Garmin eTrex 10 Worldwide Handheld GPS Navigator

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 1.3 x 4 x 2.1 inches ; 5.6 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00542NV32
• Item model number: 010-00970-00
• Batteries: 2 AA batteries required.
  

By : Garmin
List Price : $119.99
Price : $110.99
You Save : $9.00 (8%)

Product Description

Edition: Base Model
Amazon.com Product Description
The eTrex 10 makes a great choice in handheld navigation for the budget savvy outdoor enthusiast. This eTrex model is equipped with a high-sensitivity GPS receiver, a 2.2-inch monochrome display, and a worldwide basemap--making it easier than ever to see where you are and where you have been.



A New Adventure
Basic Navigation
This handheld GPS is armed with a sunlight-readable monochrome display and a worldwide basemap making it easier than ever to know where you are and where you are headed next. If you are searching for a basic GPS unit to use for your casual outdoor activities, the eTrex 10 makes a great choice.
Rock Solid GPS
With its high-sensitivity, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver, eTrex 10 will locate your position quickly and precisely, maintaining its GPS location even in heavy cover and deep canyons. With added HotFix and GLONASS support, you can count on faster positioning and a more reliable signal--whether you're in deep woods or just near tall buildings and trees, you can count on eTrex 10 to help you find your way when you need it the most.
Rugged and Ready
The eTrex 10 is a breeze to operate, indoors and out, with five buttons on either side within easy reach. With its bright yellow case and included lanyard, it's tough to lose. Plus, since the eTrex 10 is waterproof to IPX7 standards, it can take an accidental splash or dunk in the water and still continue to perform.
Find It and Go
With eTrex 10, your adventure will last, with over 20 hours of battery life on two AA batteries (rechargeable NiMH or Lithium batteries work great). As a handheld, it's plenty portable, weighing in at just 5 ounces with batteries. It's also compatible with a variety of spine mounting accesories, for use in cycling or other activities.
Paperless Geocaching
eTrex 10 also supports geocaching, a high-tech version of hide-and-seek where you explore the outdoors in search of hidden "treasure" and adventure. Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants (members) navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. The eTrex 10 is the perfect way to get started.
What's in the Box
eTrex 10, USB Cable, Lanyard, Documentation
The eTrex 10 makes a great choice in handheld navigation for the budget savvy outdoor enthusiast. This eTrex model is equipped with a high-sensitivity GPS receiver, a 2.2-inch monochrome display, and a worldwide basemap making it easier than ever to see where you are and where you have been.

 

Garmin eTrex 10 Worldwide Handheld GPS Navigator

 

Technical Details

• Rugged handheld navigator with preloaded worldwide basemap and 2.2-inch monochrome display
• WAAS-enabled GPS receiver with HotFix and GLONASS support for fast positioning and a reliable signal
• Waterproof to IPX7 standards for protection against splashes, rain, etc.
• Support for paperless geocaching and Garmin spine-mounting accessories
• Power with two AA batteries for up to 20 hours of use

Customer Reviews

My 30 arrived a few hours ago.
As you read this review, note that Rocker refers to what Garmin has now renamed the Thumb Stick.
Pros:
o The on-screen keyboard is much better designed than the old eTrex (and this issue was important enough to me to pay for a 450 last year):
.....o Stays in upper case (hallelujah) rather than, with the old eTrex, the first alpha triggering the on-screen keyboard to change to lower case and special characters, which then necessitated navigating to the shift character to restore the keyboard to upper case and numbers.
.....o DONE is easier to access as are cursor left and cursor right.
.....o Can use the Zoom keys (top left side of GPS) to switch between the three keyboards: alpha and numbers, special characters; numbers.
o The display is nice and crisp.
o Can load maps to internal memory without using an SD card (56MB of maps tested leaves 1.68GB of internal memory). The old eTrex required an SD card .
o A distance proximity alert can be created on the 30 using any waypoint or POI as a source (more info below).
o Can load maps, waypoints, and routes from MapSource (see Bugs below).
o Smaller than the eTrex Legend HCx.
o Includes place to affix a lanyard (but a lanyard is not included).
o Garmin tech support was excellent. Michael spent and hour and a half as we researched four issues including the bugs mentioned below.
o As mentioned by other reviewers, satellite acquisition is fast: first power on to location: 45 seconds.
Cons:
o The new interface seems cumbersome when compared to the old eTrex. The old interface was quicker to navigate with more data being displayed on menu screens, but maybe it will get better with more hands-on time. The new interface seems to have been designed for a touch screen, which the 30 is not. On some screens, such as the Map Information page there is a lot of wasted empty space. Tip : Use Setup Page Sequence to add pages that you want to quickly access using the Back button; those pages will then disappear from the Main Menu.
o Testing indicates that proximity alerts for POI's loaded using the POI loader do not work. On the old eTrex Legend HCx, POI's containing speed or distance proximity alerts could be loaded using the POI Loader and the Legend HCx would issue the appropriate alerts. The POI Loader works with the 30, but testing indicates that the alert is not issued. This test was for a distance, not speed, alert (speed alerts are of no interest to me, so I'll leave that testing to someone who wants that functionality). On the other hand, proximity alerts can be manually created on the 30 using waypoints or POI's as sources. This is definitely a big Pro and is listed in the Pros above. When the user creates a proximity alert from a POI, a waypoint is created with the same name with a "1" appended at the end of the name. So, it appears that to mass load distance proximity alerts onto the 30 will require loading them as waypoints with the proximity distance set, rather than loading them as POI's. And, it appears that waypoints only support distance alerts, not speed alerts, in the 30, MapSource, and BaseCamp. A minor point: while MapSource can maintain a waypoint's proximity in miles to 3 decimal digits (0.000), the 30 supports only editing to 2 decimal digits (0.00). And, as we all know, 0.01 mile is approximately 53 feet so this is probably a non-issue for most applications.
.....o To compound the problem of not supporting proximity alerts for POI's and forcing the use of waypoints instead, Garmin has removed the capability to delete waypoints by symbol, leaving only the choices to (a) delete all waypoints or (b) delete waypoints individually. This means that if I assign special symbols to the waypoints which I want to retain permanently on the GPS while letting temporary waypoints have the default (blue flag) symbol, I cannot delete just the temporary waypoints en masse -- as the old eTrex would have supported. In order to retain the waypoints which I want permanently on the GPS, I will be forced to either a) delete the temporary waypoints individually in the field if I forget to do it at home, (b) remember to delete them in BaseCamp before departing for the outdoors, (c) remember to delete the \Garmin\GPS\Waypoints_dd-mmm-yy.gpx file before departing for the outdoors, or (d) remember to delete all waypoints and then reload all of the permanent waypoints before departing for the outdoors. (I did not realize this until after my initial review submission. I would now give a 4-star rating, rather than 5, because of this whole POI proximity alert issue and the lack of delete-waypoints-by-symbol.)
.....o Note that some of the newer Garmin GPS's (e.g., 450) say they support proximity alerts, but the functionality is limited to when a waypoint is on the route being navigated. This is a major difference from the old eTrex Legend HCx, where simply being the appropriate distance from a POI was sufficient to trigger the proximity alert - even when not navigating. In the case of the 30, proximity alerts also work when not navigating (like the old eTrex Legend HCx) but the proximity alert must be for a waypoint and not a POI.
o Another new mounting system to purchase mounts for.
Bugs:
o Cannot transfer tracks and waypoints directly from the 30 to MapSource as was supported for the old eTrex. In USB Mass Storage mode (Setup System USB Mode Mass Storage) only the current track, not waypoints or archived tracks are transferred. In Garmin mode (Setup System USB Mode Garmin), the current track and all archived tracks are transferred but the waypoint checkbox is greyed out in the MapSource dialog box (meaning that MapSource probably does not recognize the waypoint file on the 30). One approach for merging a single waypoint .gpx file and multiple track .gpx files is to drag and drop each .gpx file onto a separate MapSource session then copy/paste into a single MapSource session. For this to work, you would use USB Mass Storage mode. (Note that trying to drag and drop into a single MapSource session results in only the data from the last drag-and-drop being present in MapSource; it assumes replace rather than add and does not issue an error message.) Garmin indicates that BaseCamp is the future and this problem with MapSource will probably not be fixed.
o If you download maps to the GPS, the Map Information page will display one of your maps plus the two basemaps which come with the GPS. The Map Information page will not scroll beyond those three maps so you are unable to disable any maps beyond those three. My testing indicates that, regardless, all of the downloaded maps are on the GPS and the maps display correctly; the testing by the Garmin tech support person indicates that the maps were not being displayed properly on his 30 - so we have two conflicting stories. The Map Information page is accessed either by (a) Map Menu Setup Map Map Information or (b) Setup Map Map Information. Garmin is working on a fix. Hopefully, all of the parties involved are communicating clearly but I am unsure because Garmin's suggested interim fix did not resolve the problem. The fix was to rename Garmin\gmapsupp.img (the downloaded maps) to any other name, e.g., Wyoming.img. After renaming, the Map Information page continued to display only 3 maps, but rather than displaying the name of a map segment (an area of a larger map set) it was now (after the rename) displaying the name of the map set. Given that I had downloaded 42 map segments from two different map sets, the 30 should be displaying more than one of my maps - regardless of whether it is showing map segments (as the old eTrex Legend HCx does and the 30 did prior to the rename) or map sets (as the 450 does and the 30 did after the rename).
o While in USB Mass Storage mode, performing an Eject on Win7 64-bit generates a dialog box: "An error occurred while ejecting ...". So, the 30 does not power down (as the Oregon does) and leaves the GPS's display showing the USB-connected icon. This makes me nervous about whether all files have been properly closed or whether there is potential corruption. This problem did not go away after updating the 30 firmware and rebooting the computer. No other devices are encountering this error. Garmin has no other reported incidents of this problem. I tried different cables (including the included cable), different ports, and three Win7 64-bit computers but the error message always appears. All three computers are running the latest version of BaseCamp (3.2.2), which means the computers have the latest Garmin drivers (2.3.0.0).
Tips:
o Just like the old eTrex Legend HCx, press and hold Rocker to Mark Waypoint.
o Just like the old eTrex Legend HCx, pressing the Power button cycles the brightness: medium high off. The user manual just describes pressing the Power button once then using the Rocker to fine tune the brightness level.)
o Just like the old eTrex Legend HCx, Menu Menu will return to the Main Menu.
o Just like the old eTrex Legend HCx, pressing and holding the Menu button will open the Find page.
o When you first get the 30, back up all of the files on the GPS to a hard drive.
o Sometimes it is desirable to display the current time to the second rather than just hours:minutes. This can be useful when setting a camera's time for later automated synchronization of photos to tracks or waypoints. To display the current time including seconds on the 30:
.....o Alternative A: Compass Menu Change Dashboard Large Data Field. The time including seconds will... Read more›

Presumably atypically I use eTrex units nearly exclusively for road navigation and often calculate long routes.
Previously I used a Legend CX extensively and it's showing its age. I toyed with buying a Nuvi but don't care for the design for subjective reasons such as lack of configurability and water resistance, touchscreen, doesn't work as well on my motorcycle, etc..
The Legend CX would routinely take several minutes to calculate long routes in addition to slow map `drawing' times and I'm pleased to note Garmin improved calculating/processing speed significantly. On several side by side comparisons the 20 processed routes in roughly 1/3 the time (still noticeably slower than the Nuvis I've used). Additionally the map drawing time is much reduced, and to my eyes the map layout/display is improved - for one thing the background is more white than yellow and easier to read.
The various menu screens are changed: previously you had, for instance, 12 options to select on the `Find' page - now there are 6; they are more legible and it's easy enough to scroll down through them all.
I'm still disappointed Garmin makes you cough up $80ish for a functional (read: turn by turn directions) road map but they're making progress on that front: you can now buy `lifetime' maps instead of having to purchase `updates' routinely. And I guess I can't blame them for capitalizing on what they can capitalize on, while they can.
Plus I have to admit: Garmin's phone customer service is usually well above average (thanks, Rocky!) and that costs something.
They changed the mounting connector design so you can no longer use your old car/bike/whatever mount.
And they took the `Exits' category out of the `Find' menu: why, Garmin? Such a useful tool it was.
To sum: if you're an eTrex fan this incarnation is IMO an impressive advance RE processing and map drawing speed. The maps more closely resemble the Nuvis.
I have no reason to believe it won't be as reliable (IME close to bulletproof) as previous units. And the rustish/red/orange color is cool.
I like mine a lot.

Update: one VERY useful feature the old eTrex units didn't have is now you can 'Search Near' a 'A Recent Find'. It nearly makes up for removing the 'Exits' category, but not quite.
And it not uncommonly crashes (keep in mind I'm probably asking more of it than it was designed for); some of the crashes require unplugging the power and removing the battery to get it to fire back up.
Still, after using mine for tens of thousands of miles I remain overall very pleased with the improvements.