Etrex 20

[milesyoung]

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?

[docsamcruz]

archiving the track is a normal thing even its a short trip while retaining a long hours of track as current. i do not know if time is the basis for archiving a track but that is immaterial anyway. try to set your unit to log/record its track for time and set the interval to 00:00:01 so your track can be of value for submission.

[milesyoung]

archiving the track is a normal thing even its a short trip while retaining a long hours of track as current. i do not know if time is the basis for archiving a track but that is immaterial anyway. try to set your unit to log/record its track for time and set the interval to 00:00:01 so your track can be of value for submission.

Hi Docsamcruz, is 1 second interval the minimum? Im just worried that i might not have enough memory for long rides, how about recording in distance, what is the minimum interval? Thanks!

[docsamcruz]

1 sec is the minimum and that is of value when you submit for new tracks, track alignment, etc in rg.

dont worry much about the memory coz that wont be full even for half a year of tracks (8 hours/day).

[Borgie]

Nice initial review milesyoung. There is actually a limitation as to the number of points a handheld garmin gps can record. In my 60CSx it is 10k points, meaning that if i set it to record 1 sec tracks (1 pt marked every second, connected pts=tracks), that 10k points is good only for about 2.78 hrs. Once the limit is reached, depending on your settings, it either stops recording, or continues recording (checked-wrap when full) but earlier recorded tracks will be deleted to maintain the 10k points limit.

However, the 60CSx has a micro SD memory card. There's a check box to turn track recording to MC on or off (Log track to data card). When checked, all tracks for the day are automatically recorded in the MC so you never lose a track. File extension is .gpx so saved tracks cannot be viewed in the GPS, only in the PC (Mapsource & etc.).

Kindly check if the ETrex20 supports this kind of track back-up recording. If it doesn't, then you might be better off having track settings set to "Auto-Normal or Least Often" when traversing known roads (those that are already in the RG map) just so you have a track record of your trip, and then switch to "Auto-Most Often" or "1-sec" tracking when traversing a road that's not yet on the RG map that you want to upload and contribute.

Another work-around, esp. if you've set 1-sec tracking, is to use Garmin's save tracks features. You can either save entire tracks (this will include ALL previously recorded tracks present in your GPS and ALL tracks will be connected to each other with straight lines starting with the oldest to the latest), or save only a portion of the track log. With this method, you can still see your earlier recorded tracks in your GPS screen. But remember to save your tracks before the earlier tracks get over-written.

... HTH

[iam3739]

Nice initial review milesyoung. There is actually a limitation as to the number of points a handheld garmin gps can record. In my 60CSx it is 10k points, meaning that if i set it to record 1 sec tracks (1 pt marked every second, connected pts=tracks), that 10k points is good only for about 2.78 hrs. Once the limit is reached, depending on your settings, it either stops recording, or continues recording (checked-wrap when full) but earlier recorded tracks will be deleted to maintain the 10k points limit.

However, the 60CSx has a micro SD memory card. There's a check box to turn track recording to MC on or off (Log track to data card). When checked, all tracks for the day are automatically recorded in the MC so you never lose a track. File extension is .gpx so saved tracks cannot be viewed in the GPS, only in the PC (Mapsource & etc.).

Kindly check if the ETrex20 supports this kind of track back-up recording. If it doesn't, then you might be better off having track settings set to "Auto-Normal or Least Often" when traversing known roads (those that are already in the RG map) just so you have a track record of your trip, and then switch to "Auto-Most Often" or "1-sec" tracking when traversing a road that's not yet on the RG map that you want to upload and contribute.

Another work-around, esp. if you've set 1-sec tracking, is to use Garmin's save tracks features. You can either save entire tracks (this will include ALL previously recorded tracks present in your GPS and ALL tracks will be connected to each other with straight lines starting with the oldest to the latest), or save only a portion of the track log. With this method, you can still see your earlier recorded tracks in your GPS screen. But remember to save your tracks before the earlier tracks get over-written.

... HTH

Wow glad to have read this information. Thanks sir!

Anyway, Sir Milesyoung, please note the reliability and durability of the eTrex series using it with the mountain bike.