Handheld GPS Reviews - Customer reviews - Garmin Etrex Venture HC GPS Receiver

Manufacturer: Garmin

List Price: $199.99
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Used Price: $129.99

Average Customer Rating: -

Product details

Offers (68)

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Spotlight customer reviews:

Name: B. Root
Location: Whittier, CA USA
Date: 2008-09-29
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Great intro unit for geocaching for the price!
Comment: You wanna do geocaching? Get this. I bought this as my first unit, it was a toss between the eTrex H, the generic unit with no map and only an arrow, and then spending more money on this. I am glad I spent more money on the Venture HC, because I don't think the eTrex H would be useful at all on long hikes in the hills.

The Venture has an easy to see and read color screen and comes pre-installed with a basemap that is basically entirely useless. If you want to do any serious hill and hiking geocaching you need to get the topographic maps that Garmin offers. These are expensive, but are pretty much necessary when navigating terrain and trails with changes in elevation. I can recall several instances when I needed to check elevation levels to make sure I was on the right trail to get to the cache I was chasing.

The topographic maps that Garmin offers also have street data on them, but this device has no turn-by-turn and, but it's great to compare what is on my Garmin to what is in my car's GPS so that I can navigate easily to caches.

I only use this unit for geocaching, however I see no reason it wouldn't work great for regular hiking and out door activities. This is a good unit at a great price. Everything about it is pretty much golden.

Pros:
- Easy to use. I figured out how to use most functions without even reading the manual, but I am a bit of a geek.
- Easy to read the screen
- Battery life is great even on non-rechargables
- Very accurate! Usually if the geocache you're hunting has accurate coordinates, GZ on the unit will be exactly where the cache is. Make sure to turn on WAAS, as it seemed to be off by default.
- Unit is pretty much weather proof and has been banged around by me a fair bit and stays strong!
- Onboard memory is more than enough to have all the topographic maps for Southern California (LA County to SD county and everything in between) in it.

Cons:
- Base map is entirely useless.
- Draw time is a little slow, but nothing that could possibly hold you up.
- Only holds data for 500 geocaches, but, really, who needs more than that really?

Name: Carrie
Location:
Date: 2008-07-18
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Excellent Geocaching Tool
Comment: I purchased this item with geocaching in mind, and it has gone above and beyond my expectations. First, it has a special folder just for geocaches, which (because this product is a Garmin) can be downloaded directly from the geocaching.com website to the device, or you can enter them manually using the geocache symbol and it automatically sorts them. Secondly, it is accurate. It keeps a signal even in the woods, and is correct about coordinates to within 10 feet, usually even closer. It beeps when you are in range of a cache, which is especially useful when driving, because it tells you approximately which exit to use on the highway. Lastly, when you find one, it saves the information to its calendar so that you can log it later, and brings up the next closest automatically. This can be a drawback if you have a lot of undiscovered caches stored, because the next one on the list might actually be behind you on your route, but it's useful if you're looking for many in the same place.

This is a fairly good GPS for general use, also. It stores information about highway exits so that you can track them similarly to tracking geocaches. You can enter waypoints of all sorts and design paths among them. It has a very accurate speedometer and odometer feature, which calculates your maximum speed, moving and stopped time, and average speed across trips. As mentioned in other reviews, the default map is not great, but it does have the major highways on it, and it stores your path so you can check where you've been. It won't give you turn by turn directions, but if you want a relatively inexpensive GPS for geocaching or other waypoint finding tasks, this should be it.

Name: Herman Gansmans
Location: Germany
Date: 2008-03-09
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Excellent value/performance
Comment: Worked with the eTrex a couple of days, very pleased, we had the Garmin Geco 201 earlier, this had a bad reception in the woods.
The Etrex is next generation, good/excellent reception with the maps in the background so far excellent ratio performance/cost.

Herman

Name: Mike A. Tichenor
Location: Valparaiso, IN. USA
Date: 2008-05-23
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Garmin eTrex Venture HC Makes the Trip
Comment: This was my first GPS purchase and i spent a lot of time being confused over the terminology and features of GPSr's. In researching a unit to buy, I also looked at what others who were not as confused as me were using. I finally settled on the Venture HC. I have to say I was not disappointed. I use my unit for geocaching and hiking. It took some time to learn to use the Venture partly because it was something new and the instructions were complicated and partly because I was new to GPS's and had to learn the terminology. Once I got the hang of using it, I was impressed with its accuracy. It carries light and is easy to operate.

Things I didn't like were that it always powers up with the screen dimmed. You must always brighten the screen to see it. I would have thought it would come on at a medium brightness. The unit also comes with a strap for carrying and the belt clip is optional. Since the Venture is designed for outdoor uses like hiking, etc., I would rather have had the belt clip as standard and the strap optional. Minor things I would like changed, but that's the only real problem I have with the Venture.

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.

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