I recently bought an etrex 20, this is my first handheld gps unless you consider Nokia's e71 as one hehe and here is a little review (pictures will be posted later as i havent taken any yet)
In the box
The usual. Unit itself, cable and a bunch of quickstarts in different languages. No lanyard, no batteries and no unit manual. The unit came in with phil osm map as well as contour and roadguide. I was actually hoping for a lanyard since i think it was included in some garmin units
Operation
From On button, it takes about 4-5 seconds to start up the device, and almost instantaneous satellite pickup when outdoors. I use GPS+Glonass, tho, i havent compared pickup time between GPS against GPS+Glonass. probably will do so some other time. buttons are quite hard to press, good if you put in a bag since the unit has no lock buttons. joystick feel is okay, cursor pointer tho is slow, but by using the zoom buttons you can cut time in moving the screen
i dont hunt and fish and have not tried geocaching, so i have not tested these features. Turn by turn direction is available in the unit, it is accurate about 90-95% of the time, for example- it requires me to make a u-turn from sumulong highway to marcos highway going to katipunan but left turn is available. With the small screen, unit is not suitable for driving anyway and with all the POI's showing, screen becomes cluttered making it hard to navigate while driving. that's okay, i bought the unit for biking and running and so far im liking in on my mtbike.
I just came from a bike around Marinduque, the unit lasted 25hours and 10-12min on a pair of fully charged eneloop 2000mah battery, true to the specifications of the unit. i was actually surprised, that the etrex was readable outdoors without the backlit on, this probably saved alot on the batteries. Map on my unit showed a road only until Buenavista but my destination was Torrijos then Sta Cruiz.
here was a weird part. i turned the tracking on when i left the house. on the way back from Marinduque, the tracking was split, the first one being archived but that only happens when memory is full. i doubt very much that the first track, which is only 177km, took up a big space and besides, the second track, which is over 300km didnt get archived. i use only normal in tracking interval.
That concludes my short review in the meantime, will follow with pictures.
Any other etrex users?
In the box
The usual. Unit itself, cable and a bunch of quickstarts in different languages. No lanyard, no batteries and no unit manual. The unit came in with phil osm map as well as contour and roadguide. I was actually hoping for a lanyard since i think it was included in some garmin units
Operation
From On button, it takes about 4-5 seconds to start up the device, and almost instantaneous satellite pickup when outdoors. I use GPS+Glonass, tho, i havent compared pickup time between GPS against GPS+Glonass. probably will do so some other time. buttons are quite hard to press, good if you put in a bag since the unit has no lock buttons. joystick feel is okay, cursor pointer tho is slow, but by using the zoom buttons you can cut time in moving the screen
i dont hunt and fish and have not tried geocaching, so i have not tested these features. Turn by turn direction is available in the unit, it is accurate about 90-95% of the time, for example- it requires me to make a u-turn from sumulong highway to marcos highway going to katipunan but left turn is available. With the small screen, unit is not suitable for driving anyway and with all the POI's showing, screen becomes cluttered making it hard to navigate while driving. that's okay, i bought the unit for biking and running and so far im liking in on my mtbike.
I just came from a bike around Marinduque, the unit lasted 25hours and 10-12min on a pair of fully charged eneloop 2000mah battery, true to the specifications of the unit. i was actually surprised, that the etrex was readable outdoors without the backlit on, this probably saved alot on the batteries. Map on my unit showed a road only until Buenavista but my destination was Torrijos then Sta Cruiz.
here was a weird part. i turned the tracking on when i left the house. on the way back from Marinduque, the tracking was split, the first one being archived but that only happens when memory is full. i doubt very much that the first track, which is only 177km, took up a big space and besides, the second track, which is over 300km didnt get archived. i use only normal in tracking interval.
That concludes my short review in the meantime, will follow with pictures.
Any other etrex users?
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