Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver
by Garmin
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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 |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver
Customer Review: For the Price? Amazing Geocaching Unit
Summary: 4 Stars
This gps, for the price, is incredible. I bought this unit for less than $100 new on Amazon. The signal strength and satellite acquisition time is awesome and light years ahead of the unit I was using.
While I am very pleased with this purchase please be aware of it's limitations:
It does not have a Electronic Compass or barometric altimeter
It only has 24MB of space, 22MB for TOPO maps, and does not have a SD card slot.
It only comes with a base map which is not as detailed as the picture here may suggest.
This unit is also not considered "Paperless" for Geocaching, and it's on board geocaching feature is rudimentary. This feature does not provide hints and basically only allows you to mark points as 'found' and put them on a calendar. The geocaching feature also holds to the units 500 waypoint max.
However, this can be worked around. Using Custom POI Loader and GSAK with a Garmin POI Maco, you can load about 2-4 thousand geocaching waypoints on this device including the hint, hide type, size, and last found.
Since this device is a Garmin, there are quite a few free topo maps floating around the internet. A quick google search of gpsfiledepo will lend you a topo of almost every state.
While this unit only has 22MB for TOPO maps, I find that for my use that is fine. I live in Oklahoma and geocache mainly in OKC, Tulsa, and Stillwater. This unit can hold the TOPO for all of those cities and the highways between them. When I Geocache somewhere else, I can simply load a new TOPO set from mapsend. It really isn't that much of a hassle.
Overall, this is a great unit. With a little searching around the internet, you can get this unit ready to go with zero cost to you after purchase.
But be aware of it's limitations. Don't buy this unit expecting a detailed basemap or turn by turn directions. If it's what you need, then it's a great buy.
Customer Review: Terrific sensitivity, lots of features, typical (poor) user interface
Summary: 4 Stars
The etrex Venture HC is an outstanding GPS. I could tell from my first week of using it that the Venture was sensitive and could get a signal in some difficult environments. However, I was really surprised at its performance on a recent trip to Washington, DC. My previous experience with GPSs in commercial aircraft led me to expect that I would probably have to hold the unit against the bottom of a window at exactly the right angle to have a hope of getting a lock. In contrast, the Etrex Venture HC locked onto its location within two minutes while I was sitting in an aisle seat of a Boeing 717. I was delighted. The unit had no difficulty keeping its lock onto the satellites for the entire trip (until time to power down all electronic devices).
At a more practical level, I loaded the locations of the Washington Metro stations from a (free) POI database before the trip. That turned out to be quite useful despite the fact that I only have the factory-installed base map so far.
The USB cable works well with the GPS, my tablet PC, and Microsoft Streets and Trips. I use the GpsGate software ($12.95) to convert the proprietary Garmin protocol to the open NMEA protocol so that a complete array of free and commercial software will work with the Garmin.
My main criticism is that the user interface takes a while to learn. The push buttons are black with nearly-invisible black identification symbols. The rocker key is very sensitive and appears quite fragile (time will tell). The sensitivity of the rocker key leads to many inadvertent button presses. Finally, the menu system has a maze-like logic similar to Jorge Luis Borges' "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge." That is, the user interface is no better and no worse than that of most consumer technology.
All in all I am very pleased with this device.
Customer Review: Excellent Geocaching Tool
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this item with geocaching in mind, and it has gone above and beyond my expectations. First, it has a special folder just for geocaches, which (because this product is a Garmin) can be downloaded directly from the geocaching.com website to the device, or you can enter them manually using the geocache symbol and it automatically sorts them. Secondly, it is accurate. It keeps a signal even in the woods, and is correct about coordinates to within 10 feet, usually even closer. It beeps when you are in range of a cache, which is especially useful when driving, because it tells you approximately which exit to use on the highway. Lastly, when you find one, it saves the information to its calendar so that you can log it later, and brings up the next closest automatically. This can be a drawback if you have a lot of undiscovered caches stored, because the next one on the list might actually be behind you on your route, but it's useful if you're looking for many in the same place.
This is a fairly good GPS for general use, also. It stores information about highway exits so that you can track them similarly to tracking geocaches. You can enter waypoints of all sorts and design paths among them. It has a very accurate speedometer and odometer feature, which calculates your maximum speed, moving and stopped time, and average speed across trips. As mentioned in other reviews, the default map is not great, but it does have the major highways on it, and it stores your path so you can check where you've been. It won't give you turn by turn directions, but if you want a relatively inexpensive GPS for geocaching or other waypoint finding tasks, this should be it.
Customer Review: So-So Starter Unit
Summary: 3 Stars
Got this unit to start geocaching with my kids.
PROS are: It seems to be very accurate, screen is easily readable, color is good, seems well made and durable. The unit is also able to obtain a satellite when indoors near a window which was very surprising.
CONS are: no built in compass which makes it very difficult to get to the geocache when you get very close. If you stand still it will confuse you and point to a different direction. The unit only points toward the destination when you are moving. So when you get close to the cache you need to constantly walk back and forth to figure out where it is. If you stop walking the display will point toward screen-north and not the destination.
Also, the Garmin operating system was a little less than intuitive causing me to read the manual more than I would usually need to for other small electronics. After much searching the manual still does not tell you how to manually enter a waypoint if you have the coordinates. It makes mention of the possibility then fails to explain how. (By the way, you use the "Mark" feature and then edit the info to do this).
Despite the fairly major limitation of not having a compass we have still had success in finding our destinations. However if I had known about what trouble lack of a compass would bring I would not have bought it. My kids (9 and 6) are not able to find a geocache without the compass and get frustrated walking in circles when near the destination.
I can see a unit with a compass in our future.
Customer Review: Great device for beginners and geocachers
Summary: 5 Stars
I am new to the handheld gps market, and this is my first purchase. I bought this with the assumption that it would be a great device for hiking and geocaching, and I was correct in assuming this. The device seems to be accurate to within 10 feet or so, which is more accurate than I need but is excellent. I haven't played around with too many of the features just yet, as I stick to using waypoints most of the time. I cannot comment on the inclusion or use of any high end features, as I am still a "rookie" with these devices. For my uses, it is just about perfect.
I use it mostly for geocaching. It is great to use with the geocaching website, as there are buttons on the website to instantly download cache information directly to the gps device. This is a big improvement from my old method of typing in each cache's coordinates. It sorts the caches by which one is closest to your location, and once you've found one it moves onto the next one on the list. This is quite handy, especially if you're in a park or somewhere there is more than one cache close by. The battery life seems to be quite long, and is convenient in that the batteries are easy to replace and a standard size. There is no recharging the device in between uses. I haven't had any problems at all with it so far. It is quite small (reminds me of cellphone size), and fits into pockets, palms, etc... with no problem at all.
Overall a great purchase, and highly recommended to anyone. Especially those of you who are interested in geocaching.