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[13 of 19 customers found this review helpful]
Garmin eTrex Vista HCx Handheld GPS Receiver Review
Poor Map Transfer and Storage
- Compact
- Strong Construction
Pros
- Inaccurate
- Mac Support
- Map Storage
Cons
- Hiking
Best Uses
"My wife and I received this product as a wedding present and I'm really glad we have it, but there are many times when it is really a pain and I wish REI sold a better one. First of all, the Mac support is horrible. It comes with a Windows only DVD and in order to convert it to Mac map format you need a Windows computer, and the fact that I don't have one is exactly why I need to convert it. I finally borrowed a computer to convert the maps, and still couldn't get them to work on my computer (and I'm pretty good with computers). Since I really wanted this product to work, I went out and got a 4GB microSD card so I can put all the Topo maps that came on the DVD on the GPS (using the borrowed Windows computer). The good news is that the GPS does support 4GB microSD card. The bad news is that the unit only supports 2048 maps at once and Garmin divides the US Topo Map into over 5000 "maps" so that even though I can fit all the maps in 4GB, you can't put them all in at once. I did discover a workaround that is a bit annoying: if you copy some of the maps (ie the western US topo maps) onto the GPS you can take the card out of the GPS and into a card reader and then rename gmapsupp.img (to US_Topo_West.img) then you can copy over whatever else you want to copy, and rename that, then you can switch between the ones the GPS sees by naming the one you want gmapsupp.img. In the end it works, but I can't for the life of me figure out why they have to make the maps an average of less than 1MB and then limit the number of them in this day of lots of cheap, large storage the size of your fingernail. Also, the road navigation is next to useless as it seems to only know how to tell you to take freeways without bridges and no local roads despite their appearance on the maps. The track logs are very precise, but the GPS isn't really that accurate so I'm not entirely sure what the usefulness of that is. If someone needs a GPS for the outdoors, I recommend trying to find a better one -- but I haven't at the time of writing this."
- Outdoor Enthusiast
- Technically Savvy
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Where to Buy
Garmin eTrex Vista HCx Handheld GPS Receiver
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BizRate Rating
Outstanding 9.2
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$223.98 |
at
Newegg
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BizRate Rating
Good 8.1
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$224.00 |
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Walmart
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$224.88 |
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