Handheld GPS Reviews - Customer reviews - Garmin eTrex Venture CX Color Mapping Handheld GPS

Manufacturer: Garmin

List Price: $267.99
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Average Customer Rating: -

Product details

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Spotlight customer reviews:

Name: 21st Century Hermit
Location: Colorado
Date: 2007-12-01
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Color 24K Maps take GPS out of the Stone Age
Comment: Pros: High Contrast Color LCD - easily readable in sunlight or dark, the GPS position pointer shows where you're at on the map in real time, no transposing. Vast Memory with microSD, Incredible array of odometer functions, Full text editor to mark special points. Multi-day battery life. Surprisingly useful alarm clock.

Cons: Too many confusing buttons, loses signal occasionally even on bare ridges, would like a bigger screen.

This is my first GPS, before color maps they made no sense. Knowing your absolute position as Latitude and Longitude is worthless without context, maps provide the context. Far better to have the maps inside the GPS than a paper map blowing in the wind. I selected the Venture Cx because it is the lowest cost entry into a color mapper with a microSD card.

I loaded my Venture with Above the Timber's 24K Colorado Topo Maps, awesome!!! Being able to navigate with 40-foot contours inside the GPS is far better than a huge paper quad and trying to figure out where on that map you are. With the microSD card, I have the same detail as 1280 - 7.5-minute quads inside the GPS at all times with 600MB to spare. The GPS position pointer is always on the map at my exact location, all the time. If I have the tracklog on, usually do, then I have a "bread crumb" trail of the path I took to get to my present position. The tracklog is particularly useful for off trail bushwhacking.

I took a 4-day backpack into the Weminuche Wilderness in Sept. and all I had were the Venture and Above the Timber's Topos, no paper maps. It logged my trip, allowed me to enter special points with a text descriptor and various position and time parameters. The maps inside the GPS were more current than my Trails Illustrated maps. BTW, my spare batteries went into the camera, the Venture had plenty of power in reserve.

On a least four occasions since I got the Venture, I was able to navigate to distant small lakes, none of which had a trail to it. The lakes were each on the map and with the position pointer, I was able to determine my position relative to the lake. If I needed to, I could quickly determine the distance from me to the lake, using the GPS' distance function.

The only drawback to the Venture is the lack of a barometric altimeter, like the Vista. It's not less accurate than the Vista, it's just that the barometric altimeter is required for elevation logging. Because of the highly variable satellite geometry, satellite derived elevation has too much drift for elevation logging.

If you buy any of these Garmin mappers, be sure it has an "x" in the model name, or it won't have enough memory for color maps. X = microSD.

Name: Jamesonsdad
Location:
Date: 2007-12-04
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Versatile little unit
Comment: I bought this unit in May 07 to geocache with. I also bought a 2GB micro SD card for $25 and City Navigator Ver.8 at the same time.

Pro's:
Small, this unit is tiny.
Incredibly bright crisp display.
Batteries last a long time.
Rugged and waterproof.
All US street maps fit on 2GB with room to spare.
Turn by turn navigation

Con's:
Side mounted buttons take some getting used to.
Becomes inacurate in deep woods. No big deal hunting deer, big
deal hunting caches.
Only holds 500 way points or geocaches.
No internal compass, makes geocaching more difficult.
No good car mount options that I found.

All in all this is an excellent unit. However if you need something very accurate or something you'd like to be able to use in your house or a parking garage get a unit with the SIRF II chip. With no internal compass this unit only shows heading while it is moving. If heading is important, get a unit with a built in compass. I just upgraded to a 76csx unit that does everything and only costs $120 more right now.

Name: Thomas Wittke
Location: NY
Date: 2008-01-07
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Extremely Pleased! Great unit for an amazing price!
Comment: I was shocked at the accuracy of this unit, i was not expecting it to have this sort of precision. I got this gps for geocaching, road trips and hiking. Everything is so easy to use and almost self-explanatory. I have used all of it's features and haven't had to crack open the user's manual once!

I found this gps has the longest battery life of any I've seen, 36 Hours on just 2 AA's!! that was the deciding factor between this unit and a few others for me. I have been researching which unit to buy for months and i am very happy with my decision and at $170, what a steal!

Name: C. Hendrickson
Location: MN
Date: 2008-06-26
Customer Rating: -

Summary: BUY IT!!!!!!!!!
Comment: Works perfect!
Great Battery life (30 hours on 2 rayovac AA)!
Awesome color screen!
Easy navigation in the menus!

Remember, this unit does not come with maps or a micro SD card. The SD card can be found on ebay for cheap (<$8) and some people have said maps can be found with a bittorent software (bitcomet.com) and thepiratebay.org.
I bought my maps at Garmin for $100/map.

Name: Geocache Dad
Location: Green Bay, WI
Date: 2008-09-02
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Great GPS for geocaching
Comment: I purchased this GPS so my family could start to go geocaching. It has been awesome. I don't think it has ever lost coverage even though we are sometimes in the thick woods. The batteries also last a long time. I would highly recommend this product.

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