Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver
by Garmin
|
List Price: Our Price: $115.99 You Save: $54.00 (32%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $106.62 (click here) Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver
Customer Review: Really Nice Unit - Super - I Likes it ALOT
Summary: 4 Stars
It seems the more research you do on GPS units the more confusing things become because of the shear number of units themselves. eTrex alone stands on a large family of products and so when it comes down to making a purchase it's most confusing. All of us want the best bang for our buck and start analyzing units until we are blue in the face. One user says this, another says something else, and so who do we believe? This was the case with my research experience. I love looking at reviews and if I see one or two complaints I tend not to get overly excited, if I see a bunch of people complaining then I know it's one to avoid and that's what I've seen about the eTrex GPS units, one works, one don't, one doesn't have a wire, one does, one don't have a manual one does, one gets reception in the car, one don't.
I've own several GPS units including 2 HP PDA's, 1 Mio, 2 Megallen's and 2 Garmin's and although I'm certainly no expert have decided that GPS is a league of it's own much like cell phones, some have everything - ½ of it cheep. For example; a cell phone will never equal a Sony camera so why try to accomplish the task of pushing every device into a phone and settle for pictures that could be better using a better camera. What I decided for me about the hand-held's like this eTrex Venture HC is to let it do it's thing which it seems to be doing quite well and let my larger models such as my Nuvi200 do it's own thing down the high-way. I've tried to use my Nuvi200 for Geocaching and it failed miserably but how was I to know it's the first time I've tried looking for a Cache. If I asked this small eTrex unit to do what my Nuvi200 does with driving data, it would fail on the high-way. Small hand-held's, any of them will not play ball with the big boys. So without trying to expect more out of this little guy then what can be produced here is what I'm seeing.
The eTrex HC in my house with an attic full of R-11 and concrete tile roof is getting seven satellites within 10 seconds of turning it on, and 4 or 5 were instant. It has a compass that works when you are moving around. It came in a cool box with a USB wire, a CD of basic hwy maps, a strap, and complete instructions in full color as a quick guide and a book to flip though in a couple languages. It has a huge selection of impressive settings including the satellites, custom welcome message, tones, color displays - many, time, Geocache, marine, units, heading, trip comp, mark, find, tracks, routes, highway, setup, proximity, calendar, calculator, stopwatch, sun & moon, hunt & fish, games and living color.
So, does it have complete driving roads of cities? - No, which I knew. Does it have topo maps? - No, and so in the spirit of what makes sense because the big ones come with street maps loaded of the entire country but no topo-maps for the same price as this which was $200, it would only make sense if they loaded topo-maps with the hand-held's which is not good business just to send them out with a bunch of empty towns. So with all the confusion about these things, I played it safe and decided to get mine at Super Wal-Mart and although cost me a little more can take it back if there is a problem.
I thought it was weird that Garmin is now trying to get a scoop of Geocache
Customer Review: Good unit, poor basemap - requires additional purchase to be usable
Summary: 2 Stars
I have owned previous similar Garmin hand held GPS units. Very good units, pretty durable, reasonably priced and I've been very happy with them. Precision and usability has been amazing...
After multiple years of car trips, backpacking, camping and other uses of my previous Garmin handheld, it finally needed major service -- so I decided to upgrade.
This unit is good in most areas and features, but with one major problem. Sensitivity is great, turn on and signal acquisition time is much improved! Color screen is bright and colorful, with excellent readability -- except you need to turn on the backlight to read the screen, even in daytime. Links well with my existing National Geographic TOPO! software. In general a good, solid unit. Precision of the unit, based upon it recording routes and tracks is excellent -- you can even see what side of the road you're on! The USB interface works very well -- amazingly faster than the previous serial cable.
However, the base map sucks. I'm sorry, but compared to the base map in my previous unit the coverage is horrid. My previous unit included coverage in the base map down to major secondary roads. I could use it with confidence if I needed to grab it out of the glove compartment or backpack, and navigate. This base map is missing *everything* except major interstates, and major state highways. As an example, State Highway 2 (the Angeles Crest Highway) north of Los Angeles is totally missing -- let alone any of the connector roads to this state highway. Cities are listed as floating dots with no linkage to any of the road networks. In the LA basin, it's missing any indication of major inter-urban roads which are 4-6 lanes wide! Makes you wonder how the new "navigate" function works from where you are to a listed location, doesn't it?
I suspect that you need to spend the additional $100-200 to get the Garmin Mapsource additional map data, in order to download more detailed maps. I've already ordered a copy of this, to see if it helps. Figure this additional purchase into your price if you are going to use this other than on a major interstate. However, the HC unit only has about 24 MB of memory, so you can't download significant amounts of map data to the unit.
Overall, I'd not recommend this unit at all. If they had put in the previous map base, I'd be writing a 5 star recommendation. But without the previous map base, you need to spend at least $100 ain additional to make this as usuable as the previous model -- and the unit has little ability in 24 MB to add additional map data. I'd recommend at a minimum going for the HCx model which allows you to add a micro SD card for up to at least 4GB of additional map memory.
Now, why did they downgrade the quality of the base map? My suspicion is they want to sell the map software as well. In which case, they should offer a bundle of the two items, which I've not seen offered anywhere.
I'm going to be using this extensively in the next few months for backpacking and road tripping (including beyond major highways), so I'll give it a fair test. From my initial usage, most likely I'll be junking this and going for a HCx in a few months...
Customer Review: Venture HC great value for amateur geocaching
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm new to geocaching, and this is my first GPS, so take this review as a newbie perspective. I bought this GPS soley for the purpose of geocaching and casual hiking. I already have a vehicle GPS and would not reccomend purchasing the VentureHC for any kind of road navigation, as its maps are severely lacking and primitive. Having said that, I've been very satisfied with this unit for geocaching. If you want something on a budget that is reliable and easy to use, you can't beat it. The $125 investment for this is well worth it. I think any GPS that's $100 or less would be inadequate and unreliable.
It comes pre-equipped with a usb cord, which makes it very easy to download waypoint coordinates quickly and efficiently. The only drawback to this feature is it does not allow for any additional information besides the coordinates and the name of the cache(i.e. no cache descriptions, ratings, maps, hints, logs). If you download lots of coordinates and search for mulitiple caches at a time, it could get a little confusing. If you're more of a casual geocacher like myself, this is not too big of a problem since I ususally do not search for more than a few caches at a time. Also, if you're a more advanced geocacher who wants to download maps, this does not have the memory, nor memory card slot to support the extra data.
Tha accuracy isn't perfect, but it usually will get you within 15 to 20 feet. It has very good satellite reception and will still be pretty reliable in thick woods. The interface is very easy to use, but it doesn't have a whole lot of technical features. But if you don't need them, what's the difference? One of the convenient upsides of this unit is it automatically records "breadcrumb" waypoints as you travel, so even if you get completely lost you can follow your trail of breadcrumbs back to your starting location.
I really like that it has a color, sunglight-readable screen (as opposed to the cheaper eTrex which is monochrome). This comes in a lot more useful than you'd think. The compass pointer can be a little jumpy at times, but always gets me to within a few feet. The only thing I don't like about this gps is that it DOES NOT HAVE AN INTERNAL ELECTRONIC COMPASS. What this means is that you have to keep moving in order to get an accurate direction and heading. The minute you stop to look around, the compass freezes up and will point in a random direction. You have to start walking again in a straight line in order to reobtain your compass heading. This can get very annoying with more difficult caches where you have to stop often, but you get used to working around this flaw.
All in all, if you're new to the hobby of geocaching and want a GPS that won't cost a small fortune and is still accurate, reliable, and easy to use -- then is is the right choice.
Customer Review: Possibly a Good Handheld GPS, but MAC OWNERS BEWARE!
Summary: 2 Stars
I got the Etrex Venture HC as a Xmas gift (purchased via Amazon) and was fairly pleased with the performance for the very short amount of time that I had it. The receiver quickly acquired the GPS satellites, and the functions seemed to work well; however, the software shipped with the Etrex is PC based but I was able to get the appropriate Mac based software from Garmin's website, including "webupdater," which allows you to update the Etrex's internal software.
Well, after downloading the software, I connected the Etrex to my Mac (the Etrex comes with a USB cable), and my Mac quickly recognized the Etrex and I received the message, "YOU MUST UPGRADE." The Etrex software was an older version. So I went with the upgrade, and the entire process just stopped. After about 1-hour, I was forced to quit, and found that the Etrex software was, apparently, erased. It no longer worked!
I called Garmin and spoke with a Mac expert; he indicated that the units often hosed up if you try to upgrade via a wireless system (which I have), and that the USB cable needed to be connected directly to the Mac, not a hub or keyboard (which is what I did). He also thought it was possible that I received a faulty unit, and recommended returning it to Amazon. He suggested getting a replacement, and to hardwire the unit to my internet connection before attempting an upgrade. I returned the unit (Amazon was amazingly good about this), and received a replacement.
I checked its software and found that it, too, was an older version, and decided to try an upgrade. I connected the Etrex directly to my Mac, my Mac directly to my internet connection (I shut down my wireless), and, again, the Mac recognized the Etrex and I received the same "MUST UPGRADE" message. This time everything appeared to go smoothly until the very last bit when everything just stopped just when the process was coming to an end. I waited almost an hour, forced quit, and, yes, the Etrex was hosed; it was wiped clean. I called Garmin, was on hold 30-minutes, and eventually spoke with a Mac expert who said that the Mac software did not do well with cable internet connection (I have Comcast).
That was it. I returned the second Etrex to Amazon (again, very easy and at no cost to me), and received a refund. Garmin has a lot of bugs to clean up concerning the Mac, and their website didn't list any of the possible problems that their "experts" mentioned. Besides the problems discussed by Garmin's Mac experts, I can't help but wonder what other Garmin to Mac incompatibility issues exist.
It's possible that the Etrex is a good handheld GPS, but I never really got the chance to find out. Frankly, Garmin lost me as a customer. (Note: I have a TomTom GPS that I use in my car; I've NEVER had a problem upgrading its software with my Mac.)
Customer Review: Excellent entry-level GPS for geocaching
Summary: 5 Stars
I have wanted a handheld GPS for some time to do geocaching and for having with me when hiking. The Venture HC is an excellent entry-level handheld GPS. It has a nice bright adjustable screen and lots of easy to use features. Features include a Geocache mode where you can easily upload to your Venture geocaches from geocaching dot com. It has a trip computer, remembers routes, and you can easily set waypoints and delete them.
It also has some other useful features, a basic calculator, calender, stopwatch, fishing feature (given your location and date it lists the best times for fishing) and a celestial calender with sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset.
It also, for a lefty has a neat feature. The joystick that you use quite a lot for selections and manuerving happens to be set-up for the left thumb. Living my entire life in a right-handed built world, I quite enjoyed this. Not to say for the 90% of people out there not left-handed that it will be hard to use, just pointed it out since it is so unusual (and nice for a lefty).
What it doesn't have is an SD card feature. I thought this was no big deal and for basic geocaching it isn't. However I downloaded some free Texas topo maps (quite cool just do a web search) and I could only download the topos for Central Texas in the 22 mb (avaiable storage). I knew that limitation coming in, but if you think you are going to want to have a lot of map layers you probably do not want this. It also doesn't have a compass feature for when you are standing still but this is not really a problem and should not be a deciding factor for you since as soon as you start moving you get your orientation.
For me the one thing to consider is do you hike/camp a lot OR do you think you would want to try geocaching. The cool thing about geocaching is that it is not just for state and national parks. There are a lot of caches right in urban areas. And it is something the whole family can do. So far I have mostly gone to ones around my house and I already have discovered a few parks I did not know existed. It is a great way not to get lost hiking but also to discover a lot of cool areas where you live. Just remember to use geocaching dot com since it is set up to easily upload geocaches right to your Garmin. Note 5 stars if no need for an SD card. Also I recommend the Garmin cover noted in the product listing. The Venture is sturdy but the cover is a nice snug fit and gives some added protection and a belt clip.