Here's my take on them that I posted in response to a question about the maps in the General section. My take on them is to only get them for the locate feature; don't think that you'll be able to look at the map and decide if you can actually walk over that hill or not or decipher how steep it actually is. The longer range of the 530 over the 130 and 120 is very noticeable in the mountains, too; the guy with the 120 or 130 will always see me on their screen, but I can rarely see them, same thing with talking on the radio. I now just talk what I have to say not expecting to hear their response unless they are on the same ridge because I know they are always able to hear me.
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I have Garmin's Topo maps on my Rino 530, and I think their software is the only one that will work with their units. I emailed back and forth with their mappers to see why their resolution sucked so bad compared to Magellans. Their basic premise was that 100,000:1 was a "good enough" scale for the bulk of their users. I then asked why Magellan went with the 24,000:1 scale for their topo maps, and they went on to say how time consuming and expensive it was to build and check the maps through computer software and human checking that went from the 100,000:1 that the information came from the government at to get to the 24,000:1 level that we actually need out in the woods. Basically Gramin didn't spend the money to get to the good resolution level, but Magellan did. And, I think, they stuck with proprietary software that keeps you from using 3rd party maps; I know that the best maps available, National Geographic's Topo, can't be used.
I'll keep the Rino for the locate feature, but I use the Magellan to actually walk around in the mountains.
