Garmin Etrex

...updates are available from the Garmin website.

Other useful accessories are the car power cable to run the GPS off 12 volts and save the batteries and various different mounting options for cars and bikes. The bike mount is a bit flimsy however so whilst it might find favour with cycle tourists, mountain bikers will soon get annoyed with having to stop after every large bump to pick their GPS up.

I've been using the ...
...complaint is that the buttons can be awkward to use unless you have fairly small hands. Many people may not find this a problem, but I have found it annoying enough to deduct one star from it's overall rating. Provided you have a basic knowledge of how to read a map then the eTrex is a valuable tool and I don't leave it behind when going away.  ... more

20 years ago if you'd told somebody that you could give them their position on the face of the Earth, accurate to within 5 metres from a bunch of satellites 11,000 miles above their heads they would have looked at you a bit odd. Even 10 years ago when the technology was available for civilian applications a GPS receiver was beyond the reach of most people. Within the last few years however, GPS has really come of age for the non-military user. One of the companies at the forefront of the GPS revolution is Garmin, the makers of the eTrex which retails for around £130 and is available in most outdoor accessory shops and even Dixons have now jumped on the bandwagon.

The eTrex is small (about the same size as an average mobile phone) and yellow and black in colour. The black bits are actually rubber and act to protect the GPS from knocks and give it some degree of waterproofing. Having dropped mine in mud on numerous occasions I can certainly verify the waterproof claim. Most of the front of the unit is taken up with an LCD display, which can be backlit for nighttime use. The display is clear and easy to read, although sometimes additional information can be in such small text that it can be tricky to read in a moving vehicle. The buttons have been moved onto the sides of the units in such a way that, with a bit of practise, you can operate the unit single handed and still use the other hand for trying to hold a map or, more importantly, drink tea.

Once you've inserted two AA batteries into the unit it'll take a little while to track the satellites it uses to calculate your position. This can take as little as 30 seconds or so with a good clear view of the sky. If you're indoors, it'll take a bit longer, or possibly not even get the satellites at all. This might be a disadvanage if you've just bought a 40 bedroom stately home and can't find your way to the bathroom, but for most of us not being able to get a signal indoors isn't going to be much of a problem.

Unlike the more advanced models in the range, the eTrex has no built in maps so you'll have to rely on a paper map for what the GPS tells you to make sense. The eTrex has basic mapping functions, but it will only show you where you've been relative to your current position and any waypoints that you've fed into it. It is also possible to tell the eTrex that you want to go back the way you came, in which case it will helpfully point an arrow to show you which way to turn to stay on track. If you're miles from anywhere and need to find the easiest way down a mountain before bad weather sets in then the eTrex is going to be fairly useless on it's own. That said, if you're going out to the middle of nowhere and you don't take a map and compass then you're asking for trouble anyway. I should imagine that Mountain Rescue won't take too kindly to having to rescue someone because they got lost due to flat batteries in their GPS!

One of the most important features that any GPS can have is the ability to store waypoints. This is simple on the eTrex. Hold the Enter button down and you're given the chance to store your current location with a name of up to six characters or you can just plump for the number that the unit has automatically given the waypoint for simplicity. Whilst this may seem like the best option at first, realising that you've got a load of waypoints from 001 to 052, which relate to various parts of the country is likely to cause headaches. Sadly, the lack of a keyboard means that you have to scroll through A-Z and 0-9 plus a few punctuation marks to get the name right. The waypoint can then be plotted on a map or you can set the eTrex to direct you back to the waypoint. Up to 50 waypoints can be linked together to form a route with a large friendly arrow on the screen pointing in the direction you need to take as you approach each waypoint with the unit giving you straight line distance and approximate time to arrival at the next waypoint. If this has been well planned then it is possible to just leave the GPS in your car and take a quick peek at each junction. The arrow is large enough to be seen without having to look too hard and, as I found out one night on my way to a village I'd never heard of, if it's been planned well enough then the navigator (me!) can have a kip whilst the driver carries on in the knowledge that they aren't lost. On the subject of travelling, the unit works fairly well in most cars, although heated windscreens block the signal rendering it useless.

The eTrex will give you various other useful information such as your current, average and maximum speeds, heading (although this doesn't work if you're stationary), elevation and of course, where you are in the world. This can be given in a variety of different formats including the two which are likely to be the most useful in the UK, DMS (Degrees, Minutes, Seconds) which can be found on virtually all maps, and the more convenient OSGB (Ordnance Survey of Great Britain), which can be found on all OS maps and many other British maps. There's another 15 formats available, and just in case you're using a really strange map you can define your own grid so that the GPS gives you a meaningful figure for the map you're using.

Various accessories are available for the eTrex, possibly the most useful of which is the PC link cable. This allows you to do many useful things, such as setting waypoints and a route on your PC before you leave home and uploading it to the GPS. This can be done by simply pointing and clicking on a map contained in Garmin's own MapSource software which is available in various different versions, pricing starting at around £45. Other software is available, including some free software which, although doesn't come with maps like MapSource, does allow you to key in the details on your PC without going through the painstaking process of setting up 30 waypoints using only the up and down buttons on the receiver to set a 10 digit grid reference and save the waypoints to your harddrive should your GPS suffer a mishap, and you forget the location of your mound of buried treasure/fishing spot/romantic hidey-hole. The PC lead can also be used for updating the GPS's built in software, updates are available from the Garmin website.

Other useful accessories are the car power cable to run the GPS off 12 volts and save the batteries and various different mounting options for cars and bikes. The bike mount is a bit flimsy however so whilst it might find favour with cycle tourists, mountain bikers will soon get annoyed with having to stop after every large bump to pick their GPS up.

I've been using the eTrex for a few months now and my only real complaint is that the buttons can be awkward to use unless you have fairly small hands. Many people may not find this a problem, but I have found it annoying enough to deduct one star from it's overall rating. Provided you have a basic knowledge of how to read a map then the eTrex is a valuable tool and I don't leave it behind when going away. 

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