eTrex Legend HCx vs Oregon 200

[PercyPercy]

Greetings and salutations

 

This is my first post on this forum, I hope it is in the right category.

 

I'm planning to buy my first handheld GPS device (I already have Garmin Nuvi 200 for in-car navigation), and I will use it for:

1. photo geotagging and track logging (most important - I want to turn it on, put it on my backpack and forget about it for ~12 hours)
   
2. navigation (in cities as a pedestrian, I travel a lot)
   
3. geocaching (least important)
   

 

After few days/weeks of reading every possible review, I have narrowed my choice to two models:

• Garmin eTrex Legend HCx
  
  • Pros
    
    • Price (~210 euros)
       
      
    • Battery life (I read it is about 22-24 hours?)
       
      
    • Can save tracklog to SD card
       
      
    • Wrist strap + belt clip
       
      
    • Looks pretty durable
      

    [*]Cons

    • Screen and interface (it looks OK on this photo, however, it is really ugly on this one)
      

• Garmin Oregon 200
  • Pros
    
    • Screen
       
      
    • Touchscreen interface
      

    [*]Cons

    • Price (~360 euros)
       
      
    • Battery life (10-12-14 hours?)
       
      
    • Can not save tracklog to SD card
       
      
    • Lanyard + carabiner, no belt clip (only 3rd party)
      

I do not need features like barometric altimeter and electronic compass, so I picked Legend over Vista and Oregon 200 over Oregon 300.

 

Now, I have few questions:

 

1. Oregon can save 20 tracks with 10.000 points. Does that mean, if it logs my position every second, one track will last 10.000 seconds = less than 3 hours?

 

2. What will happen when I fill one track with 10k points? Will it continue automaticaly with another track?

 

3. Can I use map for navigation while track is logged in background (multitasking) ?

 

4. Can I load Garmin NT maps to eTrex?

 

5.

This

page says that eTrex comes with wrist strap but I am unable to find a photo of it. Is it a true wrist strap like for

Foretrex and/or Forerunner

?

 

For now, I'm leaning towards eTrex (because of price and battery life primarely), but interface on Oregon is so much better

 

Any suggestion will be appreciated

 

Thanks

[+g-o-cashers]

I can try to answer a few of the Oregon questions:

 

- Your assumption about tracklogs is correct, you'll fill the internal tracklog in about 3 hours if you record at 1hz

- On the 300 and 400s when you fill the internal tracklog an archive file will get created which can contain up to about 5000 points. Once this file is filled another will be created, up to a total of 20 for a total of about 100,000 trackpoints (which is a little more than 24hrs at 1hz collection frequency). Each of these 5000 trackpoint archive files takes about 1MB which puts you very close to the 24MB internal memory size of the 200. So I'm not sure if the 200 will let you collect this much or not and there is no way to have the archive files saved to SD card.

- Tracklogging will run in the background on both units while you are doing other things

- There is a belt clip out for the Oregon here:

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=31492

[+Hrethgir]

The Legend does come with a wrist strap, but nothing like the Forerunner, it's really just a short lanyard. And the screen is nice, although both of those pictures you showed are accurate. The first one is a daylight color scheme, lighter colors and stuff, while the second once is a night time scheme, with darker colors. It can switch between them automatically based on sunrise and sunset, ot you can set it to stay on what you like. But the daylight scheme is pretty bright if you are outdoors at night, and a darker scheme works pretty well for that.

[+luckybobb]

Two things I want to mention about the pictures

 

1. The daytime photo is a vista HCX and the nighttime photo is the Legend HCX. I don't know if this could be the difference as I have never seen them side by side.

 

2. The photos are at different zoom levels so the legend is displaying more of the roads than the vista. I think this is what is causing the difference in the quality. The farther you zoom the less roads are displayed and it seems a lot less cluttered.

 

That being said we have the Legend CX (Same as the HCX but no high sensitivity receiver) and we love it. I am not sure about the differences between the legend and the vista as I have never used the Vista.

[+julianh]

Now, I have few questions:

 

1. Oregon can save 20 tracks with 10.000 points. Does that mean, if it logs my position every second, one track will last 10.000 seconds = less than 3 hours?

For most users, there is no practical need to record tracklogs at 1 Hz. (Think about it - how far can you move in 1 second, and do you

REALLY

need to know exactly where you were at 13:07:05, 13:07:06, 13:07:07, ..... ?

)

 

In general, you will find recording tracklogs using the "Auto" Recording Method with "Normal" Time Interval (this is how it is described in the eTrex series - I assume the Oregon's terminology is similar), rather than a fixed time interval, will give excellent results for all practical purposes. The unit recognises significant changes of direction and speed, and puts down a trackpoint automatically, giving good "fidelity" when wandering along bush tracks etc. You will have a trackpoint at least at every bend in the track, and every 25 - 50 metres or so in between, which will be fine for plotting out tracks, geo-tagging photos, etc.

 

When you are moving relatively steadily in straight line (e.g. driving down a freeway), it will put down trackpoints more sparingly - maybe one every 15 - 30 seconds, or every couple of hundred metres, say - still plenty accurate enough to mark out a freeway!

 

Using this approach, you will get several

DAYS

of travel in a 10,000 point tracklog.

 

Hope this helps!

[PercyPercy]

- On the 300 and 400s when you fill the internal tracklog an archive file will get created which can contain up to about 5000 points. Once this file is filled another will be created, up to a total of 20 for a total of about 100,000 trackpoints (which is a little more than 24hrs at 1hz collection frequency). Each of these 5000 trackpoint archive files takes about 1MB which puts you very close to the 24MB internal memory size of the 200. So I'm not sure if the 200 will let you collect this much or not and there is no way to have the archive files saved to SD card.

Hmm 24mb available or total memory ? So, in best case I can put maps to SD card and use all 24mb for tracklogs right? I really can't understand why they did't include feature to save tracklogs to SD card

 

Oh btw, what happens with tracklog when device losts GPS signal (e.g. I enter some building) ? Is it possible to continue automatically once the signal is found again?

 

The daytime photo is a vista HCX and the nighttime photo is the Legend HCX. I don't know if this could be the difference as I have never seen them side by side.

I think the screen is exactly the same, 176x220 px with 256 colors.

 

Using this approach, you will get several DAYS of travel in a 10,000 point tracklog.

 

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the tip