I would like to hear from any who has upgraded from the 76Cx to the 78 and can answer the following:
gpsmap78 versus 76
Jack,
The 78 series is a major upgrade over the 76Cx.
A basic comparison is at http://www.gpscity.com/compare/76csx&78sc . A good review is at http://gpstracklog.com/2012/08/garmin-gpsmap-78-review.html
Thanks Greg
We didn’t get any answers , so we went ahead and picked up two of them today.
Nanci who is much quicker then I quickly figured out how most everything works, and I found a few other things.
We are both pretty happy about how similar the two are.
The only thing we are stymied on right now is the lighting on the date of the tides. It is snowy and next to impossible to resd, and we can’t figure out how to change it. I figured I would call Garmin tomorrow
On the routes; we are constantly navigating routes that we set up on the 76Cx, and are hoping that is similar on the 78. We’ll be setting some up in the upcoming days as soon as this front passes through.
I saw that you were entered. Will see you on the beach
Jack L
Up date;
We bought two 78's and are returning them today.
As far as we are concerned, they are not an up grade, but have degraded.
The only thing better with them is catching the satellites quicker.
1. The screens and read outs are smaller
2. the north point is smaller
3. You need a magnifying glass to read the scale
4. If you want to find the tide, and find a station. Once you find it and hit "go", it wants to navigate you to the tide station. Instead you have to hit "menue" and then "review", (absolutey) stupid!
5 When you finally get the tide graph, instead of a moveable cross hair to find the tide in relation to the time of day, they have fine lines at every hour, (so fine you need a magnifying glass to see them. Then when you finally locate a line, there is no time shown on the screen, and when you go to another screen with the time, you lose the tide chart
6. the graphics are not nearly as clear as the 76Cx
7. Final straw was changing the batteries for the first time the other day, and when I removed them, the tiny flimsy metal cover for the map chip that they stupidly put under the batteries, flipped out with the batteries. Luckily I was sitting at the table. If I was in the kayak it would have been long gone.
If you are into geocaching it might be good, but for our use, the 76CX has it all over the 78
I would advise anyone who is thinking of up grading: don't waste your money.
Unfortunately they stopped making the 76Cx and no one has any to sell. We luckily scored one on E-bay which we grabbed.
I hope someone from Garmin reads this, since they don't seem to want to answer my e-mail
Jack L
78 shortcomings
Jack,
Sorry to hear the new model didn’t work for you. That said, the 78 series will only get better with new software updates, the 76 is dead.
It sounds like the tide screen is a deal-breaker for you. I agree that if you can’t read the data, you don’t have the data.
While I prefer the way tides were presented on the 76 with the moving cursor, it’s just not a deal-breaker for me. On the 78 tide graph, the text area above the graph scrolls up and down, to give the time of the highs and lows for the day in fairly large text. You don’t need to change screens.
BTW, once you use the find button to find the tide or current you want, you can just move the cursor slightly to select the tide/current icon, and then press enter to see the tide/current info. Or you can just press menu/review point.
I do have trouble with fine print on the currents screen. I agree Garmin should provide a method to make the print larger. I talked to Garmin support and suggested that this should be configurable like other text items, and should allow scrolling. If they really wanted to be fancy they could implement a cursor-controlled “magnifying” glass that enlarged the area beneath it.
FWIW, I don’t have the same experience on your other points, e.g. screen sharpness, etc. I’ll share my thoughts below, in case someone is debating on whether to get the 78.
I haven’t had any issue with the “chip clip”. It’s similar to how a SIM card is held in a cell phone. Did you have the clip in the locked position? Did you catch it with your fingernail? I prefer the chip under the batteries as it is a more watertight location than the chip slot on the 76.
I haven’t tried to email Garmin support, but I have never had to wait when I called them directly.
My old, beat-up 78Cx is collecting dust. If you need it cheap for a backup, send me email back-channel. For a back-up I got a regular 78 (my primary is the 78sc). I need the much-improved route capability of the 78 series and prefer it over the 76.
Greg
I have both the 76cx and the 78sc
I like the 78 much better. The screen is brighter, it acquires satellites much faster, the road routing (my main use) is much faster with the newer cpu, the memory capacity is 20x more, and you can download satellite pictures and maps.
I do agree that the tide graph is a little harder to read, but that’s not a big issue for me. I don’t do much salt.
The 78sc model also has all the marine Blue Charts built right in. They are amazing, even though I don’t use them much either. In addition to the blue charts, I can fit in both the road maps and topo maps for the entire eastern half of the USA and Canada.
The 76cx served me well for 8 years on the road, in the boat, and on the trail, but I find the 78sc much better with lots of improvements. With Energizer Ultimate lithium batteries, my 78 stayed on continuously (light off) for five days on an Adirondack trip last summer.
You hit the nail on the head Glen
the 78 probably is great for the road, but it is supposed to be a marine GPS.
When we initialized our new 78's they wanted to navigate us up Rt 1. - Go figure that. When you bring up a tide station and the prompt is "go" and you click on "go" it automatically wants to navigate you to that tide station. Who in the hell wants to navigate to a tide station?
They are probably great for the road and land but for our use as far as we are concerned it has regressed from the 76Cx.
Several days ago, we did a thirty five miler putting in a route. It was an out and back route, and we put in our points and programmed it for that. We turned around about fifty feet before the turn around point, and the thing never recognized it after five miles, and kept wanting us to go back. The 76Cx would recognize that after a few hundred yards, and then recalibrate sending us to the rest of the points for the return.
Jack L
teething and setup
I disagree. The 78 series IS designed for water. Both the 78 and 76 series are pretty mediocre for the road, IMO. I have a Nuvi for the road (voice instructions, etc).
I have been using the 78 for night routes in Mosquito lagoon and have been very pleased with the operation.
With the 78 when you come to the end of a route you have to go to the route planner and select “Reverse Route” option to return. If you plotted a route there and back, depending on what options you have set, you may need to get within a (configurable) proximity to the point, otherwise the GPS will not realize that you reached it and will keep directing you there. There are options for how the unit routes you to the next leg. You can set it to Automatic, Manual (which allows you to select the next leg) or by a certain distance.
You can choose to have the unit lock to a road, or not. I turn this off. If you choose the marine profile (profiles are new to the 78), it will set the options as you would expect for marine use. There are different profiles for marine, automotive, fitness, etc.
There are a lot of new and different features. It takes awhile to sort it out.
greetings I have a problem with downloading tracks from 76cx to Basecamp. Using a 76Csx (very old unit) I could make a new track simply by turning off unit and turning it back on, and then download the tracks to Basecamp. With newer 76cx I can make a new track by turning unit off and on, and I an see the track list in the track list, but when downloading to Basecamp the various tracks are connected together by straight lines end to end. Is there a way to prevent the various tracks being mashed together?
@Bluediesel said:
greetings I have a problem with downloading tracks from 76cx to Basecamp. Using a 76Csx (very old unit) I could make a new track simply by turning off unit and turning it back on, and then download the tracks to Basecamp. With newer 76cx I can make a new track by turning unit off and on, and I an see the track list in the track list, but when downloading to Basecamp the various tracks are connected together by straight lines end to end. Is there a way to prevent the various tracks being mashed together?
Download “Map Source” and then down load it to there. Each track is separate
I use Garmin Homeport (free) with my GPSMap78 units as it is marine-oriented and has some nice planning features. Very easy to manage routes, tracks, etc.
That said, a few things, like loading map sets, and Birds Eye registration, require Garmin Basecamp (also free), so I use both.
I don’t use Mapsource anymore. I thought it was obsolete?
@Bluediesel said:
Is there a way to prevent the various tracks being mashed together?
Short answer: don’t know, however to ‘unmash’: ‘Divide’ (in Tools) the track into desired segments (after uploading to BaseCamp)
Longer discussion:
I use a 78, however, still have a 76, but haven’t used it in years.
I just plugged it in with BaseCamp active.
It has a number of ‘tracks’ on it (from 2017).
With tracks named like: ‘ACTIVE LOG nnn’ (where nnn increases)
There are no ‘tracks’ covering more than one day.
There are many separate tracks on the same day.
This goes with what you are saying.
In the 78, you manage tracks differently.
They all go into one track ‘Current Track’, and you can ‘Archive’, ‘Save’, etc.
I don’t use that functionality, I just ‘edit’ the ‘Current Track’ in BaseCamp.
I save all my tracks from daily paddles (for my ‘paddling log’). (even from long trips, last one in '09: http://www.yakabout.us/fska/Aus09_trk.htm)
What I do:
After my paddle, I upload the ‘Current Track’, then ‘trim’ it for my trip, then rename it to ‘yyyymmdd’ (sometimes with a suffix of ‘a’,‘b’, etc)
With your 76, you could do something similar, you will probably do a combination of using the ‘Divide’ and ‘Join’ functions under Tools, or the ‘right-click’ menu (join isn’t under ‘Tools’).
The way I do it, is I ‘open’ (double-click) the track, then manually remove all points not of interest (I go to the ‘date’ I paddled, find when the speed starts moving, remove the junk, before trip & after)
I would run away from the 78sc GPS unit-- it will not display island names. This is a major limitation for a graphics map based GPS. If I had known this, I would not have bought it.
I had a Garmin Colorado 62 with g2 bluecharts and topo software–the 62 clearly displayed island names.
@ExploreNE said:
I would run away from the 78sc GPS unit-- it will not display island names. This is a major limitation for a graphics map based GPS. If I had known this, I would not have bought it.I had a Garmin Colorado 62 with g2 bluecharts and topo software–the 62 clearly displayed island names.
I warned you !
Hmmm. Here’s a screen capture from my GPSMap78sc, BlueChart (SW Florida 10,000 Islands), so yes, the 78sc does display island names just fine.
However, the mapping product makes a difference. BlueChart does not display names for many inland waterways, lagoons, etc. You will need a Garmin Topo to see island names there in many cases.
For example, in Mosquito Lagoon, Florida (inshore waters), Blue Chart does not show the Island names, but Topo does.
Greg Stamer
@gstamer said:
Hmmm. Here’s a screen capture from my GPSMap78sc, BlueChart (SW Florida 10,000 Islands), so yes, the 78sc does display island names just fine.
However, the mapping product makes a difference. BlueChart does not display names for many inland waterways, lagoons, etc. You will need a Garmin Topo to see island names there in many cases.For example, in Mosquito Lagoon, Florida (inshore waters), Blue Chart does not show the Island names, but Topo does.
Greg Stamer
May I ask you to disable all maps except the “stock G2” blue charts maps, point to Stonington, Maine, and see if any names of islands to the south of Stonington appear?
“Crotch Island” is easy to remember, and it is the source of granite for the finest kitchen counter tops too!
I am hoping their is a setting deep inside the menu system that is blocking the names.
As an aside, a marine GPS without Island names is much like an Automotive GPS without town names…useless. IMHO, Certainly the 78SC has port names, but Garmin is a bit too greedy to make us buy TOPO maps to see island names. Some of these islands are mere ledges of granite and no information from a topo map is useful.
In the mean time, I will call Garmin Support. If TOPO is needed, I will ask them for feasibility and cost.
Here’s a screen capture for what I see for “Crotch Island”, Garmin US Marine Detail g2 chart; (chart that is built-in to the GPSMap 78sc). I paddled this area of the Maine Island Trail a few years ago, and was able to see island names during that trip.
Names show even if I change the level of detail from “normal” to “least” detail. I’m guessing you must either have a setting that is causing issue or your map product has problems. Hopefully Garmin support will sort you out. They are usually fairly quick to answer.
Greg
Thanks! Garmin said I needed to buy topo. I will ask them again
I saw interesting things on the ledges west of the island and on reflector #22 at Stonington Harbor over Memorial Day weekend.
@gstamer said:
Here’s a screen capture for what I see for “Crotch Island”, Garmin US Marine Detail g2 chart; (chart that is built-in to the GPSMap 78sc). I paddled this area of the Maine Island Trail a few years ago, and was able to see island names during that trip.Names show even if I change the level of detail from “normal” to “least” detail. I’m guessing you must either have a setting that is causing issue or your map product has problems. Hopefully Garmin support will sort you out. They are usually fairly quick to answer.
Greg
Can you take a screen shot of the configure maps screen showing all the maps you have “enabled” and the specific version of US Marine Detail g2 chart? The tech support rep insists I have to buy more maps…If their tech support is correct, then they have “drained” the value of having island names out of the version of g2 that I received…
I checked on a newer GPSMap78sc that I rarely use (it’s a spare) and the island names were not showing by default. It appears that Garmin changed this for newer versions of bluechart.
Here is what worked for my newer unit: Go to the map screen. Click on Menu -> Setup Map -> Advanced Map Setup (Text Size, Zoom, etc.) -> Text Size. Map Points needs to be changed from None (I set to Small).
If the names show at some zoom levels but not others, experiment with the Zoom Levels for Map Points in the Setup Map menu (e.g. set to 20ft).
Greg