By way of amends for recommending buying a MM 3500 in the 33% off sale at Blacks, when it clearly said on the front page “Offer excludes GPS” 😳 this deal’s for real.

However, if you have any old GPS unit, you can get them effectively for cheaper from memory Map… £299 less £50 trade in.

http://shop.memory-map.co.uk/acatalog/info_Adventurer_3500_Great_Britain_GPS.html

Do you have one MTG? I’ve heard far from great things about their reliability. Was pondering one but put off by stories of woe.

LOL, and £250 from Evans with their extra 10offdeal voucher code 😉

Until recently, they were £400ish everywhere since they first came out.
I wasn’t aware that a few retailers have dropped the price now and that OS deal is nothing special.

cp, yes, I got one for mountain bike orienteering as I wanted to be able to read it while riding and it was the biggest screen available.
I had problems with mine at first, being unable to turn it on.
It turns out there was a known problem with the brightness control. There are two ways of adjusting it and if you got them conflicting it would default to minimum brightness, or something like that, so it was turning on, I just couldn’t see the screen.
I can’t remember what I did, but it’s OK now. I think the problems been sorted now anyway.
Other than that, it’s been OK for reliability, battery life etc.
The only two faults I’ve found are that the screen doesn’t scroll very well at all, it jumps about all over the place. This may be because it’s a bit scratched. I should have bought a screen protector from new.
It doesn’t like hard bumps either. I’ve never dropped the unit it’s self, but if I crash or the bike falls over hard, it will switch off.

Is a device like this worth it relative to phone-based gps stuff? I have viewranger on my defy, and I think the whole UK landranger is 90 quid for that app. What sort of considerations would push you towards the dedicated GPS?

I’ve moved nearish to the peaks, and am familiarising myself with a lot of the classic routes. There’s that many turnings on wee paths and roads that a gps on the bars is looking like a good idea.

As you’ve mentioned, you can attach to the bars. A dedicated unit is much more robust than a phone, generally (though I’m not so sure about the MM 3500 as apparently they are a repackaged PDA essentially). Battery life on dedicated units is usally FAR batter than a phone. You’re not relying on one device for navigation & emergency calls if need be. etc….

(I’m also just tying to justify the fact I just bought a new edge 800 with OS50 mapping!… it was a bargain though)…

I’ve had one for a while. Its ace, when it works.
Presently been sent back for the 4th time (it won’t switch on) and i’ve asked for a refund…