I have the LegendCx and love it. I moved up from the etrex yellow. I did buy the maps and put them into the unit. I also must say I have never used an explorist. The only bad thing about the garmin is the map program. It dose not accept *.loc files, like the ones from geocaching.com. So i found the perfect program to convert them called GPSBabelGUI. Ever since i found that i use the unit for everythin. If you are going to a POI and you tell it to go there and follow the roads it gives you a ETA at destination and all the turns along the way. I love the LegendCx but i must agree with the above and say you should try to find them both and see which you like better.