Garmin 152 GPS / Plotter - Worth Buying ?

[chrome dome]

G'day,
can someone tell me if these are any good,
l think they've been discontinued?
have seen one for $100 AU 2nd hand,
thought it 'sounded' cheap but don't know ANYTHING about them and can only find one review which basically said get something better,
just thinking about it for my son's runabout in his local Oz waterways
would appreciate an honest opinion..good or bad,
TIA,
cheers

[svHyLyte]

Originally Posted by chrome dome

G'day,
can someone tell me if these are any good,
l think they've been discontinued?
have seen one for $100 AU 2nd hand,
thought it 'sounded' cheap but don't know ANYTHING about them and can only find one review which basically said get something better,
just thinking about it for my son's runabout in his local Oz waterways
would appreciate an honest opinion..good or bad,
TIA,
cheers

Are you referring to the GPSMap 162? (I cannot find a referance to a 152.) If the 162, we have had one installed at our helm station since 2002 and have been pretty satisfied with the device. Being Black and White it is not quite as good as the color units (the 172 for example) but it is functional. The drawbacks are that it has relatively limited memory hence one's ability to load charts is accordingly limited and-being older technology-the redraw time, for example when one changes scales-is slower than one might like but, thus far it has been sufficient enough that I have not been able to justify buying a replacement. Note that the charts must be on the Garmin CD and you must purchase the "key" (unless the seller is including these as well). The unit will "talk" to a computer if you are using one of the lap-top charting programs or if you have Garmin's nRoute loaded.

FWIW...

[barnakiel]

152 is not a plotter - it will not take charts. It may have navaids database but then that's it. Garmin used to make b&w plotters but nomore.

I like 152 very much.

b.

[chrome dome]

thanks for the info,
svHyLyte, l dunno whether it's the same as the 162, after doing a bit of searching l found the 152 on the U.S. Garmin site, it's not on the local one though,
barnakeil, thanks for the clarification, l've had a bit of a read about it and decided to give it a miss,
will look at dedicated GPs/chartplotters down the track a bit,
thanks again,