Garmin MapSource TOPO! US 24k West Topographic Coverage for California and Nevada (microSD/SD Card)

These are "the latest 25k topo maps". According to Garmin when I called them that is correct and being fair to this retailer I gave it 3 stars simply because their description is correct and they supplied the latest version. HOWEVER it would be good to know in advance that the "latest" version was last updated in April 2009 and doesn't contain road and city features much after 2005. When I called Garmin they confirmed this was the latest topo map and stated that topography doesn't move around or need updated and if I needed roads to use my Nuvi. I am a paraglider pilot and when I glide to some distant location and land I want to know where I am and I usually land next to a road. Garmin openly admitted they don't update the road and street information very often and searching these maps I could find multiple roads that were built between 2005 and 2009 that are not on these maps not to mention those built after April 2009.If you want reasonably detailed topography - that is hills, lakes, valleys, coastline etc or tacks and roads that existed prior to 2005 these maps are pretty good. If you are trying to locate a road name and where you are on it and the road was bulit after 2006 forget it the information isn't here. The best you can do is zoom out until it shows a road which being fair is always named and give that road and your GPS location to someone trying to find you.I love Garmin products and I like my Oregon 450t and my Nuvi 40LM, but I think it is a pretty poor excuse to say topo maps don't need to be updated with new roads more often than every 10 years or so when you own a company that can update my other product with detailed roads about every 2 years.It is silly to be told to state whether you would recommend these when there is no more up to date available! Read this review then decide if you want them at all. Bottom line they are better than 100k maps.

I went to several national parks in CA and used this in an Oregon 550. It wasn't particularly helpful, though I think if we had done more extreme hiking it would have been.In Death Valley National Park there wasn't a single trail shown in the map. Maybe they figured that mapping trails wasn't necessary in this particular park because everything is so open and most people drive rather than hike.In Sequoia we only went on short hikes that were mostly paved, but those weren't shown either. Again, maybe the thinking was that the simple, well-marked trails didn't need to be shown. Other longer trails seemed to be marked.In Yosemite we went on a long hike (Nevada Falls) that was shown. Here the map was not detailed enough to help us choose a direction when it wasn't clear which way the trail led, but it was useful to see how far we still had to go, how much we would have to climb, and if we had gotten way off the trail we would have seen which way to go to get back.A lot of the information in this map is in the base map. If you are a normal tourist you probably don't need this. If you are going on long extreme hikes where you don't see many other people it could be good to have.The improvement over the US topo base map is much smaller than the difference between the City Navigator driving maps versus the global base map.

I received these topo-maps about two weeks ago and used them for road navigation (car) and trail navigation (MTB) so far on an etrex Vista HCx. My overall impression is mixed I have to admit.From the start:Installation is nice and easy, just pop in the micro-SD, power up the Garmin and the gadget will do the rest. In less than 5 minutes the map-set is completely configured and ready to go. I like this much better than the hassle with the DVD and transfer via USB cable which takes aeons. I made a backup of the SD card, yet I don't know if this will work the reverse way if I have to restore the SD. I recently read that this might cause problems but I don't have any experience with this.Using it on the road it works well, fast calculation, precise directions. But this is definitely not what I bought it for.So I took it to Lake Chabot (Anthony Chabot Regional Park) and... I was lost. Not a single one of the trails going round the lake was indicated. I rode into the golf course trying to get through somewhere, had to go back. Next through a nearby village, again, no trail indicated. Asked a resident and she told me where to get back on the trail. Fine. At least I was able to use the compass with the map to get back to my starting point. All in all: disappointing.One week later up to Mission Peak. This time I was smarter and took a map of the Regional Preserve with me. And again, none of the trails indicated on the Garmin. Without the map I would have probably again been lost. Garmin and the map together worked well, but honestly saying the map alone would have been sufficient.There are however some trails correctly indicated in parks and preserves which I can tell because I rode them earlier. But you'll better make sure that trails are displayed on the Garmin BEFORE you go there. Otherwise take a paper map with you. Well, I know you should always do this when hiking in the mountains where no official trails exist. But for park trails??A downside of the SD card: you cannot use it on your PC for route planning, track or waypoint readout or whatever unless you have another map set on CD with the MapSource-SW. Think you can download MapSource from the Garmin homepage and activate it with the code of the SD-based maps? No way! Aaaaargh!!!Summary: If you need a supplement of topo-maps when you already own MapSource it is probably alright because you can easily check on your PC and plan your trip before hitting the trail. Or you can check if there is any trail indicated at all. For the actual price it is still alright, but always make sure you have a paper-made backup with you if you are not 100 % sure that you can rely on the etrex.