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(More customer reviews)Two months ago my family and I joined about 2.3 million others in leaving the Texas Gulf Coast as Hurricane Rita came our way.The road system could not handle that much traffic and a 3 hour drive turned into a 16 hour nightmare.Roads were clogged beyond capacity and I used a county map to navigate along back roads (gravel, shell, dirt and cowpath) to get ahead of a few thousand cars stopped on highways.That worked fine until the map ran out.Then we were stuck in traffic and melting heat.As we sat there I saw other people using nearby roads with confidence and I assumed they had better maps than I did.I was right, but their maps were on their GPS devices.The decision to buy a GPS was made then and there.
I did a lot of research trying to decide which device I wanted to buy and soon found myself lost in a sea of varying opinions.Right after reading a review that extolled the virtues of one unit I would read another that completely trashed it.Eventually I decided that the reviews here and at other sites were not going to give me the answer I was looking for and I would have to buy a device and try it for myself.Using reviews and some common sense I decided that the Garmin eTrex Legend C was a good bet for a trial and ordered it from Amazon.
After giving it a real workout this last week I have to report that this device is a dream.When I chose the Legend C it was my intention that be our introduction into GPS navigation on road and off as well as to use for Geocaching.
We began using it the day we got it by entering an address and navigating to a friend's house on the other side of town.What amazed me was that it chose the same route I would have used, (from among several that were not as desireable).A few days later we used it on a 300 mile trip and it performed flawlessly.It even found our destination, a place in the middle of nowhere, past the end of the last marked road and in a pasture accessible only by a ranch road with no name (that was on the map I downloaded into the device from Garmin City Select Map CD).We used it in the field for several days and my son played with it almost constantly.Before we left to return home we used it to find our first geocache.
The Pros - Great battery life.I do recommend the 12 volt car power cable option because the backlight times out to conserve battery life.We used it for a week (kids sat there and played with it for hours trying to discover all of the features) and it's still on the first set of batteries.
- Easy to read display.Like most other color displays it washes out a little when direct sun is shining on it, but unlike the color display on my cellular telephone it only takes a small adjustment in angle to see the readout well. The display is sharp and automatically changes at dusk and dawn to make itself easier to view in different light conditions.
- Amazingly accurate.When navigating, the device provides warning of upcoming turns by beeping and changing the display.As you get closer to the turn it displays a countdown to the number of seconds before the turn.We were astounded by how accurately it marked the turns to the second.
- Quality of optional maps from the City Select CD.We were out in rough country where even the marked county roads are unpaved and barely maintained.The number of no-name ranch roads scraped out by graders, or are trails marked only by the track of other vehicles that use it, are how people get around once off the highway.Other than some of the smaller tracks this map found every gravel or shell private road we came across.We even found some roads that we had not known existed before as we saw them on the map display while driving around.
Ability to maintain contact with satellites.If you plan to use this in the car I recommend that you turn it on outside the car first and let it find the satellites.It seems to work faster that way.However, while it may take longer for the Legend to find the satellites from inside a vehicle, no matter how it finds them once it acquires the satellite signals it hangs on to them from inside the car.The only way we ever got it to completely lose the signals was to hold it down well below the line of sight from any window.I purchased the optional vehicle mount that suction cups to the windshield and I always had a great signal.Outside, under medium cover, it held signals without a problem.I did not have major cover to deal with so I can't say what would happen in a forest.I expect that the Legend would have the same problems as any GPS would when used under a heavy canopy of trees.
Cons - The device uses a small pointer button to maneuver through options on many of the menus.When trying to manipulate the pointer and then press it to enter an option, it is easy to make mistakes and make the cursor move when you meant to press "enter".A minor hassle but one you should be aware of.
The display is small for use as in vehicles.I could read it allright, but if I were using the device only for in car navigation I would a larger readout.But, as I said I chose this unit to perform a variety of GPS jobs.
Pro and Con - The maps from the CD were fantastic.I have yet to find an error.The "unlocking" process was not as much a pain as I expected from reading other reviews, but it was not as user friendly as I would like.
Maps are loaded by sections and urban areas really eat up a lot ofmemory.My next unit will have more memory or an expansion slot to add memory via SD or CF cards.
Final analysis.If you are looking for a GPS device to perform a wide variety of tasks on and off road then I highly recommend the eTrex Legend C.As an entry level unit it is expensive, but the cheaper devices had limitations that I was not prepared to live with.More expensive units offer more memory and other things that are nice to have, and of course you can find devices that are more specifically designed and useful for more narrowly focused applications.
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Garmin eTrex Legend C Waterproof Hiking GPSProduct Description: Garmin's pocket-sized eTrex Legend C handheld GPS unit enhances Garmin's popular eTrex Legend with a color screen, automatic routing, and longer battery life, making it one of the smallest, least expensive waterproof products to combine a color TFT display with advanced GPS auto-routing abilities. You won't miss a thing when you take this lightweight, easy-to-use handheld out hiking, biking, boating, or geocaching.
Compass indicates direction. View larger. An easy-to-read color map. View larger. Displays nearby attractions. View larger. The eTrex Legend C packs advanced GPS navigation into a compact, waterproof device. The unit offers a bright, transflective color TFT display for easy daylight viewing, automatic route generation, off-route recalculation, turn-by-turn directions with alert tones, and icon-driven menus for finding points of interest (when combined with Garmin's optional MapSource CDs). You'll get up to 36 hours of use on two AA batteries. The unit offers 24 MB of internal memory and its mini-USB port lets you download map data rapidly from Garmin's library of MapSource CDs (not included) with your PC.
You'll enjoy outstanding accuracy of less than three meters (10 feet) when the device is enabled to receive enhanced GPS signals from the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) in the United States. Like on all eTrex units, the primary controls are located on the side of the unit, so you can operate it with one hand. An innovative rocker switch on its face makes inputting data easy, and with it you can scroll through menus or pan the map page.
Other key features of the eTrex Legend C include an auto-route basemap (featuring general map data like highways, major roads, rivers, lakes, and borders); a waterproof design (to IEC 60529 IPX7 standards--submersible in one meter of water for up to 30 minutes); 500 waypoints/routes/tracks (with graphic identification); 50 reversible routes; 20 saved tracks; 10,000 trackpoints; TracBack technology); alarms (proximity waypoint, anchor drag, and off-course, as well as a built-in alarm clock); a GPS patch antenna; selectable audio tones and color schemes; a stopwatch; a hunting/fishing calendar; sun/moon calculations; and a trip computer.
The Legend C includes a built-in, permanent basemap, Americas Recreational, which cannot be altered. The Americas Recreational Routable Basemap v2 includes the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America, and covers an area from longitude 30 to 180 degrees west and latitude from 60 degrees south to 75 degrees north. It includes a high-level, worldwide map featuring borders and major cities.
Standard map coverage includes oceans, rivers, lakes greater than 30 square miles, lakes greater than five square miles in the U.S. and southern Canada, lakes greater than 10 square miles in central and northern Canada, principal cities, some smaller cities and towns, major interstates, principal highways, political boundaries (state and international borders), major airports, and a database of Interstate exits for the Federal Interstate highway system. This last includes many establishments within about 0.25 mile of exits, including restaurants; diesel and gas stations; hotels, motels, and inns; overnight RV parking; dumps; campgrounds; truck stops; medical facilities; shopping and outlet malls; ATMs; and many more such attractions.
What's in the Box eTrex Legend C GPS receiver, basemap (Americas Recreational), MapSource Trip & Waypoint Manager CD, PC/USB interface cable, wrist strap, quick reference guide, and owner's manual.
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