Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver
by Garmin
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List Price: Our Price: $117.48 You Save: $52.51 (31%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $112.93 (click here) Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver
Customer Review: No brainer for the price, but watch out for...
Summary: 5 Stars
Keep it far, far away from heat sources in your car (meaning the defroster vents, dashboard, etc.) because that will mess up the rubber baby bumper; dissolve the glue and stretch it out, and you can't get a replacement. (I ended up cutting off the bottom of the rubber and resticking the rest with double sided tape, it works but looks bad).
It has annoying storage limitations. It can only hold 20 dumbed down tracks and 24 megs of maps. If you try and combine two tracks into one, it draws an extra line between them. 24 megs in maps might cover 1/100th of the lower 48. So unlike your typical car gps, you'll be doing some track and map transfers with a computer before going places.
The good stuff: the display is very clear, very bright. It picks up satellites relatively quickly. It seems about as accurate as these things get. Battery life isn't bad, it uses the common AAs, and works with cheap rechargables.
It's all most people WITH A BRAIN need. It's maps are very basic (only the very most major highways). But it pretty much knows where every city and town is. It points like a compass at the city or town you to go to, tells you how far away it is, and how long it is going to take you. However, riding companions not familiar with a hiking gps may get impatient with the lack of maps and turn by turn.
Garmin's maps are pricy, but there are good free ones on the internet.
Customer Review: I love this little gizmo
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my first GPS and it is a real joy to use. It takes a little while to get use to what the buttons do and the different functions it has, but once you get the hang of it, it's simple to use. I bought it because I was going hiking in mountainous terrain and I didn't get lost! Just a word of warning, to get the fancy road and topographical maps you need to fork out another ~$100. But if you are technically oriented (or have access to a 5th grader) it's relatively easy to convert and import data from the USGS to make topo maps or crude road maps. Garmin has better road maps, but you can make decent ones for free. I wouldn't recommend using it while driving since it can't give you step by step directions, but is good for the passenger to keep track of you. The 24 MB of memory is plenty at least for me. It's a snap to transfer your hike to your computer at the end of the day and if you save it as a *.gpx file, you can view your journey in Google Earth. Correlate the time with the camera pictures and you know exactly where you took a picture. Too cool. The battery life is good as long as you turn it off when you are done for the day. The only complaint is that the altitude seems to have more error than the long/lat, but is generally good to within 100 ft, but if you want more accuracy a better GPS with altimeter would solve that problem.Customer Review: Great value and perfect for MY mission.
Summary: 5 Stars
I've owned my garmin etrex Venture HC for about a month. I read all the critiques about the low detail map but tried it anyway. I wasn't looking for an automotive GPS, I wanted a hiking-flying-fishing-traveling GPS. Without the detailed topo maps this thing was very good for my needs. It would show me what was the next exit on the freeway and what services were there. It gave me speed, altitude, and positional awareness when flying in general aviation aircraft. It showed the Canadian border when on Lake Erie. Then I added the MapSource topo maps and it tripled in utility when hiking and driving and flying. I learned that I couldn't load the whole world into the thing because of memory limitations, so I just loaded the areas around Bozeman, and Rocky Mountain National park, and SW Florida, and most of Ohio. It's great! It seems to run a long time on a set of batteries (how long specifically, I don't know...ten to fourteen hours I suppose...I really don't care, I'm not a statistician) and after a few hours of use it's intuitive. And this puppy will lock on to satellites VERY fast and will keep on them even on the first floor of my two story home. This is my third GPS, my first Garmin, and I'm hooked on it. It was $113 from Amazon, shipped! That's about a tank and a half of gas for my Tahoe. I love it when I make a good purchase.Customer Review: Does a very nice job for the money!
Summary: 5 Stars
We got this at Christmas to try geocaching. So far we love the sport and are very pleased with this gps receiver. It is not perfect, I would not want to deal with moderate or heavy tree cover, you definitely have to find "open" areas on your trail, but for geocaching it has certainly gotten us to over 30 of them already in only 3 weeks. We have been pretty much on or close to the mark every time as we have no trouble finding them. I love the geocaching function on it, Garmin models work with geocaching.com and the website will write it directly to the gps for you and we have done multiple caches in a day and it will pop up with the next closest one for you automatically.It has alot of bells and whistles that I haven't even begun to play with, but so far it has been excellent both at navigating and is fairly intuitive for getting through the menus and such. I'm not much for instruction books and I've done okay wtih it but I know there is so much more I could do with it when I get through the instructions. We are very pleased, I'm sure you could do better, but you will pay 3 or 4 times as much for it. If you are looking for something to do some basic things with and most especially geocaching, then I recommend this one!! In fact, we like it so much we are now looking for a second Garmin for my husband to take on business trips!Customer Review: Great Value and Powerful Navigator
Summary: 5 Stars
I got my eTrex and couldn't wait to fire it up and get going. I plan to sail with it on my Hobie Cat 18 to help me race and follow wind shifts. The Trip Computer page is perfect with its three rows of data and very large, daylight readable display.
I sailed a bit with it then came back and downloaded the day's tracks to the MapSource program. I was able to see moment-by-moment speeds and headings on the legs of my tacking.
Only a couple of notes though. The "Enter" button didn't perform well at first but now it seems better. When pressed initially, nothing happened, but now, after a week of use, it seems to work every time it's pressed.
Also, in the map view, there's a ring around the position indicator at about 0.20 statute miles. This ring indicates the combined accuracy of the map and the GPS receiver, according to Garmin. It took Garmin about four days to finally explain this to me.
The color display is quite readable in daylight and the battery life is amazing. I have used it for many hours at full intensity and haven't changed batteries yet.
For the %$120 price tag, you can't go wrong with this powerful little unit. It's supposed to be waterproof to 1 meter for one half-hour and I may test that if a flip my boat one day.