0ur opinion:

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The eTrex Legend C is Garmin's exciting, new, pocket-sized handheld that brings color, automatic routing, longer battery life, plus more to Garmin's popular-selling eTrex Legend. You won't miss a thing when you take this colorful, lightweight, easy-to-use handheld out hiking, biking, boating or even geocaching. The eTrex Legend C along with the eTrex Vista C are Garmin's smallest, least expensive products to combine a color TFT display and advanced GPS routing capabilities in a waterproof design.0utdoor enthusiasts will love the latest improvements made to the eTrex Legend C.

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Garmin's pocket-sized eTrex Legend C handheld GPS unit enhances Garmin's popular eTrex Legend with a color screen, automatic routing, and longer battery life, making it one of the smallest, least expensive waterproof products to combine a color TFT display with advanced GPS auto-routing abilities. You won't miss a thing when you take this lightweight, easy-to-use handheld out hiking, biking, boating, or geocaching.

Compass indicates direction. View larger.

An easy-to-read color map. View larger.

Displays nearby attractions. View larger.

The eTrex Legend C packs advanced GPS navigation into a compact, waterproof device.

The unit offers a bright, transflective color TFT display for easy daylight viewing, automatic route generation, off-route recalculation, turn-by-turn directions with alert tones, and icon-driven menus for finding points of interest (when combined with Garmin's optional MapSource CDs). You'll get up to 36 hours of use on two AA batteries. The unit offers 24 MB of internal memory and its mini-USB port lets you download map data rapidly from Garmin's library of MapSource CDs (not included) with your PC.

You'll enjoy outstanding accuracy of less than three meters (10 feet) when the device is enabled to receive enhanced GPS signals from the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) in the United States. Like on all eTrex units, the primary controls are located on the side of the unit, so you can operate it with one hand. An innovative rocker switch on its face makes inputting data easy, and with it you can scroll through menus or pan the map page.

0ther key features of the eTrex Legend C include an auto-route basemap (featuring general map data like highways, major roads, rivers, lakes, and borders); a waterproof design (to lEC 60529 lPX7 standards--submersible in one meter of water for up to 30 minutes); 500 waypoints/routes/tracks (with graphic identification); 50 reversible routes; 20 saved tracks; 10,000 trackpoints; TracBack technology); alarms (proximity waypoint, anchor drag, and off-course, as well as a built-in alarm clock); a GPS patch antenna; selectable audio tones and color schemes; a stopwatch; a hunting/fishing calendar; sun/moon calculations; and a trip computer.

The Legend C includes a built-in, permanent basemap, Americas Recreational, which cannot be altered. The Americas Recreational Routable Basemap v2 includes the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America, and covers an area from longitude 30 to 180 degrees west and latitude from 60 degrees south to 75 degrees north. lt includes a high-level, worldwide map featuring borders and major cities.

Standard map coverage includes oceans, rivers, lakes greater than 30 square miles, lakes greater than five square miles in the U.S. and southern Canada, lakes greater than 10 square miles in central and northern Canada, principal cities, some smaller cities and towns, major interstates, principal highways, political boundaries (state and international borders), major airports, and a database of lnterstate exits for the Federal lnterstate highway system. This last includes many establishments within about 0.25 mile of exits, including restaurants; diesel and gas stations; hotels, motels, and inns; overnight RV parking; dumps; campgrounds; truck stops; medical facilities; shopping and outlet malls; ATMs; and many more such attractions.


What's in the Box
eTrex Legend C GPS receiver, basemap (Americas Recreational), MapSource Trip & Waypoint Manager CD, PC/USB interface cable, wrist strap, quick reference guide, and owner's manual.

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Buyer's feedback: - * Great little gps? ...
I paid only $139 for a refurbished unit, complete with a full factory warrenty, and couldnt be happier!

Be advised that this is a discontinued unit, and the base map can not be changed, but it was always my intention to buy the current City Navigation maps, so the point (for me) is moot.

This WASS capable unit does everything the big boys do, at a faction of the price. Being water-proof and with proximity and off-anchor alarms, and Blue Chart compatable, it make a great marine unit as well.

You can import waypoints, POIs, Geocache chests, routes, and tracks thru the fast USB port.

I also can get over 45 hours of battery life with lithium batteries.

My only concern, is that the memory is built in, and can not be increased, but with each detail map being about 5 megs, you can enough data to get you just about anywhere.

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Buyer's feedback: - Depends on what you use it for.
I am comparing this to my old etrex Venture. This is not a mapping grade GPS, meaning that there is no NMEA output. Typically, this does not mean a dang thing to the typical user. If you are a bicycling, hiker, fisherman,hunter, then this will be a great choice. The display is easy to read. Right now I am sitting in my house with the unit plugged into the computer (which uses the computers battery source) and I have 6 satellites. There was no way I could have used the older models indoors. In other words, the satellite reception is great. For the money, it may be worth choosing a different model, as this one is now discontinued. Makes me wonder if that is a sign from Garmin??

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Buyer's feedback: - * eTrex Legend C and Cx ...
Very good and capable. Takes a while to understand all the detailed features, but they are all very good.

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Buyer's feedback: - Legend C Phonebook?
This GPS is amazing. I recieved it as a Chrismas present several years ago. I primarly use it when driving in the car. After using it for a while and researching the mapsource software I decided to buy it. This software is worth the $$. The software lets you download maps. With the maps you have dl'ed to the gps you can search for intersections, addresses, parks..you name it. One really cool feature is you can search for a business by name get driving directions to their location and their telephone number so you can call ahead (say to order takeout). The software ads another dimension to the versatility of this unit.

The only downside is no expandable memory. This is a bit of a dated version. Newer versions come with micro-sd slots. The bigger the sd card the more maps/info you can cram into this pocket sized travel guide.

For the legend c shop around I paid $180 for mine.

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Buyer's feedback: - * Hardware problems ...
When this unit works, it is pretty slick. Most of the negative responses I've seen about this thing have to do with people not understanding what maps come with it, expecting too much out of the routing function, or the lack of NMEA output (which is more of a real problem).

My eTrex Legend C, which has been replaced twice already and is presently in the box on the way back to Garmin for the third time, has issues anytime it is plugged into either the USB of a computer, or the Garmin car adapter. It has had the same problem repeatedly and while Garmin, to their credit, has allowed me to exchange it each time without any issues, it keeps having the same problems.

When it is turned on while plugged in to either a USB port or car adapter, it thinks it is a Vista C, which only presents the problem that I loose the GPS elevation and instead get a "barometric" altimeter saying that I am at something like 65555' at all times.

Garmin has told me one the multiple times that I've called that it is 1. "not something they've ever heard of," 2. "A problem with a bad run of cables and that both the unit and cables need to be replaced," and finally, 3. that "it is a bug with the Legend C, but shouldn't cause any problems."

However, the first unit I had I tried to ignore the problem but slowly the unit stopped receiving satellites and started turning itself off, so I am skeptical when they now tell me that it doesn't cause problems.

Anyhow, hopefully my fourth unit will work. We'll see.