E-trex Legend Color

[+Eric K]

Figures I just bought my Legend about a month ago..

 

Anyway I see that Garmin now has an E-trex Legend Color available.

 

They claim to have longer battery life also.

 

I really like my Legend and was wondering if anyone has tried the Legend C yet and what you think of it.

[+TheOfficeMaven]

Erik K,

 

My wife has a Legend C and I have a Vista C (which is identical to the Legend C except that it has an electronic compass and a barometric altimeter - and it's a different color too ) and we really love them.

 

Here are a few other threads on this forum that talk about them:

 

Legend C, hands on impressions

 

The New Vistac And Legenc, Why do we want this with so litle memory

 

Etrex Legend In Colour

 

Also, if you want a closer look at the unit's firmware/software, take a look at the user manual:

 

eTrex Legend C Owner's Manual

 

eTrex Vista C Owner's Manual

[wtex55]

I would echo Office Maven's enthusiasm for the legend----the screen is exceptionally bright, the route calculations are fast, and data entry is fast even with the click stick( which is much improved ). Also improved is the signal acquisition in comparison to the older Vista.

 

I also have a 60C but I will be selling it--not because it is not an excellent unit, but the portability of the Legend is far superior. In a side by side feature comparison of both units, the 60C will win every time......but , if you are looking for a unit that has auto-routing, and a terrific screen, you can't go wrong in picking the Legend/VistaC!

 

I am experimenting with both Metroguide V4 and City select----the metroguide works very well in autorouting and in displaying rural farm roads that sometimes don't show up in City Select.

[+Searching_ut]

I haven't been able to geocache for awhile due to time constraints. Things finally returning to normal, I hope to get a bit more caching, and backpacking/hiking in so I just picked up a Vista C.

 

The display is great in bright sunlight, better in my opinion than even the Legend or sportrak were as far as readability. I find I end up using the backlight sooner as the light levels drop though.

 

As far as sensitivity, I borrowed back one of my old sportraks, which I had given away to the kids, and find the Vista C does noticably better at getting and maintaining a lock, at least in my house. (Aluminum siding, all signals have to penetrate the roof/ceiling, which has no metal on the insulation.) The Vista C is also considerably less sensitive to orientation than my regular Legend. I still need to do a lot of field testing before I have much of an opinion on overall sensitivity however. I should get several hours of trail, route finding use in this weekend.

 

Feature wise, while similar in many ways to the older Legend/vista, things aren't where you expect them to be all the time, and there is a bit of a learning curve to using it if you're used to the older units. The new color units are slightly wider than the old etrex line, and a little bit shorter with the depth being about the same. It basically looks same as the old vista, with the exception of a screw hole in the back to put clips etc on, and a small USB connector under the flap where the old serial connector used to be.

 

The VistaC has a geocaching mode, and has now got waypoint averaging. (Manually selected), It also makes noise, although the volume isn't very loud. You can set an assortment of alarms, including a basic alarm clock. Loading a full 24 megs of TOPO maps into the thing takes less than 3 minutes on my computer, a very significant improvement over my old Legend, which took about 20 minutes to accept 8 megs of maps.

 

It will take awhile to ring this thing out completely, but my first impression is that it's a great hiking/caching unit, and quite reasonable for road navigation as well.