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Customer Reviews and Ratings for Garmin eTrex 30 |
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93% of our reviewers recommend this item.
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24tango
Kingston NB
May 1, 2012
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ETREX 30
Pros: very clear detail.
Cons: no case or strap included. had to buy separately
I like the size of the unit. This is my first GPs and so far I am having no trouble sorting out instructions
Recommend? YES
10 viewers found this helpful.
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hiker
NH
Apr 18, 2012
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GARMEN ETREX 30
Pros: what it does
Cons: no directions. on line manual not comprehensive.
Amazing little instrument. I'm no lonfger afraid to hike alone. Proble: No directions. On-line manual not helpful. Lots that owner has to figure out on their own. Should have documentation on how to use each setting. All it has is what the settings are.
Recommend? YES
10 viewers found this helpful.
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LeoObserver
Puebla, Mexico
Apr 12, 2012
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Pros: easy to use!
Cons: small for my hands
few minutes after I received it, use it, the truth is very complete! Very accurate. Depends where you clothes, here are a lot of room open within 10 seconds gave 2 meters apart.
Recommend? YES
10 viewers found this helpful.
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The mad triker
Salmon Arm
Apr 2, 2012
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GPS FOR ALL REASONS
Pros: nearly does everthing & has great battery life.
Cons: no nmea and useless manuals
My prime purpose in purchasing this unit was to collect geographical information (for updating open source maps) and to navigation while cycle touring and kayaking. After messing around with this my first GPS, I am reasonably impressed. I am very impressed with its battery life and that it is made to used NiMH (1.2 volt) batteries. The maps that the unit comes with are awful and to the point of being but completely useless. I loaded routable OpenStreetMaps from garmin.openstreetmap.nl onto a 8GB sim and now I have all the up to date road maps for Canada and the boarder states (some data is missing but I can add it). Topographical information is freely available but I have not dug through the requirements that are required to add it to the maps as yet. I found the manuals, including Garmin online one, overly minimalistic to the point of being nearly useless thank goodness for the Internet and other users. I was very impressed by Garmin product support as I had a problem upgrading the software. They were quick and informative, though a good manual would have been better. I tried out the road navigation and found it to be adequate and really liked that it didn't talk to me only beeped occasionally. The unit's files are easy to access from Linux platform (and any other platform ) as it has mass storage mode. I have the navigation crash once (through it went back into display mode) and I tried to add and display a track extending across Canada that froze the unit. In the deep canyons of the Vancouver Metro scape the was a bit of drift (which made the displayed track look noisy) otherwise it seemed to be extremely accurate. Because of the accuracy of this device it is too bad that they left out NMEA capabilities.
Recommend? YES
8 viewers found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
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Matt
North Vancouver, BC
Jan 9, 2012
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SO FAR SO GOOD.
Still figuring out the intricacies of the unit and have yet to get a good topo base map. Unit only comes with a very basic start up guide andhavent spent the time online reading the full manual. It seems to acquire signals fast. Would be nice to have a start-stop button for tracking.
Recommend? YES
13 viewers found this helpful.
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Darth Snoozer of Who Needs Oxygen
Laval, QC
Dec 16, 2011
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PERFECTION IS A GOAL
Pros: fast, battery miser.
Cons: menus are crap. not enough detailed settings.
I purchased the etrex 30 to get at 3 features: 1) GLONASS 2) Magnetic compass 3) Baro altimeter.
Garmin do not tell us much about the GPS receiver inside. We don't know how many channels it has. There is no recording or output in realtime where we can dig into what is going on.
This is the FASTEST TO ACQUIRE handset that I have ever used. Even new out of the box it was tracking within 30 seconds (I guess it had a fresh Almanac when shipped from the factory).
I'm also delighted that here in eastern Canada that it is picking up EGNOS satellites resulting in differential correction to the GLONASS... though this far out of the EGNOS coverage - I'm really not sure if that may be negatively affecting precision. Unfortunately I have no control over which SBAS satellites it decides to track. I can turn off the GLONASS and just use GPS with WAAS if in doubt.
The display is nice, but not "iPhone" class by any stretch. The "included" map is useless. Roads are way off.
Heading is jumpy. The mag compass implementation seems poor to me (yes - I calibrated it). When heading to a waypoint the bearing to pointer is very jumpy.
Recorded tracks seem over-filtered. I set it to record every 5 seconds, however it seems to also have some sort of distance minimum before recording or a "pinning" feature that can't be user controlled. I'd rather have all the data w/o this filtering.
I still need to DL some maps from Garmin to see how those work out.
This is a very good GPS for the money - however, for basic GPS w/o the whistles the etrex 20 would be a better value for most users. Hikers should benefit from the etrex 30's baro altimeter, however. A basic hiker's magnetic compass would be a lot better than the etrex 30's compass.
Recommend? YES
12 viewers found this helpful.
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sebe66
Montreal
Dec 14, 2011
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BEST QUALITY-PRICE
veri good gps, can read topo, marine, road, every kind of maps
Recommend? YES
9 viewers found this helpful.
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Christian
San Diego, CA
Nov 19, 2011
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AN EXCELLENT CHOICE FOR CANYONEERING
Pros: great reception, glonass ready, compact, rugged
Cons: size of screen i guess
I have had this unit close to a month now, and has performed awesome in regular trails. It tracks very accurately and is a fast responding unit overall. I have nothing to complain about with the formats of files it accepts or doesn't. I even have the ability to convert Google Earth files, or any other format mentioned in other reviews as not compatible, with GPSBabel. Though I use BaseCamp in conjunction with Topo US 24K West. Love it. More than I can ever need with features.
I'll make a quick note on features. For me, it's perfect. It's got the essentials and no bells and whistles that only jacks up the price and are rarely used. No fancy camera or any of that. It has no maps, which I love. No need to get and pay for maps in areas I will never be in. Many see this as a con. :/
Another quick note about firmware. It seemed buggy out of the box, often delaying but not freezing. After a succesful update, it all runs smoothly now!
Now, for the real test. I wanted this to take it on canyoneering trips and took it out to test it in one of the deeper canyons in the San Gabriels. To be tested in Utah sometime next year. This particular canyon has chasm-like areas, that was confident if the unit did well there, Utah canyons should not be a particular problem. Can't say much other than it did outstanding. With the unit on, it only gave me the "?" symbol once, and lasted no more than 5 seconds. I turned off the unit, powered it back on, and check to see how long it took to get a signal from being powered off. I did this several times, specially in the spots I thought would give the most trouble, and the longest it ever took was about 50 seconds.
Recommend? YES
58 viewers found this helpful.
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Knitting Chick
Yarrow, BC
Nov 3, 2011
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THIRD TIME LUCKY
Pros: decent reception, paperless caching, chirp,
Cons: no maps! a little labour intensive.
I have now had my new eTrex 30 for a month, and in that time I have taken it on several marathon caching days including GroundSpeak. This unit is used exclusively for geocaching and after starting out with a very basic eTrex I figured it was about time to move up to a better unit with paperless capabilities. Well that proved to be a disaster and after trying another, supposedly better unit that crashed after 2 months, and then again 2 months later I was a very unhappy customer. Meanwhile the eTrex 30 came out, and thanks to the excellent customer service at GPS City, they allowed me to return it and I grabbed the 30 as fast as I could. Very very happy with it, and bonus!! it has a Chirp in it, which I did not even realize until I was out caching one day! Excellent battery life is also a big plus. Happy camper! Plan on having the unit for quite a while. Biggest complaint, NO maps, drives me crazy these units do not come with basic North America.... ridiculous.
Recommend? YES
49 viewers found this helpful.
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Roy Hansen
Harestua, Oppland, Norway
Oct 30, 2011
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GREAT OUTDOOR GPS
Tested etrex 30 for almost 2 weeks, very precise and more accurate than our other GPS. Was out for maintenance on tree of my Geocache today and this Etrex 30 was perfect on coordinates. Good battery lifetime and I like the size on the GPS. I have already recommended this new GPS to Geocache friends.
Recommend? YES
11 viewers found this helpful.
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Aussie Son, Scott
Highlands, NC
Oct 27, 2011
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GREAT FEATURES FOR GEO-CACHING
I bought this unit sepecifically for geocaching, especially for its ability to d/l the geocaching.com cache details, etc., and its ability to send those to others in my caching party. Not quite as accurate or featured as my GPSmap 60CSx, but it does well what I got it for.
Recommended
Recommend? YES
38 viewers found this helpful.
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Aussie Son, Scott
Highlands, NC
Oct 27, 2011
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GREAT FEATURES FOR GEO-CACHING
I bought this unit sepecifically for geocaching, especially for its ability to d/l the geocaching.com cache details, etc., and its ability to send those to others in my caching party. Not quite as accurate or featured as my GPSmap 60CSx, but it does well what I got it for.
Recommended
Recommend? YES
36 viewers found this helpful.
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Hans
Dokka, Norway
Oct 26, 2011
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GREAT UNIT, BUT CRAPPY FW UPGRADE
Pros: small, compact, glonass ready
Cons: fw not stable
I was really looking forward to this model, but after two weeks of use and upgrading to FW 2.30 I am really disappointed. The unit does not accept GPX files from gsak, so I had to go back to my Oregon 550t. Hopefully a new FW is ready soon, but releasing upgrades like 2.30 is not ok. I like the Garmin range of trail GPS's, and own several models. But the Etrex 30 is the first model that does not accept GPX files. But I will give Garmin a chance.
Recommend? NO
19 viewers found this helpful.
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Richard
Kenmore, WA 98028
Oct 26, 2011
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GOOD ON ROAD AND OUTDOORS
Pros: fast, clear, precise
Cons: none yet
So far, my new eTrex30 has worked well for my needs, with two exceptions: 1. The altitude reading is quite variable for the exact same location in the field at different times, for example at one time it may read about 90 ft, and the next about 300 ft, and yet another time about 400 ft, and will not settle. 2. When entering GPS coordinates for a field location into a Google map entry search box, the map points on the Google map may be as much as 100 - 200 yards off, yet if the same coordinates are entered into a MapQuest map entry search box, the map points on the MapQuest map will be precise. This interface is very important when sharing data with others by internet. Many people use Google and MapQuest for their work, so comparability would be useful.
Recommend? YES
18 viewers found this helpful.
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(4.5/5.0 based on 15 ratings)
