Garmin eTrex Legend HCx Personal Navigator

I've been using the HCx Legend for about a month now and I've been very, very pleased with it. I use this unit mainly for hiking and backpacking; anywhere from well established trails in state parks to the deep back-country of southern California. This is not a unit I would suggest for use while driving. Maybe in the hands of your navigator, sitting shotgun, but this not a drivers GPS unit in my opinion. For hiking, and some casual Geocaching, it's been an excellent companion and tool.Some of the things I really like about it are, for one, that the buttons are located on the side of the unit near the top. This becomes particularly relevant when the unit is actually in use IN your hand. Your fingers are at the top, the display is at the bottom and you can manipulate the buttons without your hand blocking the display. This may sound like a minor thing, but it's not.Another thing I've come to appreciate is it's relatively small size and... well... "roundedness". The Legend doesn't have one of those protruding antennas which, for some reason, always seems to be a problem for me somehow; always poking something or taking up space. The Legend is small, round and "pockets" easily (yes, I'm using a noun in the verb tense, deal with it; you know what I mean).Let's see... What else to say about this unit. Well it's got WAAS. Believe me, you want that in a GPS unit. It acquires satellites quickly and I've never been at a loss for a good, solid signal (very confidence inspiring when you're deep in the back country). The color display is nice, details are easy to read and work with. The little thing that looks like a button on the top left of the units display is actually a tiny joystick, or mouse, that you use to move the pointer on the display and/or make menu choices by pressing down (much like a mouse-click). I find this a niftier solution than using buttons or a scroll-wheel sort of thing. Battery life seems pretty good to me using either alkaline or NiMH (I prefer to use the latter) and there's a setup option where you can choose which type of battery you're using in the device since the two types of batteries have different discharge profiles. Sweet that it also accepts SD cards for additional map storage.Regarding the use of 4GB memory cards: Previously my review stated that this unit worked with 4GB memory cards. Well, now it appears that while the unit will in fact ACCEPT a 4GB card, it will only RECOGNIZE 2GB. That's still a ton of maps but a little disappointing nonetheless. However, just to give you an idea of how many maps that is: I have 24K TOPO maps for ALL of CA, NV, UT and AZ, as well as street level maps for just over half the United States (west to east from California to around Kansas and border-to-border north to south), all loaded on a single 2GB card with around 300MB of memory remaining on the card. This is using Garmin TOPO maps and free street-level maps from gpsfiledepot dot com (an awesome source for free maps for your Garmin GPS by the way).If you like to go geocaching this unit should get your consideration. Lots of options specifically for geocaching in particular. I can easily upload cache locations right off geocaching dot com, modify the entry if I need to, add a quick note and be off 'caching in no time.The Legend also has a lot of cool features that are just plain sweet to have even if you don't use them every day. The only thing missing on the Legend that I can think of that some of the pricier units have is the Altimeter. The Legend has the Compass, the Tracking/Backtracking options ("bread crumbs"), the Odometer, a Proximity Alert... All the cool "bells-and-whistles" type stuff.Map facts you should be aware of: 1) The unit ships with a VERY basic install of maps. By this I mean interstates and major through-streets and that's about it. If you want TOPO maps and/or city navigation (residential & side streets, points of interest, stuff like that) you'll have to buy, and install, Garmin map products. 2) Garmin map products are NOT cheap. You might want to research how much they get for their TOPO maps and/or City Navigator software packages if you're new to the whole GPS thing. With a little research you can also find places that offer Garmin-compatible maps that are (legally) free to download and install. The proprietary nature of GPS units and the maps they work with is not unique to Garmin either. If you go with, say, Magellan, you'll need Magellan map products; you can't "mix and match" as far as I know.All in all I love this unit. It does it all and does it with a nice, compact form-factor. I really can't see spending more on a GPS unit. This one does so much for the price it really feels like I hit the sweet spot between price and performance.Pro-Tip: Get a screen protector, one of those tough plastic sheets that people put on their iPods and such. The ones designed for the Microsoft Zune work well, even if a bit too small to cover the entire display, they do protect the essential part you really need protected. A set of protectors will set you back about $8 or so. That's pretty cheap insurance.Regarding the use of 4GB memory cards. It appears that while the unit will ACCEPT a 4GB card, it will onlyr recognize 2GB. That's still a ton of maps but still a little disappointing I guess. Still, to give you an idea of how many maps that is: I have 24K TOPO maps for ALL of CA, NV, UT and AZ as well as street level maps for just over half the United States (west to east from California to around Kansas and border-to-border north to south) loaded on a 2GB card) with around 300MB left over.

This is a very well made item with nice, long battery life and reasonably intuitive controls. I used it on a very cold backcountry hut ski tour in Colorado and it did a great job of tracking our location. It was really fun - and comforting - to see that every time we were skiing on a known trail or driving on a known road, the GPS unit was right on the money.It picks up satellites reasonably quickly, and can be operated reasonably well even with gloves. I dropped it on the parking lot and it didn't show a scratch or suffer any internal damage. It has a nice, rubberized feel to most of it, and intuitively placed controls.You will absolutely need a separately-purchased topo map and an SD card to make proper use of its many features, and the installation process can be a little daunting for non-technophiles. But if you do some internet searches you'll find several sites that help take you through the process. It's much easier to create all your trails and waypoints on your home computer and then load the data onto this unit.Rather than spend mega-dollars on an official Garmin topo map, go online and search for free Garmin topo maps and you'll find several options. There are also very reasonably priced commercial topo maps out there with more features.I wish it had the ability to perform with Garmin's fitness tracking software, but unfortunately it doesn't. This is a perfect unit for hikers and backcountry skiers, but trail runners might be disappointed. (Then again, I don't know if the purely-running Garmin units do such a good job with displaying topo maps and the like.)As usual, the Mac side of the software features seems a little bit left out, but I'm enjoying using this with my Macbook and look forward to not being lost anymore - or at least not nearly as much.(Serious note: Never count on a GPS unit alone. Always bring along a hard-copy map and a compass, take along extra water and clothing, and tell someone where you're going and when you expect to be back!)