Name: ideastoday
Location: Madison, AL
Date: 2008-02-04
Customer Rating: -
Summary: An outdoor GPS receiver as revolutionary as the original eTrex
Comment: Before buying this new Venture HC, I had spent many hours trekking with several of the original eTrex models over the years. I think it's fair to say that while the concept of the original eTrex was great, the execution was frequently disappointing.
It disappoints no more. This new Venture HC is the eTrex perfected. It remedies almost every shortcoming that plagued the original models. The new high-sensitivity receiver is amazingly effective. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've stood in wide open spaces cursing my old eTrex because it wouldn't acquire even a single satellite. Last night I turned on the Venture HC on the bottom floor of my two story house, and it locked on to 7 or 8 satellites...through the roof and the upper floor. No more "need a clear view of the sky" messages. Amazing!
The screen has gone color, and the user interface is now substantially more intuitive, while adding even more functionality. The old serial cable has become USB, another welcome improvement. The case is somewhat redesigned (it's wider), but it remains very similar to the original. If you owned an old eTrex you will find a lot of familiar design elements in the Venture HC.
A basemap is included but it is just that...basic. It shows the largest highways, bodies of water, and has some limited capability to display highway exit services. Still, if you need turn-by-turn street directions, an eTrex is not what you want. This is a GPS receiver true to Garmin's outdoor heritage.
Promised battery life (14 hours) is near the bottom of the range when compared to the existing eTrex models, but is still perfectly adequate and has posed no problems.
One weakness that remains is Garmin's waypoint manager PC software. It has the feel of a product whose version 1.0 was released circa 1992 and has never been updated. Garmin could certainly include a better PC interface. For $59 you can buy ExpertGPS, which is excellent. Or Topografix is giving away EasyGPS for free on its website. Either is superior to the Garmin OEM software. If anyone at Garmin is listening, you guys really should consider licensing the rights to ExpertGPS and throwing your current PC software out.
Still, this criticism is a quibble when third party workarounds are available. The Venture HC itself is great. It is a market changing product, in my opinion. Finally, an outdoor GPS receiver that I can wholeheartedly recommend.
Name: Serge van Neck
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Date: 2008-03-10
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Great for geocaching, astronomy!
Comment: I got this unit after much research into different brands and, after settling on Garmin, different models. It's a great all-around GPS at a great price. It's my first, so I can't comment on the increased sensitivity of the HC chip, but I get plenty of coverage inside my house, and when I step outside the accuracy goes to about 9'. I would have liked the compass and altimeter of the Vista, but really don't have much need for them since I'm not an avid hiker, and didn't need to spend the extra money.
The Venture HC is great for geocaching. I took my family out on our first hunt last weekend, and although we only had about an hour to spare, we had a great time finding caches stashed around a park nearby. I can see this as a fun family activity on road trips as well. The Venture has built-in geocaching features that let you download waypoints directly from geocacher.com (using the free Garmin browser plugin), and even mark caches as found right on the GPS. The color screen is very readable in sunlight. Although the Venture HC doesn't have a proper compass, the "compass" page is very useful for closing in on the target.
The Venture HC is also great for amateur astronomers. My computerized telescope needs to know lat/long/time to accurately slew to and track objects in the sky. I can get coordinates on standard addresses on geocoder.us, but if I just want to set up at a dark site somewhere, a GPS is a must. Rather than pay $200 to get the GPS option on my scope, I can use this general purpose GPS and just plug the numbers into the telescope's controller, or even connect through my laptop. Although any GPS will give you the time and location, not all have as nice a backlit screen as this one, a good thing when you're out in the dark. The customizable color schemes (with automatic night mode) and the variable backlight intensity are also great for astronomy to keep stray light to a minimum.
If I'm disappointed with anything it is with the built-in base map. Again, because this is my first GPS I was somehow expecting more detail, not necessarily in terms of street names, but certainly with respect to canals, mountains, even major cross streets etc. The only features I've been able to distinguish are freeways, lakes and cities. There are many mountains where I live and none of them are shown on the map. More detailed topo maps are available, but cost anywhere from $80-$120. I'm not subtracting any stars for this, because I'm sure all basemaps are pretty much the same. And with 24MB of memory, there's room for decent quality maps.
Garmin updated the firmware for the Venture in February 2008, so one of the first things I did was download their free WebUpdater utility to automatically install updates. I had one scary moment when my GPS lost the USB connection in the middle of the process, and I was worried my unit would be disabled. But after turning it off and back on it came right back up and, after a second try, the new firmware was installed in about 5 minutes.
All in all, I'm very happy with the quality of this unit. It feels sturdy yet light weight, with a nice rubberized feel to it. It's also waterproof, so no trouble using it in the rain. The interface took a little getting used to, but after a while it becomes second nature. The Venture lets you customize almost every screen to your taste; for example, I wanted to have time, elevation and location on the same page for astronomy purposes, so I set one of the screens up to show all these fields. At $130, the price point was perfect: significantly lower than the next model up (sacrificing only the compass/altimeter and microSD slot), and not much higher than plain-vanilla black & white units without geocaching features.
I highly recommend it.
Name: Horacio F. Olivo
Location: Iowa City, Iowa United States
Date: 2007-10-19
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Better Reception with the eTrex Venture HC
Comment: I was very pleased with the purchase of my new eTrex Venture HC. I've used a Garmin Legeng Cx for geocaching for the last year and coords jump off too much under heavy canopy. This is not the case with the new eTrex Venture HC. I was also able to load Topo and City maps without any trouble using my old software. I also had no problems loading waypoints directly using GSAK software.
Name: William R. Fuhrer
Location:
Date: 2008-08-17
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Great Geocaching GPS
Comment: I use the Venture HC only for geocaching and did not purchase the detailed maps for street navigation or hiking. Buttons are not intuitive as they are unmarked. Their functions need to be learned then remembered. It works great, accurate to 9 feet in many places, and is steady where others have complained of reduced signal strength. Downloading waypoints from my PC is seamless.
Name: B. Gensel
Location: Valparaiso, IN
Date: 2008-06-22
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Great for geocaching
Comment: I did the research for a first-time geocacher gps and decided on this model. I haven't been disappointed, although my 13 year-old son is the expert on using the gps. It locates satellites quickly and is very accurate. On one trip, my son was frustrated because the unit said we were right on top of the cache. Turns out we were, in fact right on top of the cache. Can't go wrong with Garmin. We use the car nuvi 660 to get us in the area and the etrex to take us to the cache.
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