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Hi, sorry total newbie and rubbish with electrics. I have bought my 1st ever sat nav as I'm going around Europe in summer. Its a 396. The lead that's supplied has a small black box between main power line to the mount and red/black wires other side. Do I need to fuse it near battery.
And can I connect red black wires to a similar connection allowing me to power it from my battery tender lead ?

Red connects to positive. Black connects to negative. I pretty sure I read that the box is already internally fused and adding a fuse isn’t necessary. I’ll try to verify that.

This is from the online manual for the 396 on the Garmin website.

(2)
12 to 24 Vdc system power (red)
NOTE: The red system power cable may include an in-line fuse on some device models. Cables without an inline fuse are protected internally.

Ah so that little black box is a surge protection thing then and there fore doesn't require any additional fuse... I guess if it needed a fuse it would of been supplied in its cable

Widephil wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 8:04 am Ah so that little black box is a surge protection thing then and there fore doesn't require any additional fuse... I guess if it needed a fuse it would of been supplied in its cable

Based on what Garmin says there, it sounds like that box is also voltage converter, changing 12 volt input to 24 volts for the GPS.
Or, maybe they just mean that the input can be up to 24 volts, not sure.

In my and some other's case, connecting directly to the battery or using a 12v socket won't bring enough power and it will send a message or/and will use up the 396's battery power until it'll go to "battery save mode" in which case it won't be possible to see the screen in the bright daylight.
I connected to 2.0 usb port using a cable (without the cradle). This solved it. It may be possible to use the cradle with a usb port but I didn't bother to convert it.