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Fantastic piece of gear. Easy to operate, reliable and accurate. It may be a bit bulkier than the new Garmins, but the color feature (and the price) and adaptability make it a best buy. For canyon hiking I plug in an external antenna that really extends range. A great unit for a great price.

Customer Service

No experience

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Magellan

This GPS rocks. The TrackBack is the tool of choice for getting out when you loose your way, and it's cool for charting your around-town wanderings in the car too. My only gripe is the track-clear function sometimes doesn't work (I don't think it's operator error) easily. It's hard to delete a track once it gets in there. Maybe when I am more familiar...... I use it for mountain biking and back packing in the Olympic mountains. The 12 channel system is great and, since the SA is gone, the accuracy is almost always <20 feet. Get one!

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None

An energy hog. Heavy, overpriced for the features it offers, obsolete technology. There are much better receivers on the market today.

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All Garmin 12 Products
Garmin eTrex
Brunton MNS

I bought the 12CX before leaving for a two week trip to Belize. I got a lot of flak from my friends for using it in Central Park but hey where are you going to learn to use something as complicated as this? The manual was big. I've learned from painful experience not to wait till I'm out in the boonies to find out how to use a new gadget. Now I'm a techie. I love having cool stuff to help me out on my trips and I go places where it's easy to get lost. I had lusted for a GPS for years but waited till they got most of the bugs out of the system.

I found the 12CX to be fairly easy to use once I learned the basics in familiar territory. The color feature is a big help since the screen is fairly small and the resolution isn't great. I found the track back and go to features to be useful. The ability to easily change between the compass and road views when following a heading was nice but it's kind of funny that the road view was the one I used to follow headings on water.

The ability to change the information that is displayed in the view is a big plus, especially when going back to a waypoint. The distance to target, average speed, time to target and other similar features were really helpful when I was kayaking between Cayes. The pilot of the single engine Cessna wasn't too sure what I was up to when I compared my readings to the ones on his planes GPS but my readings were almost identical to his (with very small differences), including the elevation readings. I was impressed, he figured I was another crazy gringo.

The fact that the unit is waterproof is nice but it's so heavy that it won't float so I kept a line on it when in a boat or kayak. The down sides to the unit are: I don't care what the manufacturer says, it's too big to wear on a belt, it's heavy + six AA batteries, there is a substantial learning curve, it's difficult to name points in the field and if you don't write down the locations you saved the waypoint numbering system can be confusing later.

The big plus's are: once you learn all it's features it will do most everything you could want from a unit it's size, battery life is good, thanks to the color it's easy on the eyes. I'd recommend it to someone who wants a unit for base camp, motorized travel and kayak touring or who isn't carrying a lot of other gear. If you want to travel light get an etrex.

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Garmin Etrex

It does what it says, tracks your locatin using satelites in the sky. Fair enough.

However, it's useless in the forest. This is to be expected since trees absorb RF energy, but I was a bit disappointed. Don't carry this and expect it to be your sole means of location finding when you're out in a forest somewhere. But if you're in a open area or in a lightly wooded forest, it's perfect.

I've found it's very useful for boating too. Hard to read the road signs when you're in the middle of a lake...

Overall, it's worth it. The forest thig isn't garmin's fault, ANY gps would be limited by the trees. I won't fault garmin too much for this until I'm able to try some other units and see if they suffer the same fate.

Customer Service

The unit developed a small red blotch on the lcd. We contacted garmin and they said to send it back for a free repair and/or replacement. I didn't have the receipt, manual, UPC, proof of purchase, anything.. they said send it back anyways and they'll warranty it.

Of course I never sent it back, but they still get an "A" in my book for the service.

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None

It does what it says, tracks your locatin using satelites in the sky. Fair enough.

However, it's useless in the forest. This is to be expected since trees absorb RF energy, but I was a bit disappointed. Don't carry this and expect it to be your sole means of location finding when you're out in a forest somewhere. But if you're in a open area or in a lightly wooded forest, it's perfect.

I've found it's very useful for boating too. Hard to read the road signs when you're in the middle of a lake...

Overall, it's worth it. The forest thig isn't garmin's fault, ANY gps would be limited by the trees. I won't fault garmin too much for this until I'm able to try some other units and see if they suffer the same fate.

Customer Service

The unit developed a small red blotch on the lcd. We contacted garmin and they said to send it back for a free repair and/or replacement. I didn't have the receipt, manual, UPC, proof of purchase, anything.. they said send it back anyways and they'll warranty it.

Of course I never sent it back, but they still get an "A" in my book for the service.

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None