Garmin eTrex Vista HCx Color High-Sensitivity Mapping Handheld GPS 010-00630-00

Excellent product, I love this gps, and I recommend it... met all my expectations

My experience buying through Wal-Mart .com was Spectacular and the Eterx Vista HCx is an Awsome GPS for the money.

If you're looking...and understand how to use...or are a technology geek, it's a nice GPS and a good value. The Garmin ETrex Vista is OK. Walmart had a great deal at $149 just before Christmas. However, it did not have any preloaded topographic maps as I thought the description said, so worthless to see how it might work on my hiking trails. I couldn't get the compass or altimeter to work easily. At this stage of my life, if something isn't easy to use, I won't use it and decided to take it back. I found free sites to download maps, but Garmin wants about $100 for topo map updates. I'm a Garmin GPS fan and have had several for street maps, but with better mapping like google maps, etc I'm amazed that Garmin doesn't include decent topo maps free. Seems like these GPS receivers for back country hiking, hunting, etc are way behind today's technology curve...too bad. Too many buttons, hard to press, hard to see the screen, not the best documentation. I'll just get a good forest service trail map until some manufacturer figures out thee are a lot of us technology challenged buyers out here looking for a simple easy to use GPS receiver.

P.S. I was very satisfied with my Walmart internet purchase. Was my first and quick delivery, well packaged, great price. And the nice part for me was I could take it back to a Walmart store for a no hassle refund. Highly recommend using Walmart on-line and now always watch their specials when shopping.

I have a Garmin ll plus, the Etrex Vista HCX is much faster. It has about every function that you will need.I use mine to navigate on a 4-wheeler in the woods, works great. Battery life is good. I used it to navigate on a highway. The turn directions were correct, but the distances between turn was inaccurate. Read the directions carefully.

This unit functions well off road, which is why I bought this unit. If you want to do any practical street navigation, you should plan to buy Garmin's city navigator maps.

After a few years of using the Garmin eTrex Legend C, I decided to upgrade to the Vista HCx. I am more than pleased with my decision.
The Vista HCx is a very handy unit and much improved over the Legend C.
Among the improvements are battery life is much longer, the speed at which the unit locks on to the satellite base is much quicker, the barometric altimiter and altitude cross section page, the digital compass, and the fact that you can store map information on a micro SD card. I was able to install the entire contents of the Garmin Metro Guide North America on one 2 gig card.
I use this unit in my daily commute to and from work. Not to keep me from getting lost, rather to keep my speed in check. My old car speedometer is just not acurate. I also use it when I go trail riding on my bicycle. I have the bicycle accesory handle bar mount and installing it is a snap.
This is an easy to use and easy to understand unit. If you are going packing, on a long bicycle ride or even a cross country drive, this unit will not let you down.
I use a veriety of Nimh batterie brands. The Eneloup brand seem to work the best, but any brand will work. I also use a Solio solar charger to power this unit when I am away from home. That way the power is always there when I need it.

If a small hand held is what you are in the market for, I recomend this one.

This unit has combined with topo maps and a 2gb SD card makes this is a top-notch unit. The fact the unit did not include topo maps hurt the value score (-1, only 4/5). However since Garmin is the most popular GPS it was not difficult to find someone who had unlocked City Nav 2010.1 and Topo 2008, provide pizza, beer and an SD card and the barter system wins. FYI the basemaps are not detailed at all but do include major highways and some secondary roads - they pale in comparison to City Nav and Topo maps.

I purchased a motorcycle mount for off-road use in the GWNF and was pleasantly surprised to find most of the major trails marked as roadways - was a great boon while keeping up w/ my jeep buddies.

The 2gb card was able to hold the entire eastern seaboard for both City Nav and topo maps and once you figure out how to select the maps it is relatively painless.

Had also considered the Nuvi 500 since it included topo maps, and was only ~$250, but decided it would be a bit awkward to carry when hiking. The Vista fits nicely in my old camera case mounted on my belt.

If you do get this unit and want free maps check out mapsntrails and gpsfiledepot web sites they should be sufficient and an improvement over the basemap that is included.

On the road City Nav works just as well as any auto/3d gps unit - you just have 2d maps only (which I prefer). Not having a car mount is a bit awkward - will have to purchase one in the near future.

Excellent in all areas, particularly for caching, and can't beat Walmart's price.

Go to http://cachereview.com to discuss your geocache finds and placements.

We bought this for geocaching and have done very well with this. It takes us within 5 feet of a cache. It's worked very well under a thick cover of trees. Doesn't work to well inside a cinder block store. ;-) The only thing that can be a little annoying is the toggle button as it can be a little sensitive sometimes. We've downloaded free topo maps from GPSfiledepot that work wonderfully with the HCX. We love the tracking option to see the paths we hiked and how long they are. It's been rather accurate. We like being able to overlay our paths on the topo maps. Great for finding your car again too! We plan to use this for our road trip to Tennessee and do cache's along the way!