Garmin eTrex Vista HCx Color High-Sensitivity Mapping Handheld GPS
by Garmin
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin eTrex Vista HCx Color High-Sensitivity Mapping Handheld GPS
Customer Review: Great Product, Great Service!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my 2nd purchase of the Vista HCX thru Amazon. As always, delivery service was excellent and on time!
Judging from comments from most people, this product is great and I agree! I used it mainly for mountain/road biking, running and driving.
Receiver sensitivity is amazing, once you get a lock, it's actually more difficult to lose the signal!
Battery life is fantastic, I'm getting roughly 14hrs on rechargeable NiMH.
Screen brightness is good even in bright sunshine.
Road routing capability : this feature is extremely useful especially when I drive or when I go road biking.
Tracking : In combination with a 2G SD card, I can set to 1 sec interval and record all my mountain biking tracks.
There are more great features in this unit but these are the main ones for me. It is difficult to find anything bad with this unit apart from the fact that the screen is a bit small, but this is expected from handheld units.
Customer Review: One Terrific Design
Summary: 5 Stars
I use mine for bike touring. It does it all: if I arrive in a distant city and have to drive to my hotel, I use it to navigate in the car. Once I get to the ride start, I put the HCx on the bike and it shows me a map of nearby terrain. I normally use the 0.2 mile or 0.3 mile scale while biking to show the nearby streets. I can upload the recent tracks to my computer. And, I can plot out new routes and download them to the GPS. It works all day on a pair of rechargeable AAs.
It works overseas (Europe, South America), and it's even fun to take on a train trip. It shows nearby restaurants, hotels, bike shops, gas stations, etc.
Be sure to buy the CD of City Navigator instead of the SD card or the download. That will allow you to set your own routes on the computer and download to the GPS.
I have lost two over the years and I'm now on my third. I just have not found a better design.
Customer Review: Excellent product
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this product to replace my Magellan Explorit 150 that went bad (and lost all of my waypoints). I can honestly say that this Garman eTrex Vista HCx exceeded all my expectations. Battery life is great-even with using the backlight for hours at a time when driving on an extended vacation trip the NiMH batteries lasted well over 16 hours. Tracking, backlight, color, maps, features are all great. One problem with my Explorit was it was slow zooming. This Garmin zooms in or out in less than 1 second, very acceptable performance. I love the layout of the buttons and although I was at first glance scratching my head over why the viewing screen was located on the bottom of the unit I understand now-this facilitates very ergonomic one-handed operation. The only issue I experienced was in getting the USB drivers to work on Windows 64 bit Vista. A call to Garmin tech support resolved this. I am a Garmin man now!!!Customer Review: What an upgrade from my first GPS!
Summary: 5 Stars
Several years ago I got my first GPS. One of the blue Etrex models. Loved it, but felt it was lacking missing the electronic compass.
Well, I dropped it and it quit working (5 years of service though,) and Santa brought me this one. I couldn't be more pleased with the unit itself. I love the sensitivity; so much better than our old one. The electronic compass means I don't have to keep walking to find out what direction I am going. The Geocaching features mean I don't need to lug around papers or my Palm based caching software and Geocaching is actually fun again!
What I didn't like was the fact that it was essentially mapless. I thought I'd have to end up buying chips or CDs. Well, I did some research online and found road maps and topo maps for free. I put an old storage card from my phone and loaded up with maps and I'm now totally happy.
Customer Review: Great performance for the price!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've owned this unit for about a month now and used it several times for geocaching. It's been working great for me and I love the color screen. If you are outside and you have WAAS enabled, this thing will be accurate to about 7 to 9 feet! The electronic compass is a nice feature too. The battery life is also very impressive. The basemap is not too detailed, but that's to be expected. It's a shame to have to spend another $99 for the street mapping software. I haven't shelled out the money for that yet, but I am considering it.
I would also recommend getting some kind of clear screen protector for the screen. They also make a vinyl carrying case which has a clear plastic screen cover built-in. Anything to keep the screen from getting scratched.
All in all, it's a great GPS receiver for the money.