Garmin GPSMAP 478 3.7-Inch Waterproof Marine GPS and Chartplotter

I love this GPS.The Con's are, it would be great to include inland lakes and ocean on one GPS, did garmin ever think that someone may actually want to take their boat on both or is this a ploy to make you purchase memory and an additional CD. The second downside is the menu's can be confusing and if you are at sea and dont remember what keys to push and are constantly going back to the quickstart guide it become irritating. This issue may not be relevant if you are a prior garmin user or once you have used it for a while and get used to the menus.The Pro's are numerous, for such a small screen it is incredibly bright and easy to read. The detail is extremly good. The battery life is at least 4 to 6 hours if you dim it down.Overall a good product.

Yes, all products have a learning curve and the Garmin GPSMap 478 is no exception. This said, the 478 is a very useful tool in any environment. It will guide you to roadway destinations with precision and charm (using the voice feature) and plot a course through nationwide costal cruising. Add on features expand its use to enhanced weather data, depth sounding, fish finding, satellite radio and more. I have only had the unit for a short time and already see it as a great asset in the car and essential on the boat. Coastal cruising here I come!

I bought the unit NEW from Amazon and received it on Jan 3 2009. The sound didn't work, so after dealing with Garmin's customer service I sent my 12V cord/speaker to Garmin waited three weeks and received a replacement. Still no sound. Garmin then told me to send the unit back to them for replacement. About three weeks after sending the unit to them, I received a replacement, only this one had a loose antenna. The GPS worked fine at first, then it started having trouble finding satellites. Garmin then told me to send the GPS back to them for inspection and sent me a replacement about three weeks later. Now this GPS does not charge. The battery is dead.All of this within seven months of spending close to $700.00 for a NEW GPS and an additional $30.00 in shipping and insurance.

I've owned the Garmin 478 for a couple of years and while I've generally found it to be a good unit, there are a couple of problems I've encountered. First, the power/recharge plug is very poorly designed (as others here have noted) and isn't sealed against the elements if you use this on an open boat. Second, and more problematic, is that the unit is held together with small steel screws that have begun to corrode and will over time expand and cause the plastic case to crack. These should clearly have been made of stainless steel. After trying unsuccessfully to get someone from Garmin tech support on the phone, they emailed me to say there was nothing they could do about the corrosion...

Battery has a very poor lifespan. Good marine and land GPS so it works well on my boat as well as in my car. Screen is more than big enough for my 28 foot express cruiser. Sometimes the display dims out.

I have been using this unit for about a month now. It is really great. I wasn't sure I wanted to spend this much for a GPS and so I almost went with a handheld model (GPSMap 76CSx) instead, but by the time I added up all the extras I needed for the handheld (memory card, maps, etc.), it was almost as much as this unit. I am very happy with this purchase and would heartily recommend it to others.The BlueChart g2 marine charts are really great, and this unit comes with everything preloaded. I love being able to move from my car to my boat with this unit without even turning it off. The battery keeps her going. In fact, I haven't even installed the power cord yet on my boat yet because the battery keeps this baby going for many hours just fine. The boat mount keeps it pretty secure, but I did have it fall off once when hitting some rough waves. Because I didn't have a power cord plugged into the unit, it dropped about 4 feet to the deck. The unit held up fine from being dropped like this. I just put it back in the mount and kept going as if nothing happened.The g2 charts are impressively detailed, giving island and reef names, showing contours of channels, rock piles, channel markers, depths, etc. The unit tracks where I go both on land and sea and has plenty of memory for keeping the tracks for many trips.The unit acquires satellites pretty fast and is very accurate. I can tell immediately what part of my driveway I am on. Amazing. The speed this unit reports corresponds almost exactly with the speedometer on my car and instantaneously tracks with it. It will even tell me how fast I am walking as I carry it to the boat from my car. The voice prompts work very nicely through the included car power cord with speaker when navigating to destinations. I like the sand bag mount for the car because I can use it in any car without installing anything. It nicely sits right on the dash. The unit has a very nice option to power on automatically when the car is started and to power off automatically when the car is turned off. There are many points of interest preloaded into the unit. If I want to find the nearest McDonalds, Burger King, Walmart, etc., it is as easy and scrolling through the menu to navigate right to it. I find the menu system very easy to maneuver. This GPS includes tide tables for numerous locations near me. It reports sunrise & sunset times, moon rise and set times, as well as fishing quality prediction. I really like that I can later buy sonar and xm satellite antenna to work with this unit. I'm interested in the weather information, but the satellite subscription price is the thing keeping me from adding it now. The price is $30 to $50 per month depending on the amount of weather information that I want. If that price comes down, I could see myself adding it in the future.The unit comes with MapSource software that lets me backup my waypoints, routes and tracks. I haven't used it too much yet, but I did notice that it would not backup the maps. I waiting for an e-mail from tech support to find out why. I used the Web Updater from Garmin and had a problem where the g2 maps seemed to disappear. It was very easy to get a tech support rep on the phone who helped me turn off the automotive maps in order to see the g2 charts. For some reason, the updater left both maps enabled when only one should be enabled at a time. Tech Support response from e-mail has been very quick and good. I'm comfortable that Garmin is standing behind this product.Cons:I live near sea level in Florida, and I have seen the elevation drift sometimes by as much as 90 feet even when I'm sitting still. This does not happen all the time, but it has happened a few times, and so if it tells me I'm at 20 ft elevation or 2 feet elevation, I'm not sure I can believe it.The power plug seems rather difficult to plug into the unit. I wish it was easier.The little rubber covers also don't always fit nicely over the holes they are suppose to cover.My street name changed about 6 years ago, and the unit reports both names depending on where I am on the street. Mostly it reports the wrong name. I assume that newer maps in the future would correct this problem.All these negatives I mention are relatively minor. Overall, I am very happy with the purchase and heartily recommend it to others.

Can't go wrong with a Garmin product. I received mine with no coastal maps loaded on to it and called Garmin about the issue. They had the maps to me right away and I was ready to go. Their customer service is excellent. This unit was very useable for my boat and my car which came in real handy as I did not want two GPS units. This is a high quality unit and works nicely. I would recommend.

Outstanding product! Kit contains everything you need for boating and automobile usage and its user friendly converting easily from water to street applications. Large screen with great backlighting making it easy to see while on the water in poor lighting and weather conditions. I am also impressed with how long the battery lasts even with the backlight on maximum intensity. Before purchasing I had read about the poor quality of the 12 volt adaptor but haven't had any issues with my unit.