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It gets signal while hanging out in my backpack, ad even locks on when I'm inside. If it lasts as long as my (still kicking) Garmin Legend, I won't be needing a new GPS receiver any time soon. I love this little GPS. No complaints here.
A 2G card holds a detailed road map of most of North America (MetroGuide North America). I am very impressed with the reception, it has no problem locking on satellites under heavy tree canopies, in the car, even indoors. For the first few hours it had the location several miles off. The screen is small, larger would be nice, but it is OK. The GPSMAP screen went blank after about 2 years of pretty heavy use.
I like the mini SD card. I'm not sure if it fixed itself, or if I did something to get it going, but it has been working well ever since. I am very happy with the Vista HCx. I bought this to replace a Garmin GPSMAP 76. It did have trouble on startup with orienting itself.
The battery lasts much longer than my old GPSMAP 76.
Great GPS - good undercover of trees. Poor documentation from Garmin - the owners manual is weak.
By this point I had had enough of this little gizmo and I packed up my Garmin eTrex Vista HCx and back it went to Amazon who was most cooperative with the return. I haven't tested this but this is what the tech support woman told me with her bad attitude. You will need AA batteries as this thing does not include a rechargeable batters. With the auto GPS you turn it on and off you go. This GPS can be used for geocatching right out of the box as it does give your the coordinates but not much else. When I called tech support (who were rude)they told me that an 8GB card was not compatable and I could only use a 2GB card with this unit.
Nowhere is this mentioned in the provided literature, manual, or the web site. This GPS device is not the same thing. Nothing mentions this in the on-line literature or anywhere. Also, you need to get a MicroHD card to store the maps that you purchase on. Firstly, you will need to purchase TOPO maps for hiking or city maps for use in roads and residential areas. I own a auto GPS by Garmin and I have been very happy with it so I thought this would be a good purchase as well.
Plan on spending at least another $80-$200 for one or both which you can get at Amazon. I purchased an 8GB card.
It was supposed to work better than my older model but the only thing that works better is it locks onto the satillites quicker. I am very disappointed with this purchase. It was supposed to work better under the trees but seems to work worse.
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