer It's like having your own weather station. The algorithms used to measure altitude with both GPS coordinates and barometric pressure are somewhat obscure. I do not understand it. Both are problematic.
• Compass This is a lot like the iPhone compass except more highly damped so the needle doesn't do a rain dance when a truck or some other unidentified magnetic object blows past.
• For some reason, I can't come up with Excuse No. 10...