Name: Thomas Turk
Location: Collegedale, TN USA
Date: 2008-11-24
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Good review for Garmin eTrex Venture CX
Comment: Good product, quick shipping. A little misleading or not clear on what comes with product when you order, but a good deal otherwise.
Name: David Fox
Location:
Date: 2006-09-20
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Excellent Value
Comment: Very happy with unit, in my opinion the best value out there. upgraded from garmin etrex legend, night and day difference
Name: Casey Tripp
Location: Monroe Louisiana
Date: 2007-01-04
Customer Rating: -
Summary: I can't believe it's not butter
Comment: Opened my Venture Cx Christmas day (or Kwanza, Winter Holliday, Winter Solstice Celebration, season of daytime fasting for the crescent moon god or whatever you would like to celebrate...I am trying to be inclusive and politically correct in this new year, and keep reminding myself, it is ok for people to not tolerate my views but I have to validate their's). Anywho, as soon as I put batteries in the GPSr, it picked up 4 satellite signals, from inside my brick home (hut, tent, adobe cliff dwelling, or news paper lined card board box, these are all valid personal choices and I do not judge you). I have used it for navigation (although being lost is a valid democratic choice) and geocacheing. The back light makes it easy to see at night and can be used as a make-shift flashlight (although choosing to stay in the dark is a valid democratic choice). All in all, this is a great GPSr, and has features of a much more expensive unit. If you are torn between this and more expensive units that include the USB cord and media card, choose this unit. Even if you do not have a USB cord for a MP3 player, camera or cell phone they are super cheap. The media card the other more expensive units come with is a 64 mg, and a 1 gig card can be purchased from Amazon for under twenty-five.
Name: Dave R.
Location: Sacramento, CA
Date: 2006-10-15
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Nice unit, bad documentation
Comment: This is my first GPS unit. I bought it mostly for hiking around in the wilderness, as well as measuring my speed while in a car (it is more accurate than a typical speedometer, like 1/10 of a MPH in the right conditions).
The Venture CX feels very solid. One tiny detail I was not thrilled with is that the microSD card slot was not machined very well. I had to push the card (not included, of course) to get it in place harder than I do on many other devices I've used (Mp3 players, digital cameras). With a tiny microSD card, as fragile as it feels, it bugs me, but since I connect to my computer through a (albeit slow) USB interface, I don't have to take the card in and out.
The included basemap is very weak, don't expect much. I had a 2004 version of Mapsource Metrosource 6.0, and using Metrowizzz (free) I am able to load the maps onto the unit and have the Venture CX calculate turn by turn directions to any address I enter. The cool thing about navigation is it tells you the distance between you and the next turn, and it beeps once in advance to tell you the turn is coming up, then when you're very close to it it beeps twice and tells you to turn (i.e. a message on the LCD "Turn left onto Main St.").
Also, you can adjust the backlight level, and set the amount of time the backlight stays on. When you turn on the device and then turn the backlight on, it will go off on its own in the amount of time specified. If you are in navigation mode, when the unit beeps to tell you about an upcoming turn, the light comes on automatically. It's really a clever design and allows you to focus on the road, and not burn up battery power by running the backlight unnecessarily.
The one major knock is the documentation, which is bad (a discussion forum search finds that the Venture / Legend CX are not alone when it comes to bad documentation). The manual tells you what the options are, but does not bother to explain them! An example is that you can choose a "battery saver mode". The manual does not explain, not even one lousy line, what this mode does (after doing a web search, I found out that it refreshes location every 5 seconds instead of every 1 second). There are other examples of this poor/missing detail. For that, I'm knocking one star off. I would hope that Garmin, whose GPS units are found in airplanes and boats all over the world, would like to tout the neat features of their GPS units by fully explaining to their owners how to use them.
In summary, I love the unit and even though I haven't had it in the wilderness yet, it is such a fun gadget to have that I wonder how I got by without it! Loving gadgets, I like to know how they work and how to use them to their fullest and I think Garmin needs to seriously improve the documentation of these units.
Name: Dr.Scooter
Location: St.Louis, MO
Date: 2007-06-14
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Lost In Space
Comment: This is a great unit, the whole GPS thing is better than sliced bread. That said, the base maps with this unit suck. That may not be fair if you only use major highways or for hiking but I was very unimpressed. I had access to City Navigator v8 since I have the Garmin GPS 18 set up on my laptop (my first GPS) and used for major auto trips. I purchased a 2 GB microSD (they can be had for south of $25) and loaded the entire USA on about 83% so IMHO getting the more expensive eTrex with the (tiny) microSD Card and data cable is a waste (if you have a digital camera you probably have the needed data cable). Battery life is unbelievable about 30 hours on 2 AA and for $10 one can find a car plug. A small unit like this won't give you verbal directions, it does beep to let you know that "something" is up but to be honest in a car you can hardly hear it. I've not really used it outdoors much for other than to track just how far I walk (workout) and tried (found) a Geocache for grins. A $14 motorcycle mount works very well on my bike Sportster 883XL (stock handlebars) and you do NOT replace the back of the unit, just add the clip that comes with the eTrex. That "new" back that comes with the bike clip won't even fit a Cx unit due to the microSD card and it's not waterproof, toss it.
I don't need a GPS daily, if I'm going on a major car drive I'll set up my GPS 18. This unit the eTrex (Venture Cx) is my handy dandy quick grab and it's a compromise but can be used for the car, my bike or on foot. My wife and I recently had to go to a family thing in NC I'd never really been there, so this was my first real use of this unit and I was impressed. Prior to leaving using my computer (camera data cable) and my Garmin Mapsource I located the hotel, event location, and the house we needed to go to. I should have input the Airport (could have done it there but just didn't think about it) but the unit bailed me out (more on that later). It does take the unit a bit to "log on and lock" maybe a minute or two so it's not a big deal. Once locked on I lit up the hotel waypoint and the little unit took us there. I just held it (or handed it to my wife) and although a small screen it gave me the next turn, distance all the things a GPS is suppose to do. Later my wife found a restaurant and when I hit the find button with POI there it was and off we went, no muss no fuss. On another occassion we went out to another restaruant with a local who rode with us and took us in such away as only a local can. Dinner done we wanted to go back to our hotel and since his wife met us there we were going to be on our own, it was dark and we were clueless as to where we were. Not a problem, lit up the GPS and on our way, made a wrong turn at the start and missed a turn in a dark rural area but the unit just recalculated and took us on in. My wife who hates all these gadget but clearly does not want to be lost was impressed. On the way back to the Airport was a bit off only because I did not create a waypoint. Using the "find" button it kept finding the closest one which was not the one I wanted. Not a real problem, I got on the highway headed towards the right airport and about 10 miles out hit the find button, went to transport and there was a list of Car Rental places, even better. Found my rental office and the unit took me in the front gate. So I have to say this unit has the potential to be great but as I started out the base maps suck. It's not a perfect car/camp/bike GPS but it "can" do all those things well plus slip in your pocket. Since I already owned the map and could install it to the micrSD card that was a good thing, if I had to pay an extra $125 for a decent map, well that's another. I hope to return to Europe for a bit of an adventure but a decent map of Europe is like $225 from Garmin, nice to have but a bit steep for a few weeks travel. It's not quite as bad a buying printer for $30 then having to get ink for $300 someone should start a Map Library, seems if you can rent a movie why not a map. "Help Me Will Robinson"
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