Garmin eTrex Vista HCx Portable Navigator

Really pleased. Works in the house and inside the car. Super sensitive and I needed a GPS that worked in the deep woods. This does. Also got into Geocaching with it. Can download direct from the Internet. Cool !

This is a wonderful GPS. I can get connected from inside my house! We are new to geocaching, but a family member showed us the ropes to get started. We just download our geocaches directly from the website and put it on the compass and we are off on our adventures. We really love this GPS. The only disappointment was that it does not come with preloaded maps. The maps are expensive to buy. We do not need them for our geocaching, but it would be nice to have if we decide to go on trails in the area in which we have dense forest. We have not found any free maps to download that work with this GPS. There are some out there, but none that we have found for this one. It is easy to use if you are familiar with GPS's and computers. I read the manual and was using it within 1 hour. We highly recommend this product. It is worth the investment.

After a few years of using the Garmin eTrex Legend C, I decided to upgrade to the Vista HCx. I am more than pleased with my decision. The Vista HCx is a very handy unit and much improved over the Legend C. Among the improvements are battery life is much longer, the speed at which the unit locks on to the satellite base is much quicker, the barometric altimiter and altitude cross section page, the digital compass, and the fact that you can store map information on a micro SD card. I was able to install the entire contents of the Garmin Metro Guide North America on one 2 gig card. I use this unit in my daily commute to and from work. Not to keep me from getting lost, rather to keep my speed in check. My old car speedometer is just not acurate. I also use it when I go trail riding on my bicycle. I have the bicycle accesory handle bar mount and installing it is a snap. This is an easy to use and easy to understand unit. If you are going packing, on a long bicycle ride or even a cross country drive, this unit will not let you down. I use a veriety of Nimh batterie brands. The Eneloup brand seem to work the best, but any brand will work. I also use a Solio solar charger to power this unit when I am away from home. That way the power is always there when I need it. If a small hand held is what you are in the market for, I recomend this one.

I did a lot of research on mid-range priced handheld GPS units and everything kept leading me to Garmin Extrex Vista HCx. After reading several other reviews on various web sites I was still sceptical of this product because the main reason people didn't like the product was that "the product's user manual was poor" or that "the product was difficult to use". Well, they were partially right - the manual is poor but I found that you really don't need it to be detailed or thorough. This is my first GPS ever and it is easy to use! It is a great product for geocaching - which is my primary purpose of using this product. For the price, you can not go wrong.

This GPS is really worth the money. I purchased it and then went on a camping trip on my own land to learn how to use it. I found it is easy to use, and very accurate in its coordinates. I really like the ease of adding in waypoints. Just click the stick and type it in. Simple and easy. I will admit that I had to read the directions several times to fully understand some of the settings on the unit, but after that it was easy. I did a lot of practicing with it to really learn the functions. I found that the battery life depends upon the battery you are using. Rechargeable ones really last a long time. One aspect I do not like is that I have to set the backlight everytime I turn it on. I think there should be a default setting to allow it to always come on where you previously had it set. I also like the compact size, and its weight is not too heavy. I also like the fact that it has a night time mode. That came in real handy when we had to find the water well at midnight to get water to drink. I have also used it to go Geocaching. This was a lot of fun. It took me right to the area where I needed to be and I found the cache easily. I like the fact that when you find the cache, and click "found", it opens the box so you know you have found it. I can't wait to use it to find other Geocaches. Overall, it has been fun to use. If you're considering this type of unit I believe it is worth it.