Consumer Electronics Store: Garmin Garmin eTrex Legend 8 MB GPS with PC Cable

Average Rating:

In addition to excellent waypoint and track management functions, the Legend features full mapping functions. The Unit includes a fairly detailed basemap of North America, but for more detailed mapping, data can be downloaded from a MapSource CD-ROM. These discs are availible in many flavors, from Waterway Details, to Topographical, to MetroGuide, which features address and business locating functions (Like Handheld Mapquest.com!)Downloading is easy, and thanks to the unit's high resolution LCD display, maps are suprisingly readable. The waterways disc features a complete database of aids to navigation, cataloging every bouy, daymark, and light in US waters.

As far as GPS functions, the unit preforms beutifully, maintaining a good position fix under moderate tree cover, and inside of a car. Heavy foliage can create a problem, but the unit performs better than most handheld GPS do in this situation. WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) increases accuracy to within 9 feet in good reception areas! Although this is at the expense of battery life. To save power, leave WAAS turned off and you will still get accuracy within 20 feet.

Because the unit uses 2 AA batteries instead of four, life is reduced; expect to change batteries at least every 14 hours, with the unit on continuously. Still, this is less often than my old garmin GPS 45, and that used four batts.

The user interface is very friendly, intuitive, and powerful. This is a great achivment, usually powerful interfaces are not user-freindly and vice versa. It bears quite a similarity to Operating Systems such as Windows and Macintosh, so if you know how to use the computer you are reading this with, you should be right at home. Besides the buttons for Page, Power/Light, Find, Zoom In/Out, there is a "Click Stick" as a pointing device. It works like a joystick or the trackpoint on a laptop to control the cursor on the screen. Pusing it in is like a mouse-click. One strage note on this: it is placed on the left side of the unit. This means that operating in with your'e right thumb blocks the screen. Many people think this is a mistake, making one handed operation with the right hand near impossible, but it makes goos sense to me: operate the GPS in your left hand, while steering the boat with your left. It is not that hard to learn to use the GPS with your left hand (if youre righty), so you can have your right hand free for other things.

In All, The Etrex Legend GPS is your best Buy in a handheld mapping GPS. If your'e looking for more features, check out the more expensive Etrex Vista and Garmin Gpsmap 76, or the very expensive handheld cartographic units, but if you just want a very good, inexpensive, handheld mapping GPS, The Legend is the best around.

As a neophyte to this whole business, I have nothing against which to compare the Garmin eTrex Legend. I chose it because there was a [$$$] rebate on it at the time, otherwise I was going to get the eTrex Venture. I am glad for the upgrade as this unit has 8MB of memory for map uploading.

I am still discovering things about the unit, and its sophistication and flexibility astound me. I think that these units are as useful and will become as common as cell phones, either in automobiles or on one's person. I recently had to go to Florida (I am from California) and it saved me half-a-dozen times from making wrong turns and creating a lot of frustration and lost time. Florida is flat and I am completely lost there as I do not know East from West nor North from South. I think that there is no directional instinct present in the higher primates. Or I am simply deficient in that area. Either way, the Etrex Legend was the most useful item I had with me (I had no cell phone).

This unit is WAAS enabled which means it can be accurate down to a three meter circle. I learned how to mark a route from the place I was staying to my mother's house. Once I had that route in place, there was no way I could go wrong. On the navigation screen the large course pointer would actually "break" and point when I came to a turn I was supposed to make. If you use the "Track" feature, the unit automatically creates Waypoints along a sort of breadcrumb trail. You can reverse the track and go in the opposite direction.

My only complaint is that you must use only Garmin Mapsource maps and each time you upload a new map the old one is automatically erased (don't be alarmed, however, because the basemap that comes installed with the unit is NEVER erased. Only the user-uploaded maps are erased during the procedure). Nonetheless, given the memory in the unit it would be nice if you could upload several different maps at a time and not lose the previously uploaded data. And the Mapsource maps leave something to be desired in their detail. For instance most of the street names in my hometown are not on the Mapsource map even though the streets themselves are there. But this is a minor quibble because in the end what you are really doing is going from one latitude/longitude position to another, and you can put in the names of streets in the form of Waypoints if you so choose.

Considering the [$$$] rebate I got from Garmin for this unit this thing is a steal. Anywhere around [$$$] is a pretty fair price for something so useful and so much fun.