The Official Garmin 62, 64 and 78 Thread

Didn't find one, so I thought it was time to start one.

The GPSMap 62 and 78 series are the replacements for the venerable 60 and 76 models which have served us well for many years (and continue to serve well for many people).

I sold my 60 to buy an Oregon when I saw the higher resolution acreen on the more modern unit. Unfortunately it died while on a trip so I ended up getting the 62, and I like it a lot.

It has a more legible screen than the Oregon series, under most conditions, and especially when riding on the bike.

For those who want the 60/76 menu style, the 62/78 has a profile called "Classic" which does the trick.

Mounting the 62 on a bike:

RAM does not have a mount yet for the 62 but the 60 mount works reasonably well. Garmin has gone away from the button on the back which RAM used as part of their mount, so a complete redesign is probably necessary.

But when I bought my 62 I needed something to hold it so we tried the 60 mount and the bottom of the 62 fits snugly into the holder, and a heavy duty elastic band holds the top in very well. In about 1500 kilometers of motorcycle riding so far, it has not come off once. I do have it tethered to my handlebars, though, just in case.

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Nice! I didn't see that one the one I was futzing around with. I didn't much care for the way the "Page" button functioned, bringing up a menu rather than simply cycling through pages.

Do you have the receiver externally powered? How's the USB connector holding up?

So the 62's don’t have that 4 pin military grade water proof power connection that was on the 60 ? How water \ rock and roll \ jump \ dump \ mud \ fall proof is the power connection now
( tell me its more then just a USB connection )

nope, ditched the 4pin round and the serial/NMEA connection that went with it.

Makes it extremely difficult to connect to dataloggers or radios.

so no round attachment knob on the back on the 62? odd.
does garmin provide something in the package to attach it to a backpack?

isn't it primarily a handheld/geocaching/hiking gps that gained following w/ the adv as being rugged? the 60 is and i also use mine for hiking adventures also. the 60 includes that round knob and apropriate clip that attaches to a pack/belt.

bummer to see the round 4 pin plug go away. was useless to transfer data via serial but it made for a robust & waterproof power connection. usb is nowhere as robust unless someone is making some special sealed end cables i haven't found. the more i read about the 62 the happier i am to jumped on the closeout of the 60csx for $195 a few months ago.

how's the sceen? resolution? in the sun?

The "belt clip" on the 62's is a slide-in latchy kinda belt clip, similar to motorola pagers/radios. Maybe 1/8" engagement on either side.

Personally I'd like to see a better mounting system for the RAM mounts... the belt clips just aren't designed to hold up to the abuse of motorcycles/snowmobiles/mtb's. Something similar to the 76/78 or Stovebolt's system would be what i'd like to see.

got it. the 60 series seemed to morph over time into more rugged enviros thus the legacy clip. ultimately touratech's mount is the beefiest.
nothing from then yet either, but the 62 is new. what is stovebolt's? is that the guy on adv making a mount outta kydex?

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=550178

Just an observation on battery life wrt the 62: i have no intention of blowing up this gps as well as the other two which were bricked by my usb power cable, so I've been using the 62 on NiMh batteries, the ones which came with my Oregon 550.

Most days the batteries were pretty much dead after a day of riding but today I turned the light control completely off so even though I was using the controls and navigating with the unit, after a whole day of riding, 788 kilometers, the batteries still had four bars of power!

The display was always very easy to see under all conditions, from sunny to cloudy, so this makes it much less important for me to hook up external power as I did on the Oregon.

Odds are I'll keep the Oregon as well once it's repaired, but the 62 and 78 will be much better than the Oregon on a bike.

More info in another thread: http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=586861

Missed that. Perhaps someone could merge the two.

Here's how the RAM 60 mount fits the 62:




Works well enough, for the time being, until RAM makes a 62 mount.

Not going to be released until November, apparently, but this is what it will look like.



Details here.

http://www.gpscity.ca/ram-mount-garmin-gpsmap-62-62s-62st-mount-cradle-ram-hol-ga41u.html

Just lost my 60csx and looking for a new replacement ( if anybody finds one somewhere in western PA - call me )

But after seeing the new 62 just has that USB for power had me looking elsewhere - looks like the new 78 keeps its 4 pin power socket - and has the same size screen - anybody use it on the bike - or do I have to wear a captains hat and white flared paints. The one other good thing is if my bike sinks to the bottom of a river the 78 does float - so all will not be lost

but I am missing something ???

Did it pop out of RAM mount?

78 is just 76 with a vew new features. Many of us have been using them for years with no major problems. Great blow out deals on both old 60/76Cx units.

Some of us happen to think that the "new features" are worth switching for. I've had many 60s and 76s but I want better, now.

And there's no shortage of 60 and 76 topics, so can we keep this a 62/78 forum?

As mentioned in the Oregon/Dakota/Colorado forums already, the new Garmins allow you to have mapsets on the units with different names, and they can be enabled or disabled as needed.

Just an example of when this might be useful - my 62 has 1.7 gig of storage built in so I can load maps to that, and the Micro SD as well.

I have a Garmin MicroSD card with North America City Navigator on it, and there are times when I want to use this, but the card is only 2 gig and practically full with only the Garmin map, so I can't add anything substantial to that card.

Now my normal MicroSD card is 8 gig and includes all of a number of other Garmin products like Topo Canada V4 and Metroguide Canada, as well as others.

So what I've done is load a smaller set of my standard Topo V4 to the onboard memory of the 62, and named it Topo V4 (GPS - Small) and the large Topo map on the MicroSD card Topo V4 (SD - Full).

This way I can leave both in the gps and choose the one I want based on what kind of search I'm doing, and if I need to switch the MicroSD card for the City Navigator, I still have some Topos to use as well.

It may be that choosing to enable the smaller Topo mapset might make the unit search faster too. Maybe I'll do some tests on that later.

yeah - kinda - last time I saw it, it was mounted in my son's 7 year old hands


I might just get another 60csx if the price is right.

The 78 and 62 have identical menu and features. Only difference is form factor and the round powerplug is on 78 (ok.. and patch vs quad antenna).

I'm happy with my 78 for bike use. Others may prefer the 62 formfactor.. or price of an older model.

The real BIG difference is that the 62 has a quad helix antenna while the 78 only has a patch antenna.