November 19, 2005

Garmin eTrex Venture Review

Etrex_venture_7UPDATE: There are two newer color versions of this model available, the Venture Cx with expandable memory, and the Venture HC, which has a better chipset for superior reception under canopy and in urban or natural canyons.

The Garmin eTrex Venture was the first GPS I ever purchased. I chose it because, unlike the basic eTrex, the Venture comes with a cable allowing you to connect it to your PC, for only a few dollars more. I eventually upgraded to a mapping unit, but I still think the eTrex Venture is a good choice for a GPS newbie, or for anyone on a limited budget.

28 reviewers gave the eTrex Venture an average 4-1/2 out of 5 star rating on Amazon.

Here's what others are saying:

  • At ZDNet, seven users gave the Garmin Venture a 7.7 out of 10 rating.
  • gpsinformation.net compares the Gamin Venture, Vista and Legend.
  • Global Positioning Systems, a UK site, shows numerous screen shots of the Venture.

Finally, here are a few other resources:

Nov 19, 2005 2:08:00 PM | Garmin, GPS Reviews

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Creating Custom Maps for Lowrance GPS Receivers In another of our continuing series of the best of the boards, this jewel comes to us from Groundspeak, the geocaching message board. In a Lowrance vs. Garmin response, I said... ...if you want to create your own maps, you can do this with the 60CS. With the H20, you can only add tracks. Lots of them, granted, but it is still a significant limitation, especially if you want to add contours. To which Hoary, a geocacher from Massachusetts said... There is a significant progress in regards of building your own maps for Lowrance iFinder. More details in Yahoo! MapCreate Format Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mapcreate_format/ Sure enough, information is posted there on a new tool, MP2LCM. I covered how to obtain data and create MP files in my book, GPS Mapping - Make Your Own Maps, but the ability to transfer those custom maps to current Lowrance units is a new development. Now I haven't tried this yet, so if you have, chime in and let us hear your thoughts. Congratulations to the MapCreate Format group for all their efforts.
PREVIOUS POST
Garmin US TOPO 24K Review One of the frustrating things about backcountry use of GPS is having to live with "as the crow flies" routing. That's not so bad when you're off-trail, but on trail, I'd prefer my GPS tell me that its five trail miles to the destination rather than three "as the crow flies" miles. The crow can fly, but I can't. On one of my last outings, I had a chance to try out Garmin's US TOPO 24K which shows contour intervals closer to USGS 1:24,000 scale maps than their USA TOPO (1:100K) product, hence the name. During one outing, I happened to be on the dividing line between these two coverages, as captured in the screen shot to the left. Clearly, this enhanced level of detail is desirable, but having routable trails excites me just as much. I couldn't trick my GPS into capturing a screen shot of a route, but the image to the right comes from the MapSource desktop. You can see that the software routed along the highway and a trail, but that it had to do "line of sight" routing where one trail was not on the map. It was really nice to know just how far...

Rich Owings

The Typepad Team

Search

Recent Comments