Garmin eTrex Venture CX

Good product, quick shipping. A little misleading or not clear on what comes with product when you order, but a good deal otherwise.

I purchased this GPS so my family could start to go geocaching. It has been awesome. I don't think it has ever lost coverage even though we are sometimes in the thick woods. The batteries also last a long time. I would highly recommend this product.

Garmin makes a great number of high quality handheld GPS devices. I particularly chose this one for hiking and remote camping uses. Specifically, I purchased a 2 GB mini memory card (SanDisk) and then the Garmin US TOPO 24K (National Parks East, for starts). I was able to pick specific quadrants from the US TOPO CD software and download it to my Garmin handheld through my PC (MAC also works). It worked perfectly. I will admit that the learning curve is high on this and I tend to get excited about electronic devices in general. This took taking the instruction manual and going step-by-step to learn all the functions available. For starters, I simply went outside and turned it on. Within a minute I had several satellite acquisitions and was immediately shown where I was (in the world). The basic map included on the device is not that particularly detailed, so I purchased additional software data. You can read all about the functions that are installed on this unit here at Am... Read more

Works perfect! Great Battery life (30 hours on 2 rayovac AA)! Awesome color screen! Easy navigation in the menus! Remember, this unit does not come with maps or a micro SD card. The SD card can be found on ebay for cheap (<$8) and some people have said maps can be found with a bittorent software (bitcomet.com) and thepiratebay.org. I bought my maps at Garmin for $100/map.

We purchased these four Garmins for our four grandchildren so that they could go geocaching this summer. We have purchased other Garmin GPSs and have been extremely pleased so Garmin was our choice. The eTrex Venture CX was the particular product we chose because if offered the long battery life, color display, compass, high number of way points and tracks and fantastic price. You can't beat Garmin on the road but especially for geocaching we have found them to be the best. From our own geocaching experiences we knew it was best for each player to have his own GPS - hence the purchase of four. These eTrex Venture CXs have continued our satisfaction with Garmin. Even the youngest at age 7 has no trouble using the device. The children had experienced geocaching in their school so their learning curve was less than for a person that had not had that experience, like me. I can do the functions but I'm slow. Still I have a lot of fun. A little more experience and there will be no st... Read more