Garmin Explore‪™‬ 4+

Great 😃= route planning Ok 😐= Bluetooth sync with watch Extremely frustrating 😡 = deleting courses on watch, deletes corresponding course on explore. Why??? Just why Garmin? I want to clean my watch and save / sort routes on explore. It’s also very annoying that you can’t pan / easily zoom in and view a saved course without editing. Potential ✅= gpx route import could be better and allow you to rename / choose sort folder - the current implementation is annoying. Needs to support more maps and satellite map view. Would be great to be able to buy and sync maps to my watch. Os maps would be great. Viewing all my routes on the map and zooming out would be useful. It would be cool for example to navigate with watch and use the explore map as a high res os maps backup device if the route reaches a tricky bit - I love that the route / user location shows on explore, whilst navigating using my watch.

All garmin software is the worst I’ve ever used. Nothing works properly. Design is horrendous. Features are appalling, Bluetooth connection is a fight and only to 1 device (you have to delete the other first). You can’t even use software to add a custom map. And can this software update your GPS? It syncs with it. It has a button that says ‘Software Update” and it tells you what software is available for your device. But, no, it can not. It tells you you have to download another app for that (Garmin Connect) and although Garmin Explore (after a fight) shows as “Connected” to your device, when you open Garmin Connect to finally update the thing, it tells you “Not Connected”! On the same device!!! Then there’s the mapping: they discontinued Garmin Homebase before adding its features to Garmin Explore, which replaces it! The horrific software also forces you to use a PC to upload maps (I only have an iPad Pro and iPhone so I have to borrow one). I could go on and on and on. You only have to go online to see how many people in the world have wasted hours of their life pulling their hair out trying to get Garmin software to work for them. How can this company have got away with churning out such total garbage for so long? I’m praying the day someone produces dedicated GPS kit with REASONABLE useable software. How many thousands of Garmin devices will hit eBay that day!

As a self confessed outdoor orienteering geek I think this app is brilliant. I use it to add and sync all of the tors of Dartmoor National Park to my Fenix 7S so I can easily navigate to waypoints when I’m out hiking without having to find them using the map on the small watch screen. The course creation feature is also really intuitive and allows you to walk, run or cycle the route via your Garmin device instantly. The collections feature allows you to easily manage and sync the geographical areas that you need on the day so you don’t have to scroll through hundreds of irrelevant waypoints and courses on your watch. The only negative is you can’t add waypoints using the British National Grid format but strangely you can do this directly on the watch and they will show on the app using standard coordinates. Such a useful app that unlocks the navigation capabilities of your Fenix watch. It makes your watch data easier to manage and facilitates navigation on the fly.