New etrex GPS

[phan_TOM]

I see that Garmin has released an update to the popular etrex, the new etrex 10/20/30, anybody own or try one of these yet? Would any of the tech/GPS savvy individuals rate these as a worthy bushwalking tool? It will be used for work and fun about 50/50 and I'm looking for something thats easy to use, easy to read with a good battery life and uses AA's not a 'special' custom fit battery that the old one has.

From what I can see I'll need to spend at least another couple of hundred bucks to get better maps for it too, seems a bit of a rip off that they aren't included but not suprising, is there anyway to get hold of cheaper maps than the advertised ones, hacked maps?? I could only find one type? Any idea how accurate the worldwide basemap is, would it be detailed enough eg does it have contours etc? I havent used a mapping capable gps before...

I'm looking to replace a Garmin Explorist whose batteries are only lasting 3-5 hours and an ancient Silva multi navigator that struggles to find any satellites on sunny days on top of treeless hills, basically a heavy and expensive compass/ugly paperweight... both are old work related units but I'm hoping that I can take the new one walking/paddling as well, they are supposed to be waterproof to some degree. I took the explorist on a bushwalk to find that the battery died after about 3 hours (& it took more than 7 hours to charge!), felt dirty having to carry the extra weight if it after that

Love to hear any opinions or recomendations for other models that may be around the same price/similar features.

I also found reference to them being able to access the new russian satellite system called GLONASS which means that you can get a fix up to 20% faster, sounds good, and can lock onto 24 more saellites than gps alone, sounds good.

If I can decide whether or not its going to be worth it, I will be getting it as a christmas present through work, sounds good

[photohiker]

Haven't seen one yet, but if its half as good as my Etrex Vista HCx, then it will be very good. I've used mine for a week of hiking on 4 batteries.

Maps. There are options other than buying or hacking Garmin's maps - a lot of areas I go to don't have good coverage anyway, so I use either the Openstreetmap or the Shonky mapping both along with Contours Australia contour mapping based on the SRTM (Space Shuttle) topo scanning done a few years ago. Works really well on the HCx and no reason to doubt it wouldn't work on the new series. There's a bit of a learning curve getting all this working, but worth the effort IMO.

Worldwide basemap is accurate, but so devoid of detail its not a lot of use. Don't know anything about GLONASS.

[Maelgwn]

Used one ( etrex 10) the other day ( briefly). Sadly it is not as easy to use as I was hoping an seemed a bit slow to acquire satellites. Haven't tried download to/from the computer, which may prove to be how to make it more useable.

Certainly v light and compact

[Mark F]

Garmin have a good name for their gps units but like most gps companies are way behind the technological frontiers when it comes to screens. When buying a GPS the first decision is do you want a mapping or non-mapping unit.

If you want a non-mapping unit then choice is really between the eTrex 10 or the foreTrex 301 or 401. I find the foreTrex work well for me but has a smaller screen - haven't found it a problem. Remove the wrist strap and the ForeTrex is 75g with NIMH batteries for stated 18 hour battery life. eTrex offers 25 hours battery life from over twice the battery weight (NiMH AAA x 2 = 24g AA x 2 = 54g) so less energy efficient for the weight - 25 vs 40 hours for the same weight of batteries. To me weight is important as is energy efficiency.

If you want a mapping unit then screen size and pixel count becomes important.
eTrex 20 30 - 176 x 220, 2.2" diagonal screen
Montana - 272 x 480, 4"
Oregon - 240 x 400, 3"
Dakota - 160 x 240, 2.6"

My personal view is that mapping us not worth while under 240 x 400 - you cannot see enough of your surrounds if you need contours - It is adeqaute for seeing a road system. So I would not buy the eTrex or the Dakota models for mapping.
Edited for typo eTrex 10 not eTrex 100

I am playing with mapping on my Android phone with a 800 x 480, 4" screen (3 times the pixels of the Montana) using Backcountry Navigator. A Christmas project is getting mapping from scans of topo maps which are geo-referenced and converted to work with the software (Mobile Atlas Creator). This appears to relatively straight forward but no doubt there are some hiccups to be overcome on the way.

Some food for thought in your purchase decision.

Last edited by Mark F on Mon 14 Nov, 2011 6:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Nuts]

I'm interested in this. I sorely need to update my own gps (the first model etrex, the yellow one with the world map logo), it doesn't work well under trees. Why those other models over the cheap e10 mark? I need something that works well enough under trees, not really for mapping. There are a bucketload of models, not really my thing, need someone to narrow the field Is iphone gps any use (i need to update my phone as well). i started reading reviews and was left thinking that Its the real world local experience that matters with choosing adequate gps?

[Nuts]

Ah.. I'm guessing you meant the e10 not e100? have you had the foretrex under thick cover mark?

[Mark F]

I have used the foreTrex in thick forest and narrow gorges and it worked fine. Just a bit slower to pick up satellites. I use it by turning it on, getting my "fix" and turning it off. I get about a week on NiMH 2 x AAA.

I prefer the Garmin because it is relatively waterproof and has great battery life and I will always carry a paper map and compass. While I can see the benefits in a mapping unit, I want one that will work well with contours and being able to see (on the screen) an area for a least a couple of km around my location. The Android phone (HTC Desire HD) means that I already have the hardware and can experiment with mapping for free (Backcountry Navigator is $10) and I already own the maps and scanner. A better path than shelling out almost $700 and then having to buy maps (couple of 100 more) to find out whether I want to use it or not.

[Nuts]

Thanks Mark, I see the Foretrex 101 201 but am guessing they are the older models with perhaps the same poor performance as mine.
Ive been mucking around with bits of 1: 25k maps on my kindle and will likely go with a phone when i'm more sure of the gps capabilities. Just need a basic upgrade for now.
Cheers.

[marangaroo86]

I just got the Etrex 20
Have had it only 3 Days
I am new to GPS Units. I am good with maps and compass and usually just go by the lie of the land and my inbuilt compass
I was going to get the Etrex 10 ,But went the Etrex 20
I thought maybe I can have some fun making custom maps
I am planning of using it as backup and in whiteouts
I have had it running in the car , I am using enloop Batteries and can seem to get 24 hours use.
$225 Delivered was the best price in Australia I could find.
Sorry I can not give you more information , have not really had a good play yet.

THANKS
Marangaroo

[photohiker]

I have used the foreTrex in thick forest and narrow gorges and it worked fine. Just a bit slower to pick up satellites. I use it by turning it on, getting my "fix" and turning it off. I get about a week on NiMH 2 x AAA.

Just to clarify. With the Etrex HCx, I get about a week out of 4 AA's and it is on for the whole walk day and logging the track. I turn it off for breaks longer than 10 minutes or so, and am careful to turn it off on reaching camp. If the HCx were used for fix only like you use the foretrex, it would probably last for months on a single pair of AA's. AAA's have way less power than AA's.

I prefer the Garmin because it is relatively waterproof and has great battery life and I will always carry a paper map and compass. While I can see the benefits in a mapping unit, I want one that will work well with contours and being able to see (on the screen) an area for a least a couple of km around my location. The Android phone (HTC Desire HD) means that I already have the hardware and can experiment with mapping for free (Backcountry Navigator is $10) and I already own the maps and scanner. A better path than shelling out almost $700 and then having to buy maps (couple of 100 more) to find out whether I want to use it or not.

Fair call, just be aware that the phone is nowhere near as rugged as a dedicated GPS and they use batteries like no tomorrow if used for constant GPS mapping. Larger screen mapping GPS are certainly available, but the tradeoffs are weight and battery life. Many have rechargeable batteries that will make things complicated and expensive if you want to use them for more than a couple of days away from a powerpoint...

[ILUVSWTAS]

I'm interested in this. I sorely need to update my own gps (the first model etrex, the yellow one with the world map logo), it doesn't work well under trees. Why those other models over the cheap e10 mark? I need something that works well enough under trees, not really for mapping. There are a bucketload of models, not really my thing, need someone to narrow the field Is iphone gps any use (i need to update my phone as well). i started reading reviews and was left thinking that Its the real world local experience that matters with choosing adequate gps?

I think there were some people rescued out of your park recently Nuts that were trying to use the GPS on their iphones. Funnily enough it didnt appear to work very well... luckily enough i guess they had a phone though and managed to call fo help....

[Nuts]

I'm thinking where they went down was not having a map to use the iphone gps with? . I know people who use them for nav (and the battery thing) just waiting to get an idea of their comparison (the newer model) to garmin as far as everyday use goes.

Ive always had these things (that gps for 13/14yrs) but don't really think of them as more than a backup. They suck money! The satphone costs $360pa without a ir sim card and has cost another $300 or so pa in depreciation. Can't avoid it really.

For private walks i'd be happy with a 'smart'phone if gps was 'adequate' and spot connect 'good enough'..

Anyhoot! Probably grab a basic gps for the short term, just trying to find the cheapest, smallest, lightest option with in mind it will be land fill soon enough.

i know they are seperate technology but a smartphone seems closest to combining them in one (in my 'non-tech' head).

I guess if it gets wet and fails at the very time i fall off a cliff i'm in deep carp Like the old timers last century.

[Nuts]

'My park' lol, should leave good vibes up there then is my 2c to that, what its all about afterall

[phan_TOM]

Maps. There are options other than buying or hacking Garmin's maps - a lot of areas I go to don't have good coverage anyway, so I use either the Openstreetmap or the Shonky mapping both along with Contours Australia contour mapping based on the SRTM (Space Shuttle) topo scanning done a few years ago. Works really well on the HCx and no reason to doubt it wouldn't work on the new series. There's a bit of a learning curve getting all this working, but worth the effort IMO.

Definitely sounds like a learning curve photohiker, but if its free then I am willing to have a go, especially if a lot of areas don't have good coverage anyway... what you recomend does sound confusing but I'm sure once I've had a fiddle I will be able to get my head around it. I've just read about custom maps too where you can transfer your own paper maps into the device using the supplied software, sounds grea if it isn't too tricky or time consuming. This is a bonus because I have a hefty collection of maps & a scanner

Garmin have a good name for their gps units but like most gps companies are way behind the technological frontiers when it comes to screens. When buying a GPS the first decision is do you want a mapping or non-mapping unit.

After having a couple of non-mapping units I'm going to get one that has maps this time but I'm also looking at price, size, weight, battery life and robustness (waterproof etc) of which the smart phones definitely dont tick many boxes. I'm not really keen on touchscreens or camera either, I have about $2.5k of camera gear that if I want to take photos (plus a water/shockproof compact) and the touch screen is just something else that can break in my opinion, not to mention suck the batteries and make for a larger heavier unit.

From what I can see GPS devices and smart phone GPS's aren't created equally either. Looks like GPS's work anywhere on the planet & phones don't and GPS devices are more accurate from what I can tell, phones arent waterproof, etc. I don't know how true any of this is though nor the difference between how the technology for the two works? does a phones gps rely on having reception?

Price wise, and I am taking all these off the garmin website, not the best deals that I can find, for a fair comparison, the montana is $800, way to much for me to spend, the oregon is $600-750, too much, the dakota $350-450, closer but still more than I want to spend (*cough* the company wants to spend). The etrex 10/20/30 are $150/250/350 respectively but I can handle it if I can avoid the extra couple of hundred buying decent maps.

Weight and size wise the etrex is the smallest and lightest of these (very close to the dakota though) and it also has the best battery life by quite a margin, up to 10 hours longer than the oregon and montana and 5 hours more than the dakota...

I have used the foreTrex in thick forest and narrow gorges and it worked fine. Just a bit slower to pick up satellites

One of the reasons I'm keen on the etrex is because after a being up in the rainforest trying to find some waterfalls with a local bushwalking group the only device that could confirm that we were where we thought were (and we were, if that makes sense) was a guy with an old etrex h. It turned on and got a fix quickly and easily even though the canopy was dense, where 2 other units struggled to get a decent signal (dont know what they were, one was a larger fancy looking model with a colour screen)

Just to clarify. With the Etrex HCx, I get about a week out of 4 AA's and it is on for the whole walk day and logging the track. I turn it off for breaks longer than 10 minutes or so, and am careful to turn it off on reaching camp. If the HCx were used for fix only like you use the foretrex, it would probably last for months on a single pair of AA's. AAA's have way less power than AA's.

Thats really cool, months on a pair of AA's sounds like you should be in advertising photohiker I always have a map & compass but I will use whatever new GPS that I get in a similar way, for logging the tracks sometimes (the first time I do a walk or paddle so I can put the track info into some kind of diary, the exact route, the distance, elevation change, speed etc etc and other times it will only be used to get a position fix if I'm uncertain (ha! never happen... much) AND to help with surveying and locating reference points for work related projects.

I just got the Etrex 20... Sorry I can not give you more information , have not really had a good play yet...

Once you felt like you've given it a good test marangaroo I'd like to hear your thoughts, pros & cons and all that, cheers

[photohiker]

Just to clarify. With the Etrex HCx, I get about a week out of 4 AA's and it is on for the whole walk day and logging the track. I turn it off for breaks longer than 10 minutes or so, and am careful to turn it off on reaching camp. If the HCx were used for fix only like you use the foretrex, it would probably last for months on a single pair of AA's. AAA's have way less power than AA's.

Thats really cool, months on a pair of AA's sounds like you should be in advertising photohiker

Simpler than that, I've been burned by AAA's and I hate them

The HCx does a great job on battery life. I forgot to mention that I turn the electronic compass off, and also the backlighting. The HCx screen is good enough to read in daylight without backlight, hope the new models are too!

Smartphones and GPS. Most use the 3G data network for AGPS (Assisted GPS), but also get along just fine without it. When you turn on a GPS it has to download the ephemeris data and stuff that tells it where the satellites are so that it can do its calcs to work out where on the planet the GPS actually is. If they rely on downloading tis data over the GPS network, the data transmission is quite slow compared with a 3G data connection, sooo the boffins came up with a way to get that data via 3G and it speeds up the time to position fix. No 3G? - it then works just like a normal GPS.

I haven't seen any reliable data that shows smartphones in general to be less accurate than consumer GPS. Each GPS be it a dedicated unit like the Etrex or a smartphone has an implementation that includes an aerial, a chipset and software interface to the user. As you can imagine, some work better than others, and generally newer chipsets are a lot better than older ones. If you pick up an old Garmin, you will be surprised how long it takes to get lock and how difficult it is to find stuff in the menus.

Other than that, your thoughts on smartphones are pretty accurate. If you just want position fix then smartphone could be ok notwithstanding it won't work if you left it on and the battery ran down or you dropped it in the creek. I do take a smartphone with mapping software and maps with me, but only as a backup to the real maps and compass and GPS.

[Nuts]

(so you have 3 forms of 'backup'.. each to their own. Thanks for the summary, there's some good points for several options here)

[photohiker]

(so you have 3 forms of 'backup'.. each to their own. Thanks for the summary, there's some good points for several options here)

You're welcome.

Really, I would take the smartphone anyway. It makes sense to equip it for the unlikely failure of two other systems, but having worked in IT I realise anything is possible. Added weight of GPS software and maps on the smartphone is 0.0g, so why not?

[phan_TOM]

...but if its half as good as my Etrex Vista HCx, then it will be very good...

I just had a look on the garmin website and did a comparison between the etrex 30 & the Vista HCx and they seem fairly similar in size, weight, batt life, etc. The etrex has a number of extra functions as you would expect but I am curious how you find the screen on yours? They are virtually the same size and have the same pixel count, which does seem low to me looking at the numbers, but the etrex has a 65k TFT vs the vista 256 TFT (sounds impressive but practically means nothing to me). Do you find it large & readable enough? Thanks for your time too Michael its been helpful and I am leaning in the general direction of the etrex at the moment as it fits most of my initial criteria.

[photohiker]

Do I find it large? No. Is it readable enough, yes. For me.

I have several GPS and have sold others on ebay. The HCx is the smallest, and has the smallest screen, but for hiking it has those things that do it for me: Battery life, mapping and a usable screen. Would it be better if it was bigger? Of course it would, but at the expense of size, weight and battery life.

As to whether it is adequate for YOU, only you can decide that. You need to go and look at one, preferably one setup with the sort of mapping you are likely to be using. Some people have trouble with seeing detail on a small screen, and zooming in and out can be painful but gets better as these devices get faster processors and more memory. An iPad would be ideal apart from the qualities it doesn't have...

Here is a close up of the screen taken in my office with the smartphone. You can see it is reflective, and the narrow angle of the camera and the light in the room is increasing the light fall-off effect of the display, but you can see that it is quite sharp at this zoom level. I think I read that the new models have a better anti-reflective coating on the cover which would help readability, you can see that it's quite reflective of the window behind me here. (This is Devonport on Shonkymaps with Contours Australia at 200m zoom) Keep in mind that this is an enlargement, the actual screen width is about 3.5cm.

[phan_TOM]

Would it be better if it was bigger? Of course it would, but at the expense of size, weight and battery life... An iPad would be ideal apart from the qualities it doesn't have...

Yeah, like my dream camera. It has a 10-1000 f2.8 zoom lens, no noise at iso 12,800, fits in the pocket of my shorts, etc etc

thanks, next step is to get one in my sweaty little hands and also have a look and try of a few different models

[Nuts]

VV

Last edited by Nuts on Wed 16 Nov, 2011 8:31 am, edited 2 times in total.

[Nuts]

Probably be lost in this topic but i did find these battery backup for the iphone:

Energiser
Trent

[phan_TOM]

Well, I bit the bullet and am now the proud & slightly overwhelmed owner of an etrex 30. Definite learning curve ahead but I think it will more than fill my modest needs.

My first impressions are:
- Wow, it is small and light;
- Compared to the old one It fires up and acquires a position fix extremely fast, less than 30 seconds to start up and to find 9 datellites and 6m accuracy. Blows the old one out of the water...;
- Accuracy seems to be spot on both horizontally and vertically when comparing it to the 1:25k topo;
- the screen is fairly small but easily readable indoors and outdoors even though its an overcast day (edit: the sun just came out and it's perfectly readable in direct sunlight). Sizewise, its not an ipad, but I can't see a problem using maps with it;
- the worldwide basemap is very vague, useless for bushwalking/kayaking (anything?). I've just downloaded shonky maps but have no idea how to make it work. I've looked at the computer from all angles, poked and prodded it. Nothing.
- the user interface is fairly intuitive and easy to navigate but its not great compared to my ipod4 (the only thing I have to compare it with) not suprisingly.

I am wondering what software people are using to get maps onto their garmin gps's? Seems to be a few options, is there a good free one? any other advice/points in the right direction in getting maps up and running on my new toy?


edit: for the mods. I'm wondering would this thread be better off in the techno babble forum?

[photohiker]

I am wondering what software people are using to get maps onto their garmin gps's? Seems to be a few options, is there a good free one? any other advice/points in the right direction in getting maps up and running on my new toy?

Start with the software that came with it. Either Mapsource or Basecamp has the facilities to do the job. If it didn't come with a software CD, then Basecamp is a free download from Garmin. The process basically involves installing Shonky onto the computer where you will be able to view it in Basecamp or Mapsource, and then uploading the areas required to the GPS using the included Garmin Software.

Its a little more involved than that, I've just painted the big picture for you

[phan_TOM]

Yeah, I managed to figure it out, thanks michael. Shonky's 50m contours still aren't really enough though so I'm going to try a copy of "contours australia" and see how that works, more to learn/more pain

I'm guessing that they can be combined with shonky maps as a layer and then transferred via basemaps to my gps, or is it one or the other?

[photohiker]

To use Contours Australia with Shonky on your GPS, you transfer "Shonky Topo without Contours" and "Contours Australia" (for the respective area) to your GPS.

When they are both active, the Contours Australia is a transparent overlay on top of the Shonky map.

Clever, aint it?

[Explorer_Sam]

Read my review on the Garmin eTrex 10 here http://samchristiesoutdoors.blog.com/2012/03/16/18/
Please feel free to leave a comment.
Explorer_Sam.