UPDATE: I’ve posted Garmin Rino 650 and Rino 655t pages with more details and screenshots.
Garmin is announcing three new Rino two-way radios this morning, the Garmin Rino 610, 650 and 655t. The Rino 650 and 655t GPS receivers feature a 2.6” touchscreen, the same size found on the Garmin Dakota series. It’s unclear from the news release, but I’m assuming the 610 uses the same touchscreen. UPDATE: The Rino mini-site confirms that all three models are touch screens. All three models accept BirdsEye imagery and Garmin custom maps, and are expected to hit store shelves in the third quarter of 2011.
- Garmin Rino 610 – 1 watt FRS/GMRS radio, uses 4 AA batteries (rated at up to 18 hours), MSRP $349
- Garmin Rino 650 – 2.6 touchscreen, 5 watt FRS/GMRS radio, NOAA weather radio, wireless data sharing with compatible units, tri-axial compass, barometric altimeter, Li-Ion battery (rated up to 14 hours), optional AA battery pack (rated up to 18 hours), MSRP $499.99
- Garmin Rino 655t – adds a 5MP camera and pre-loaded 100K scale topo maps to the 650’s feature set, MSRP $599.99
UPDATE: Here’s the Garmin Rino mini-site.
Here’s more pics and the full news release, which is worth reading for more info if you’re interested in these models…
Garmin® Rolls Out New Rino® to Communicate, Locate and Explore
OLATHE, Kan./June 1st, 2011/Business Wire — Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), the global leader in satellite navigation, today announced the redesigned and upgraded Rino® 610, 650 and 655t handheld two-way radios integrated with GPS. Boasting up to a 20-mile communication range the Rino 650 and 655t 5-watt FRS/GMRS radios have evolved to include a 2.6” glove-friendly touchscreen and are packed full of powerful features like a barometric altimeter, 3-axis tilt compensated compass and NOAA weather radio. The Rino was announced in preparation for the Teva Mountain Games in Vail, CO, where it will be prominently displayed at the Garmin booth June 3-5.
“Whether you’re a hunter looking for peace of mind in the woods, a ski patroller monitoring conditions in the Rockies or simply want to enjoy the outdoors with the benefit of radio communication and GPS, the new Rino has what you need,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “Having the ability to know where someone is in your hunting group at all times and to communicate freely with them provides a new level of safety only found from Rino.”Find Your Friends: Rino’s unique position reporting capability lets you send your exact location to other Rino users so they can see it on their map page. And after pairing for the first time you will be able to see your friends even in situations where they cannot call for help or tell you their position. You can also send unit-to-unit text messages to other Rino users in your area – it’s ideal for loud or windy conditions, or just when you don’t want to disturb the wildlife. Gone are the days of missing a note as Rino timestamps and records the notes you receive from contacts for later review or forwarding. Plus, improved audio performance means it’s easy to communicate with any other conventional FRS/GMRS radio in the area. The device can be useful in an emergency, or just a handy way to keep tabs on your hunting party, hiking partner, family or friends.
Weather Alerts, Wherever you Go: For added safety, Rino 650 and 655t feature a built-in NOAA weather radio that can help you avoid hazardous weather. The radio supports Specific Area Message Encoding, which allows you to see National Weather Service warnings and watches displayed county-by-county on the map screen so you can stay informed at a glance when you need to be in the know. The 650 and 655t are powered by a removable and rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack lasting up to 14 hours or up to 18 hours with the optional AA battery pack.
Turn On and Go: Each device in the Rino series has a high-sensitivity GPS receiver with HotFix®, which automatically calculates and stores critical satellite information and can use that information to quickly calculate a position so you can spend more time active and less time waiting. And with multiple profiles like Marine, Recreational and Automotive to name a few, Rino can be customized to match whatever activity you might be performing. To see Rino in action visit, www.garmin.com/rino
Value Minded: Garmin’s Rino 610 is an entry level 1-watt FRS/GMRS radio handheld GPS radio is powered by four AA batteries, lasts up to 18 hours and comes pre-loaded with a worldwide basemap. With its spacious 1.7GB of internal memory Rino makes it easy to add maps with its wide array of detailed topographic, marine and road maps. Rino 610 lets you load TOPO U.S. 24K maps and hit the trail or BirdsEye Satellite Imagery (subscription required), which lets you download satellite images to your device and integrate them with your maps. In addition, Rino 610 is compatible with Custom Maps, free software that transforms paper and electronic maps into downloadable maps for your device.
Share Wirelessly: With Rino 650 and 655t, you can share your waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches wirelessly with other compatible Garmin GPS devices. Once your Rino is connected via USB, download BaseCamp™ software (www.garmin.com/basecamp) to easily store and share your photos. BaseCamp also helps you view, plan and organize your maps (in 2D or 3D), waypoints, routes and tracks – including elevation profiles – and send them to your Garmin handheld.
Document Your Journey: Never miss a memory with Rino 655t’s built-in 5-megapixel autofocus camera; you’ll be able to capture the highlights of your outings. Each photo is automatically geotagged with the location of where it was taken, allowing you – or those you share your photos with – to easily navigate back to that spot in the future. Along with its camera, Rino 655t comes pre-loaded with TOPO 100k maps.
The new Rino devices are expected to be available in the third quarter of 2011. The Rino 610 and 650 have a suggested retail price of $349 and $499.99, respectively. The Rino 655t has a suggested retail price of $599.99. Additional information about the Rino series is available at www.garmin.com or www.garmin.blogs.com. Garmin has spent more than 20 years developing technologies and innovations to enhance users’ lives, making it a household name in the automotive, aviation, marine, wireless, outdoor and fitness industries.
About Rich Owings
Two things. I am really surprised they are touch screen, as opposed to having buttons like the 62 series. Not sure i like this. Also, i believe offering one of these with a marine VHF instead of the FRS/GMRS radio would be a home run with the boating/kayak community. Other than that they seem full featured.
I expect that the touch screen Oregons are outselling the 62/78 series, which may be influencing them to go that direction. But that may be due to the higher price for the more recent 62 series too.
Oregon 450 is ranked #1,069 in Electronics sales at Amazon; 62s is ranked at #1,508. I suspect the $80 price differential is responsible for this. By comparison, the old Garmin 60CSx is ranked at #87 (!), despite being only $90 cheaper than the Oregon 450.
Does anyone know how Amazon calculates their Bestseller list? Could the fact that the 60CSX has been around so long have anything to with it’s ranking?
Amazon says it is “updated hourly.” I suspect that they do some sort of smoothing though. In terms of interest, they’re almost neck and neck on this site – 5636 page views for the Oregon 450 in May, vs. 5547 for the 62s.
I noticed on one of Garmins screen shots of this unit that areas of a map (counties perhaps) are highlighted red with a button above that says weather warning/or advisory. Is it possible Garmin has interfaced NOAA weather warning alerts with areas of the map for a warning indication? It appears so from the picture. That would be really neat and something new, i think.
Rick
Yes they have. A nice feature indeed!
I have an old rhino with ,what they say is ,a 14 mile radio capability. In the woods I can only count on 1/2 mile range. What kind of reliable range will these new rhinos get in the woods.
The 65x models say 20 miles, but as you have discovered, that is very terrain dependent.
If by old you mean a 500 series, check the power setting in the radio setup. These will do much better than 1/2 mile even in heavy woods in my experience. The 600 series must have a better antenna since the wattage is the same as the 500 series but is advertised out to 20 miles.
I love my 530hx, but I hope the quality of the 600 series is better than the 500 series as I am on my 3rd one under warranty.
I just purchased the Rhino 655T and used it 2 days in the field. The features it offers is great and works well, but it has one major flaw. The unit clips on via its battery and three days in hiking through heavy brush while hunting, all I had at the end of the day was a battery clipped onto my pack and no GPS. You would think the unit would be secured to the GPS not the battery.
I would not consider this unit again without a resolution to this problem its to expensive of a tool to have falling off. Garmin should have the unit attach to the GPS not the detachable battery.
Was the battery cover not secured? This appears to be similar to the cover on the 62s, which I haven’t heard of anyone having problems with. Did you get it back? If so, I’m curious how tight it feels when you latch the cover.
The battery cover was on correctly and tight, it also feels tight when attached, it was on for 2 1/2 days while backpacking in and spotting from ridges. However the first time I went through heavy cover the battery detached from the unit. The locking pin only requires a short turn to lock the battery in and evidently does not require much to undo if caught on brush. After trying to retrace my path through thick brush for 1/2 a day I had to give up and did not recover the gps. Attaching the clip to the gps unit would make much more sense as the cost of replacing a battery is much more palatable than the cost of replacing the Rhino 655t if they become separated.
That is terrible! Have you contacted Garmin and if so, I’d love to hear what they said.
Yes, I did contact Garmin to let them know that the method of securing the gps by the battery did not hold up well when going through brush. Their comment was that its what they use on other units and they feel it is a good option to secure the unit by the battery and they where sorry it had been lost. I would not recommend this unit for any one who would be using it in the field unless is is secured in a pack, which is counter productive if you have to pull it from a pack every time you need to use the radio or gps.
David, Good to know about the lanyard issue with the 600s. I have had many things stripped from my body crawling through underbrush, usually Manzanita is the problem. Once I lost a Rino that was just clipped to my pack, but my buddies were able to talk me to it eventually. Now I tie everything to my pack as I haven’t had it pulled off me yet. The Rino 500 series has a sturdy lanyard attachment on the GPS itself that has not failed me. Garmin should replace your unit and fix this issue.
Marc
will my spare battery pack from my 530 fit the 655
Looking at the accessories tab on the Garmin pages for both models, it doesn’t look like it will.
Hi Mark,
The battery pack from the 500 series will not fit the new 600 series. Bummer since I have three.
Whitesheep
I just did a 5 day deer hunt with the Garmin 655T. I did not have time for downloading or reading the user manual. While in the National forest areas of Washington State and after downloading TOPO 24K West this unit performed w/o fail. I took many pictures and when downloaded to my lap top they look as good as my Canon camera shots.
Hi!
Does anyone know if the Rino will be able to be used with dog-collars as used by the Astro-series of Garmin GPS?
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=209&pID=89564
In my opinion, knowing you hunting dogs position is just as vital as your hunting partner.
Thanks!
No, they are not compatible.