Handheld GPS Reviews - Customer reviews - GARMIN Etrex Vista HCx GPS Receiver

Manufacturer: Garmin

List Price: $299.99
Our Price: Too low to display
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Refurbished Price: $214.99
Used Price: $150.00

Average Customer Rating: -

Product details

Offers (81)

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Spotlight customer reviews:

Name: skier
Location: MA, US
Date: 2008-01-23
Customer Rating: -

Summary: eTrex Vista HCx
Comment: I am still learning it, but I have real blast.
I purchased already TopoUSA map (Amazon $69.99) loaded it on new 1GB microSD card (just part of whole map fits in) and started exploring.
I ski with it - it shows total vertical, total mileage, average and max speed (I clocked myself at 52.3mph!)plus altitude plot (great)and bread crumb trail on map - all this helps me to review a day and later boast about it(!), very cool! I plan to get free ski area maps for Colorado (going there)at
http://www.travelbygps.com/premium/colorado/resorts.php
There is also another good product but you have to pay:
http://www.mountaindynamics.com/

I tested street navigation, but somehow it is not precisely drawing on the roads - with Topo map, it gets general directions, not as good as automobile GPS - like Mio/Nuvi.

Name: P. Wallinger
Location: Austin, TX
Date: 2008-04-06
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Almost perfect
Comment: If you have been frustrated by the inability of the previous incarnations of this product to acquire satellites when you were in moderate tree cover, or deep canyons, this is the unit you have been waiting for. I've been delighted by the improved capabilities of the new antenna. In the few months I've had this GPS it has never failed to acquire.

The menus have changed, but once I've gotten used to them. I think they are an improvement. Having a dedicated `menu' button works better than scrolling the curser over to select menus

The only reason I couldn't give this product 5 stars was that I have an old Black & White etrex vista which I had used to save a lot of tracks. I found that I was unable to download many of my tracks to the new unit. It seems they reduced the number of track points from 750 down to 500 so it truncated many of my tracks. Although annoying, I still wouldn't have let it bother me too much if I was told that a fix was on the way. But instead, the response from customer service was basically "Too bad all the new products like that." As cheap as memory is these days, and the fact that this latest unit has tons of expandable memory you would thing Garmin could be a little more accommodating of their long term customers. Allow me to store them on the expandable memory, give me a conversion tool (although this would reduce my resolution), something, anything, but don't just tell me "sucks to be you!"

Name: Ed from Long Island
Location: Long Island, NY
Date: 2008-06-04
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Great for Geocaching
Comment: I previously used a Garmin Etrex Legend for geocaching. If I was in dense trees, it would lose satellite reception or else the accuracy would be horrible. I recently tested both, side by side. The old Legend lost satellite reception but the new Hcx maintained position throughout the search.
I still haven't mastered the electronic compass yet so I just turn it off.
If you are looking for a reliable GPS for off road use, this is certainly a good choice.

Name: G. lane
Location:
Date: 2008-11-07
Customer Rating: -

Summary: This baby rocks.
Comment: A month ago I replaced my old Garmin Etrex Vista with the new Etrex Vista HCX. My old Vista was great, except when I was in heavily wooded areas or rocky canyons---in other words it was worthless to me as a GPS but priceless at the front entry as a door stop. The new HCX has solved this problem, but I may have to go to Target to get a new door stop as I sold my old GPS.

I can now hike in very heavily wooded, mountainous and deep rock canyon areas in central and southern Mexico and not worry about the signal. This HCX locks into the satellite signals and rarely lets go. The altimeter and compass are very accurate. The battery life is much improved over old units (up to 25 hours on two alkaline batteries). And, you can't beat Amazon pricing and quick delivery-----I got this GPS from Amazon for about $60.00 less than any other vendor's pricing.

In other words, this is a highly functional and useful hiking and biking GPS. What can be done to make it a five-star product:

1. Since this is a routing-capable GPS, add voice prompts for turns. You do get a beep, but that's not useful and, indeed, potentially dangerous if you're behind the wheel of a car if you're constantly looking at the screen, leading me to recommend a separate car-specific unit for a car;
2. The basemap of the Americas is useful, but be aware that Garmin maps are expensive should you desire topographic, street, other country or specialized maps. I did some internet research and found effective workarounds for getting non-Garmin maps on the unit and some reasonably good free maps which would have cost me a total of $500.00 had I bought them from Garmin. Garmin should either lower the price of their maps or provide instructions for loading non-Garmin maps on their units. Slim chance!

Name: F. J. Ryan
Location: Seattle
Date: 2007-11-21
Customer Rating: -

Summary: Outstanding handheld GPS
Comment: Third handheld GPS I have owned and by far the nicest. Good screen, reasonably powerful and intuitive menus and functions. Great altimeter and compass. Acquires satellites quickly and maintains satellites very well, though I have occasionally (but briefly) lost signal in thick woods while hiking. Base map not adequate for most uses. Topo 2008 is nice, but doesn't show enough topographic detail/contours for me. Overall though, this is a great and fun product--excellent for hiking and biking.

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