Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver by Garmin
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List Price: Our Price: $116.00 You Save: $53.99 (32%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $112.93 (click here) Category: GPS or Navigation System See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver
Digital camera Review: Consider spending more on HCx model
Summary: 3 Stars
This unit is a very basic entry level model. It has great battery life and is easy to carry around. Accuracy is within reasonable limits. The "loaded" maps are not detailed enough and there is insufficient RAM/memory space to load more detailed maps (which are available for purchase from Garmin). On the other hand, the slightly higher priced HCx model uses a RAM card slot for almost unlimited detailed map storage. While this unit is OK for the most part, I wished I was aware of it's memory limitation so I could have purchased the HCx unit instead.Digital camera Review: Decent backup or for casual use
Summary: 3 Stars
This unit should work perfectly fine for the casual GPS user. However, it has rather severe limitations and quirks that more serious users would find annoying.
First, the supplied base map is a joke. It has highways and major roads, but not much more detail. If you want to go off road, hiking or away from major cities, you will need to load additional maps. This is where the 24MB internal memory limit will likely be hit. This is barely enough to squeeze one, maybe two grids of a 1:24K topo map into. You might be out of luck if your trail or hunt unit straddles two or more grids as the MapSource software will not let you select smaller areas. When a highly detailed map is loaded, you will need to turn off some of the detail otherwise it is painfully slow on redrawing the map at any zoom level. Since this unit does NOT accept additional memory, such as an SD card, 24MB is a hard limit.
The other annoying limit is 250 waypoints. It is unclear to me why such a limit exists if more memory is available. While 250 sounds like a lot, it becomes problematic if you are marking a lot of features while scouting for hunting or exploring trails or forest roads on an ATV.
One thing I have learned (the hard way) is that this GPS seems to take several minutes to completely acquire its position. When I arrive at the place I want to hike, I will turn on the GPS and let it sit for a few minutes. Otherwise, it will report your location with a rather severe error (as much as 1/4 mile sometimes). Once it is locked on, it is very solid. Just be warned - don't turn it on and immediately head into the woods. Most GPS's take a few moments to solidly acquire their position, but this is definitely the slowest one I have ever seen. Be sure to check the satellite status page to ensure you are really where it says you are.
The 32 hour battery claim seems lofty. About half that is more realistic.
In spite of these complaints, I have to reiterate that this GPS is not a bad unit for the money. If you are looking for a low cost GPS for occasional use on the trail, for geocaching, or whatever, this unit is hard to beat. In addition to the GPS, it has additional screens for a basic calculator, stopwatch/timer functions, a few games, and a calendar with sunrise, sunset, and moon phase.
Digital camera Review: Descent GPS handheld
Summary: 3 Stars
Using the unit as delivered was fairly simple since I have use a variety of GPS systems in the past. The maps supplied with the GPS were barely useful. I did load some Garmin Topo maps in the system which added a new dimension to the unit. With the addition of those Topo Maps, I would give it a better grade. Additional storage space would have been a plus. It's just ok!Digital camera Review: Disappointment
Summary: 1 Stars
I was never so disappointed in a purchase. The first thing is the resolution of the maps, anything smaller than an interstate throughway does not show up. Great areas are just blank. So I went to download maps with greater detail only to find my browser (Opera) is not supported. Then I tried to install the software to download some info to the device and my operating system is not supported (Linux). I managed to install the software using wine but I still cannot access the unit as there are no Linux drivers.
Opera is a great browser and it is the 3rd most popular (before Safari) and Linux is becoming more and more popular, it is time Garmin started to cater for all their customers. For a company that charges so much for its products and updates to tell its customers you MUST use such and such an operating system and such and such a browser when the demanded software is so poor, so problem and virus prone is unreasonable. If Garmin do not want to sell a universally usable product they should open up the software they use and let the community write the drivers and other software required.
Digital camera Review: Dissapointing
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this unit for an upcoming trip to replace my ancient [but still working] Garmin Geko 101. The Geko did everything I wanted a GPS to do at the time, and although it was lacking in any frills whatsoever, it served me well for years. I upgraded the Venture HC because I wanted to be able to use topographical maps, which is something the Venture HC is advertised to be able to do (reference the picture).
They can't.
Well they can, but they can't. Let me explain...
The unit is advertised as having 25 MB of internal memory, however only about 23MB is useable at any time. That's about enough for 1 topographical map section at a time, in my case Central Florida, with the exception of the East coast took about 18.2MB, and with a trail overlay that took about 900KB, there was no more room. Granted, if you're using this for hiking and backpacking like me you're not likely to walk from the center of the map off of it, BUT you don't get to pick the center of the map, and if the trail you're planning to use crosses 2 map sections, you're screwed.
So, you should really look at the Garmin HCx, which has a micro SD card slot allowing you to expand the memory. Problem solved.
Not! There's another problem here: this unit can draw the (useless) basemap pretty quickly, but add a topo map with any level of detail and it takes it ages to draw the map. Not a problem you're thinking? Think about it like this: say you're on the trail and would like to find a stream near you to filter some water from. You can either zoom way out or move the map pointer to your north, south, east and west. In either case, every zoom step or every map pan will result in a 10-20 second redraw of the map. So if you zoom out 2 levels, then pan in all the cardinal directions, you could spend a minute or more just waiting on the map to draw.
And finally, a note about the maps. You CAN use non-Garmin maps with this product. There are some freely available around the net that are even better than the $130 Garmin 24K Topo maps. Without some sort of add on map, this thing is no more useful than my 10 year old Geko 101, which you can buy for nothing these days.
As for my unit, I returned it the day after I received it and ordered the GPSMap 60CSx. Faster map drawing times, INCLUDED 64MB SD card (mine came with a 1GB, but the product listing said 64MB...) and a much better interface. All for not much more than the HCx.