Garmin eTrex H Handheld GPS Navigator

In the box you get the GPS, a lanyard (just the right length), easy start guides in multiple languages, and a CDROM containing the user guide. What you don't get are batteries or a pc connection cable.The GPS itself is robustly built. It has a basic LCD screen and you can turn the backlighting on or off manually or automatically, as you wish. The buttons are protected by thick membranes, requiring a good firm push to activate them and overall there is a good degree of protection from ingress of water and dirt. This is important given its likely use.The quickstart guide is all you need to get up and running. The user guide on the CDROM adds little to what is self-evident when operating the unit. That said, the user interface is not well designed and takes a degree of getting used to. The top level menu system cycles around 5 main menus, some with sub menus:o Satellite signal strength (basic and advanced views)o A graphical representation of your waypoints and past track, zoomableo A compass-rose style page indicating north and direction to go to a waypointo A highly configurable numerical readout page, with 5 user selectable readouts (e.g. Course, speed, elevation, distance to go etc)o Waypoint entry and review (waypoints have 6 character names)The unit is good at its main function - telling you your lat/long position. If you are outdoors and not in tree or building cover it will have you locked in quickly after power up and will give a position accurate to around 4 meters. If you are indoors it may not get a signal. Batteries are used up quickly. You can manage this partially by ensuring the screen backlight is not on unnecessarily, and switching the receiver off if you are simply entering waypoints.Entering waypoints is a fiddle if you don't have a cable to connect to a pc. But it is perfectly useable. NB: The connection is a Garmin proprietary standard, not USB but it is possible to but a Garmin to GPS cable at a reasonable price if you search around. Once up and running you will find that the interface is pretty basic, allowing waypoints to be sent to the device and tracks from the device. The 6 character waypoint name length is a pain since some waypoint identifiers on the Geocaching website are 7 characters - which sometimes results in waypoints overwriting each other.Note that the receiver does not incorporate a GPS compass. This means that when you are stationary it does not know where North is, and so cannot orientate the graphical displays accordingly. There is no provision for maps of any form, other than the display of your past tracks.I've used this unit for a few months now for Geocaching and can say that it does a great job. You may wish to consider a pc cable when purchasing though.PRO: Robust, reasonably cheap, functionalCON: No pc cable, no compass, 6 character waypoint name length, eats batteries

I bought one of these for a holiday in Marrakesh, Morocco. I was staying in a riad in the old part of the city, which is a maze of twisty passages, all alike, and I didn't fancy pulling out a map every few paces. Instead, I had this thing in my hand. It looks like a mobile phone from a distance, which is handy if you want to avoid being hassled by the "guides" who offer to take you to the best shop in town; just pretend that you're waiting for a phone call. Without the eTrex I would probably still be lost somewhere in the medina. There's no way to download a streetmap, although having said that there *aren't* any good streetmaps of the old part of Marrakesh - but I always found my way back home, or at least to somewhere I could visually identify. It was a bit like playing a computer game, where you have to follow waypoints.You can set the device to memorise tracks, but I never bothered with that, I used it as a simple direction finder. The compass is sometimes jumpy and you have to walk a few feet before it updates, and so in that respect it's not ideal for the kind of close-quarters environment of Marrakesh, where there is an intersection every few feet. The device tends to lose signal indoors or under cover, but it picks the signal up again quickly thereafter (there is a longer delay when you turn it first thing in the morning).Before the trip I spent a couple of hours on Google Earth, plugging latitude and longitude co-ordinates into it for e.g. the local train station, the edges of the city, that kind of thing. It's a shame the device doesn't have a USB port so that I could have downloaded things automatically without having to buy the special and expensive serial cable.As with all GPS devices, it has a clock that updates from the satellites. The backlight isn't quite powerful enough to use as a torch, although it is just enough to find the front door keyhole at night. I tended to keep it in my pocket and backpack, and yet it still works and doesn't have any scratches or dents; it's rubberised, and feels as if it would easily survive a drop onto the floor. I'm a bit dubious about the battery compartment cover - it's held on with a little metal pole that seems flimsy, but it doesn't wobble, and perhaps I'm being picky. The unit is weather sealed. The buttons are very stiff. Very stiff. Perhaps they will loosen with age, like a woman.I found that the battery life was enough for a full day walking around, with plenty left in reserve; I carried a spare set of batteries with me but never needed to use them. I suspect the batteries would have lasted for two days of constant hiking, but I never tested this. Unlike some electrical gadgets, it doesn't seem to drain the battery when it is turned off, or at least not to a noticeable extent.My only real gripes are that the waypoints are limited to six-character names (MARJNE and MENARA are fair enough, but I have no idea what I was thinking when I entered RBAKDM or CASMU), and it's a shame there are only 200 waypoint slots. Given that each waypoint consists of a six-character name, an elevation, and a pair of co-ordinates, it can't be all that hard to stick in a larger memory chip and have e.g. 200,000 waypoints. 200 slots is a lot, but I have filled fifty of them with places in Morocco - there are other places in the world that are just as interesting, and what if I fill up the memory? Will I delete Morocco? The alternatives are to either buy an expensive computer interface cable, or transfer the co-ordinates to my computer by typing them up, which would be boring.It would be nice if the next version has a much larger memory, an eight-character name limit, a USB port (with perhaps an option to import and export waypoints as simple comma-separated text), and if it was available in a range of colours, such as green or blue or white or pink (for the ladies).