Garmin eTrex Vista HCx GPS REVIEW

[Bob Bankhead]

from an REI catalogue that just arrived, this quote from the description of the referenced GPS;

"highly sensitive SiRFstar III chipset…."

$499.95 ($459.95 after $50 Garmin mail-in rebate; expires 12/31/07)

[Mike W]

…

[David C Briggs]

I used the Forerunner 305 for about 100 miles of VT AT in October. It only lost fix a few times. I did have to recharge it everynight – it went low battery after about 11 hours. I wrote a program to convert AT centerline data to the Garmin .tcx format and used that as the track. The 305 beeps to tell you that you are off track and points you which way to get back on. Its not a map, but on the AT, its more than enough.
The Edge 705 soulds like it is a 3.7 oz full maping high sensitivity GPS that can take Garmin Topo maps. It also sounds like you can justify the price by getting the street maps and having it double as a Nuvi/TomTom since it also does turn by turn directions. Has anyone tried one yet for both purposes?

[Octavio Salazar]

hi guys,
first off I’d like to thank for the very informative review, based on the information I’ve decided to give GPS route finding another try, I’ve had a GPS for a while now but I just use it as a back up and in reality only take it out of the pack each time I break camp, I mark the car location, put it away, then after a long day of hiking, bring out the GPS for a minute, mark the camp site then put it away again till the next night,
when I first got the unit I found it very distracting and was paying more attention to it than the land marks so I decided to use it this way as not to distract from my hiking experience,

I read the review and thought I could upgrade my GPS and get more use of it by making waypoins on my planned route using my topo! software before hand and habing the assurance of the route could actually do more exploring,
so that was the plan, so I buy the Vista HCx spend all day making the route on the software and now I cant download the waypoints to the unit, am I missing something?
how can I export the waypoints from topo! software to the Vista HCx unit? I hope its just “user error” otherwise I’ll return the unit and keep with my old ways

thanks for any advice

[Octavio Salazar]

so, i found i have an older version of topo!,
need to upgrade to ver.4.0

[Rob Marchetti]

I have had a few garmin gps units and the hcx is my fav for sure. While the positioning is a little erratic ,the track can innacurately jump around, this is not a big problem and is part of learning curve. You learn to read the instrument and anticipate when it might be off a bit and get another reading.

The high senstitvity (hcx) is like night and day difference from the other non hcx etrex models. Way way way better reception to the point that the old models basically dont work in the woods and this one does.

As far as 24k maps that are uploadable to the garmin unit, check this out: http://www.miscjunk.org/ . I am not sure of the scale but the contour interval is way better than the mapsource maps. Essentially 24k detail on your gps! I have uploaded these maps to my unit and they are great.

Also the battery life is phenominal

I also have a colorado 400t and I think the hcx is better especially for long trips (weight and battery). The screen on the colorado is bigger but not that much easier to read. colo has more internal memory capability than hcx but for practical reson hcx has plenty.

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