Etrex Solar

[+Red90]

Okay. Non mapping GPS with long battery life and built in solar panel.  Fine.

 

What I do not understand is the price point.  Is anyone going to buy it at that cost?

[+Great Scott!]

I bought one from Shop Geocaching to check it out (and to get all of the free trackables)
Still learning what it can do with the Garmin Explore app. 

It'll probably just be clipped to my backpack and run all day when I go for a hike, or bike, or out geocaching.

[+MaliBooBoo]

I would probably buy it if it had maps. Without maps I am not sure what purpose it would serve to me.

[robertlipe]

It's pretty clearly not a device targeting the power geocacher market. If you're a multi-day backpacker or maybe long-haul cyclist that legitimately spends a few hundred hours of activity without access to electricity, but still needs orientation to nearby cities for help, preloaded waypoints, and/or just needs a breadcrumb trail to return you whence you came, they may make sense.

Maybe you log a geocache along the way at the summit. Maybe. But it's not the primary purpose of the unit.

It seems to have the same level of mapping that the eTrex of recent years has had - a very very limited (28MB? MEGAbyte) basemap that you can refresh from your phone. I'm not sure if your phone needs a signal to pull this off or if you can siphon over a preloaded map from when you had service. You're just not going to get a color screen and turn-by-turn directions and maps for a continent in a device that claims 200 hours from a single charge. If you need turn-by-turns, you have access to power.

Knowing that flash memory that small really doesn't take less power (it's built on older process nodes) and probably commands a price premium just for being less popular, it does seem likely that a 28MB map is artificially restricted. A 64GB basemap doesn't make sense and if you had a GB of basemap, the first questions everyone would have would be "how do we load detailed maps or topo maps or birdseye or...", it'd all be distracting. So it's likely artificially 'dumbed down' to keep it on par with its namesake from 2001 or whatever.

Like Astro or the various fitness or marine or aviation units, it serves a market. That market probably isn't driven by price and they don't always overlap with geocaching.  If you're 200 hours from an electrical outlet, the weight of a spare power brick or a bucket of AA's is a big deal.  They're probably on trails or paths and have paper maps just for survival, so detailed mapping with elevation contours and such just isn't necessary for them.

I think the last posters reaction will be that of MOST geocachers, but that's OK. This unit wasn't built for geocachers. That's OK.

 

[+kunarion]

7 hours ago, robertlipe said:

It's pretty clearly not a device targeting the power geocacher market. If you're a multi-day backpacker or maybe long-haul cyclist that legitimately spends a few hundred hours of activity without access to electricity, but still needs orientation to nearby cities for help, preloaded waypoints, and/or just needs a breadcrumb trail to return you whence you came, they may make sense.

Maybe you log a geocache along the way at the summit. Maybe. But it's not the primary purpose of the unit.

It seems to have the same level of mapping that the eTrex of recent years has had - a very very limited (28MB? MEGAbyte) basemap that you can refresh from your phone. I'm not sure if your phone needs a signal to pull this off or if you can siphon over a preloaded map from when you had service. You're just not going to get a color screen and turn-by-turn directions and maps for a continent in a device that claims 200 hours from a single charge. If you need turn-by-turns, you have access to power.

Knowing that flash memory that small really doesn't take less power (it's built on older process nodes) and probably commands a price premium just for being less popular, it does seem likely that a 28MB map is artificially restricted. A 64GB basemap doesn't make sense and if you had a GB of basemap, the first questions everyone would have would be "how do we load detailed maps or topo maps or birdseye or...", it'd all be distracting. So it's likely artificially 'dumbed down' to keep it on par with its namesake from 2001 or whatever.

Like Astro or the various fitness or marine or aviation units, it serves a market. That market probably isn't driven by price and they don't always overlap with geocaching.  If you're 200 hours from an electrical outlet, the weight of a spare power brick or a bucket of AA's is a big deal.  They're probably on trails or paths and have paper maps just for survival, so detailed mapping with elevation contours and such just isn't necessary for them.

I think the last posters reaction will be that of MOST geocachers, but that's OK. This unit wasn't built for geocachers. That's OK.

 

 

I like that it does location tracking.  I do the same with my Garmin Oregon, but leaving it on for the entire time, it's likely that the batteries will go dead (which they usually do).

[tr_s]

But... did Garmin finally fix that dreaded rubber gasket or not?

Otherwise I see it as a real and true risk that whilst the battery life might be "unlimited" in 75k lux conditions, the rubber gasket will dry out and gum up and the buttons fly off under such hot conditions after just a few outings...

 

Also.. for almost $300 I am not exactly impressed by a mere IP67 waterproofing which is really too weak for constant marine use. There are full smartphones around this price range with IP65+68 or even IP69K.

Edited January 28 by tr_s

[+Red90]

On 1/28/2024 at 3:30 AM, tr_s said:

But... did Garmin finally fix that dreaded rubber gasket or not?

Otherwise I see it as a real and true risk that whilst the battery life might be "unlimited" in 75k lux conditions, the rubber gasket will dry out and gum up and the buttons fly off under such hot conditions after just a few outings...

 

Also.. for almost $300 I am not exactly impressed by a mere IP67 waterproofing which is really too weak for constant marine use. There are full smartphones around this price range with IP65+68 or even IP69K.

 

Are you confusing this with the traditional etrex?  This is a completely different design.

[tr_s]

On 2/6/2024 at 6:44 PM, Red90 said:

 

Are you confusing this with the traditional etrex?  This is a completely different design.

I know, but it still seems like some sort of rubbery gasket hence the concern.

 

My classic-style Etrexes had a soft rubber gasket, my eTrex 30 had a harder rubber gasket. Even with just medium-light use both types dried up and had buttons ripped off; the classic variants had the gasket detach entirely.

 

Hence wondering if this is still a corporate-related quality illness or if they finally swapped the design to become robust for rugged outdoor use.