Garmin eTrex Legend 8 MB GPS with PC Cable

In addition to excellent waypoint and track management functions, the Legend features full mapping functions. The Unit includes a fairly detailed basemap of North America, but for more detailed mapping, data can be downloaded from a MapSource CD-ROM. These discs are availible in many flavors, from Waterway Details, to Topographical, to MetroGuide, which features address and business locating functions (Like Handheld Mapquest.com!)Downloading is easy, and thanks to the unit's high resolution LCD display, maps are suprisingly readable. The waterways disc features a complete database of aids to navigation, cataloging every bouy, daymark, and light in US waters.

As far as GPS functions, the unit preforms beutifully, maintaining a good position fix under moderate tree cover, and inside of a car. Heavy foliage can create a problem, but the unit performs better than most handheld GPS do in this situation. WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) increases accuracy to within 9 feet in good reception areas! Although this is at the expense of battery life. To save power, leave WAAS turned off and you will still get accuracy within 20 feet.

Because the unit uses 2 AA batteries instead of four, life is reduced; expect to change batteries at least every 14 hours, with the unit on continuously. Still, this is less often than my old garmin GPS 45, and that used four batts.

The user interface is very friendly, intuitive, and powerful. This is a great achivment, usually powerful interfaces are not user-freindly and vice versa. It bears quite a similarity to Operating Systems such as Windows and Macintosh, so if you know how to use the computer you are reading this with, you should be right at home. Besides the buttons for Page, Power/Light, Find, Zoom In/Out, there is a "Click Stick" as a pointing device. It works like a joystick or the trackpoint on a laptop to control the cursor on the screen. Pusing it in is like a mouse-click. One strage note on this: it is placed on the left side of the unit. This means that operating in with your'e right thumb blocks the screen. Many people think this is a mistake, making one handed operation with the right hand near impossible, but it makes goos sense to me: operate the GPS in your left hand, while steering the boat with your left. It is not that hard to learn to use the GPS with your left hand (if youre righty), so you can have your right hand free for other things.

In All, The Etrex Legend GPS is your best Buy in a handheld mapping GPS. If your'e looking for more features, check out the more expensive Etrex Vista and Garmin Gpsmap 76, or the very expensive handheld cartographic units, but if you just want a very good, inexpensive, handheld mapping GPS, The Legend is the best around.

Rating: 4 - Very good GPS receiver. Could be better (for a price).
You can see other positive reviews of the etrex Legend here, so I won't rehash them. The short story is that the Legend is a pretty decent GPS unit that works pretty well.

The base map included in the Legend only shows major highways and major streets. This is similar to the maps you get from a car rental agency. It's perfectly fine for doing rough navigation from city to city. At first, I tried using Rand McNally's StreetFinder and TripMaker Deluxe on my laptop with the Legend. The setup worked, but having to deal with the serial cable and using a laptop in the car was not very practical.

After I've had my Legend a while, I had a chance to borrow and use a Vista. The owner of the Vista upgraded it with detailed street-detail maps from Garmin's MapSource "Metroguide USA" CD .... The detailed street map is a really nice feature -- especially because you can look up addresses. Having such a detailed map in a small portable device is a delight! I decided to get the Metroguide for myself.

From my usage comparison, I found two things missing in the Legend compared to the top-end etrex Vista.

First, the Legend has only 8 MB of expansion memory instead of the 24 MB in the Vista. This turns out to be a big issue for me, as I would like to have a complete metro guide of the greater Los Angeles area. With 8 MB, I could only fit 6 of the 18 MetroGuide map sets that I would have liked. This means, I am missing coverage of a large section stretching roughly from Compton to Long Beach to Lynwood to Cerritos to Irvine that I would have wanted. In contrast, the Vista held all of greater Los Angeles area, plus some San Francisco, San Diego, and Las Vegas.

Second, the Vista has sensors for barometric altitude and magnetic compass heading. The Legend estimates altitude via GPS, and calculated heading based on your travel speed vector. If you are a trail-hiker, these sensors improve your navigation.

Used as-is from the factory (i.e., only the American basemaps), the Legend is perfectly fine, and I was quite happy with it.
I could live without the Vista's sensors;

But, having hit the 8 MB memory limit (trying to load Los Angeles), I would definitely go with the Vista now.

The Metroguide maps sizes of other cities may or may not be an issue for you. Go to the Garmin website and use their MapSourec Map Viewer and count the number of "yellow squares" you'll need to cover you area of interest. Each square roughly represents between 500K to 1.5 MB of data (with the smaller, "dense" squares being toward the 1 MB to 1.5MB size). You'll find that most of the big cities will have enough squares to easily exceed the 8 MB of the Legend.

For more details and to buy the Garmin eTrex Legend 8 MB GPS from Amazon, you might like to try:

Garmin eTrex Legend 8 MB GPS with PC Cable