Features:

• Waypoints/icons - 1000 with name and graphic symbol
• Tracks - Automatic track log with 10 saved tracks to let you retrace your path in both directions
• Trip Computer: Current speed, average speed, time of sunrise/sunset, resetable maximum speed, trip timer and trip distance
• Map datums: More than 100
• Position format: Lat/Lon, UTMUPS, Maidenhead, MGRS, Loran TDs (Venture, Legend and Vista only) and other grids
• Acquisition times: Warm - Approximately 15 seconds; Cold - Approximately 45 seconds; AutoLocate - Approximately 5 minutes
• Update rate: 1/second, continuous
• GPS accuracy: Position: <15 meters, 95% typical, Velocity: 0.05 meter/sec steady state>/li>
• Interfaces: RS232 with NMEA 0183, RTCM 104 DGPS data format and proprietary Garmin
• Antenna: Built-in patch
• Power Source: 2 "AA" batteries (not included).

With Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) support, the eTrex Legend offers extremely accurate readings (rated to within 2 to 3 meters). (For more on WAAS, see the Frequently Asked Questions section.) A good-size screen--288 x 160 pixels--makes it easy to see location details, and the Legend redraws maps quickly when zooming in or out of a position.

The eTrex Legend provides precise GPS positioning using correction data obtained from the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS).

The Satellite page shows satellites being tracked, and their corresponding signal strength. View larger.

The internal trip computer provides a range of data about hikes and drives. View larger.

But one of the most striking attributes of the Legend is its comfortable and efficient design. While it rests easily in the palm of either hand, it's most suited for the left hand, where its handy click-stick can be manipulated with the thumb. The click-stick works like the pencil-eraser nubbin on laptop PCs and is handy for moving through screen icons and menus. It also works as a button when pressed down.

The Legend is coated with a waterproof, rubberized plastic shell that grips nicely. Weighing in at only 5.3 ounces, it fits into a pocket or clips onto a belt loop, going almost unnoticed.

The internal trip computer of the Legend provided a range of data about our hikes and drives, including current speed, average speed, trip distance, and time traveled (both moving and stopped). For those interested in checking out their foot pace and distance traveled, it's a handy GPS to have in hand.

Our only major beef with the Legend is that the receiver sometimes seemed to grow weak. Even when it wasn't in WAAS mode (which can be tough to maintain a signal in), it dropped the signal from time to time. We even lost the signal once while walking along the streets of San Francisco--it seems that the medium-size buildings were enough to interfere with the reception.

But this only happened on a few occasions. Most of the time the well-designed Legend was able to keep us in touch with up to 12 GPS satellites for a strong-enough read to maintain a tight handle on our location. --J. Curtis

Pros

• Comfortable, compact design
• Click-stick for interface navigation
• Bright backlight
• Handy distance-traveled feature

• Sporadic reception within urban areas
• Can take several minutes for a cold fix
  
  
  Amazon.com Product Description
  There are now enough handheld global positioning system (GPS) receivers on the market that you can be choosy when it comes to price, features, and design. Garmin--a leading manufacturer of car, boat, and personal GPS receivers--has a complete line of eTrex handheld receivers, with our Legend falling about midrange.

  Easily look up nearby services with optional downloadable details from MapSource CD-ROMs.

  With Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) support, the Legend offers extremely accurate readings (rated to within 2 to 3 meters). (For more on WAAS, see the Frequently Asked Questions section.) A good-size screen--288 x 160 pixels--makes it easy to see location details, and the Legend redraws maps quickly when zooming in or out of a position.

  Its 8 MB of memory means there is also plenty of room for waypoints, routes, and saved tracks. The Legend will hold up to 500 waypoints, complete with a name and graphical symbol, 20 routes with 50 waypoints each, and it contains slots for 10 saved tracks. You can also download maps from Garmin's MapSource CD-ROMs (thorough but expensive accessories for the GPS receiver) to see street-level or topographic detail (depending on the CD-ROM title).

  Built-in exit listings show services at U.S. interstate exits.

  But one of the most striking attributes of the Legend is its comfortable and efficient design. While it rests easily in the palm of either hand, it's most suited for the left hand, where its handy click-stick can be manipulated with the thumb. The click-stick works like the pencil-eraser nubbin on laptop PCs and is handy for moving through screen icons and menus. It also works as a button when pressed down.

  The Legend is coated with a waterproof, rubberized plastic shell that grips nicely. Weighing in at only 5.3 ounces, it fits into a pocket or clips onto a belt loop, going almost unnoticed.

  The internal trip computer of the Legend provided a range of data about our hikes and drives, including current speed, average speed, trip distance, and time traveled (both moving and stopped). For those interested in checking out their foot pace and distance traveled, it's a handy GPS to have in hand.

  Our only major beef with the Legend is that the receiver sometimes seemed to grow weak. Even when it wasn't in WAAS mode (which can be tough to maintain a signal in), it dropped the signal from time to time. We even lost the signal once while walking along the streets of San Francisco--it seems that the medium-size buildings were enough to interfere with the reception.

  But this only happened on a few occasions. Most of the time the well-designed Legend was able to keep us in touch with up to 12 GPS satellites for a strong-enough read to maintain a tight handle on our location. --J. Curtis

  Pros

  • Comfortable, compact design
  • Click-stick for interface navigation
  • Bright backlight
  • Handy distance-traveled feature
  Cons
  • Sporadic reception within urban areas
  • Can take several minutes for a cold fix
    
    Product Description
    The Garmin eTrex Legend GPS receiver is modeled on Garmin's popular entry level eTrex, but adds the same base map found in Garmin's III+ and eMap models, along with 8 MB of memory, making it a solid midlevel offering in the eTrex line just behind the eTrex Summit. Housed in a translucent blue case, this powerful, 12-parallel-channel, global positioning satellite (GPS) receiver weighs only 5.3 ounces and measures 4.4 by 2 inches. It literally fits in the palm of your hand. The Legend boasts the ability to hold up to 8 MB of amazingly detailed information that you upload for the area you plan to navigate. In addition to all that detailed information at your fingertips, the Legend actually gives you a higher-resolution screen than the slightly better equipped eTrex Summit. The massive 10,000 track log points of the Legend compare well to the 3,000 track log points the Summit model offers and the 2,048 that the Venture offers.

    The eTrex Legend's 8 MB memory enables you to download points of interest and map data from optional Garmin MapSource CD-ROMs to make your GPS unit more useful. The built-in base map of the Americas displays city and interstate highway information for North, South, and Central America, as well as U.S. highway exits. Address and business listings are displayed with data downloads. It also provides points of interest along lakes, rivers, and coastlines.

    The Legend has a front-panel rocker switch that allows for quick and accurate map panning. View maps on a liquid crystal display with a resolution of 288 x 160 pixels. The unit is waterproof to an IPX7 standard, so it can withstand a dunk.

    The Legend maintains a tight satellite lock, even in a forest. The unit can store up to 1,000 user waypoints with graphical icons, and it boasts Garmin's own TracBack feature, which reverses your track log and helps you navigate your way back home. The eTrex Legend also uses animated graphics that will help you identify your marked waypoints quickly and easily.

    Garmin makes some of the accessories to help you integrate your GPS with your life and your priorities. Keep your GPS at the ready while protecting it from knocks and bumps with the carrying case. If you'll be on the road, you'll want to have access to the most detailed topographical maps of the United States available: The Garmin MapSource CD-ROM (USA TOPO). And don't let the product's many abilities overwhelm you--train yourself in all the eTrex's ins and outs with a handy instructional video.

    The Garmin eTrex Legend comes with a PC interface cable, a manual, and a quick-reference card, and it's covered by a one-year warranty.
    
    

The base map included in the Legend only shows major highways and major streets. This is similar to the maps you get from a car rental agency. It's perfectly fine for doing rough navigation from city to city. At first, I tried using Rand McNally's StreetFinder and TripMaker Deluxe on my laptop with the Legend. The setup worked, but having to deal with the serial cable and using a laptop in the car was not very practical.

After I've had my Legend a while, I had a chance to borrow and use a Vista. The owner of the Vista upgraded it with detailed street-detail maps from Garmin's MapSource "Metroguide USA" CD .... The detailed street map is a really nice feature -- especially because you can look up addresses. Having such a detailed map in a small portable device is a delight! I decided to get the Metroguide for myself.

From my usage comparison, I found two things missing in the Legend compared to the top-end etrex Vista.

First, the Legend has only 8 MB of expansion memory instead of the 24 MB in the Vista. This turns out to be a big issue for me, as I would like to have a complete metro guide of the greater Los Angeles area. With 8 MB, I could only fit 6 of the 18 MetroGuide map sets that I would have liked. This means, I am missing coverage of a large section stretching roughly from Compton to Long Beach to Lynwood to Cerritos to Irvine that I would have wanted. In contrast, the Vista held all of greater Los Angeles area, plus some San Francisco, San Diego, and Las Vegas.

Second, the Vista has sensors for barometric altitude and magnetic compass heading. The Legend estimates altitude via GPS, and calculated heading based on your travel speed vector. If you are a trail-hiker, these sensors improve your navigation.

Used as-is from the factory (i.e., only the American basemaps), the Legend is perfectly fine, and I was quite happy with it.
I could live without the Vista's sensors;

But, having hit the 8 MB memory limit (trying to load Los Angeles), I would definitely go with the Vista now.

The Metroguide maps sizes of other cities may or may not be an issue for you. Go to the Garmin website and use their MapSourec Map Viewer and count the number of "yellow squares" you'll need to cover you area of interest. Each square roughly represents between 500K to 1.5 MB of data (with the smaller, "dense" squares being toward the 1 MB to 1.5MB size). You'll find that most of the big cities will have enough squares to easily exceed the 8 MB of the Legend.


The best GPS in this price range, with one caveat:   January 16, 2005
 94 out of 94 found this review helpful

If you are reading this, you are probably considering the Legend for its combination of price & features, along with the overall user satisfaction. That's why I chose it anyhow. ;)

Before I bought, I too read all of these amazon reviews and decided this GPS would be the best one for the money. ($136 at the time I bought it) I read the reviews of the Magellans, but they were pretty mixed, and their customer service NEVER got any kudos. It seemed like only 50% of their customers were happy out-of-the-box. I was initially attracted to them because they are said to retain satellite lock better than these low-end Garmins. But then I read that they have lower resolution displays, and that they're a lot bigger and heavier. A shame, since some of the medium Magellens had expandable SD memory...

Back to the Garmin Legend, bad news first: reception could be a bit stronger. If you follow Garmin's directions and hold the receiver flat under an unobstructed sky, you will always have excellent reception, a good lock, and good accuracy. (WAAS brings it from 27 ft. down to under 10 ft when you are covered by WAAS enabled satellites) But the signal gets degraded easily. For instance, if you don't hold it flat as you walk around outside, the accuracy generally drops from 10 ft to 50 ft. No big deal really. In the car, mounted to the dash there are never any problems. (check ebay for mounting accessories, unless you want to get gouged for the name-brand ones...)

The features are great, and are pretty easy to learn. The "clik stik' menu navigation is great. The display is very sharp and has great resolution. I can't believe how good it looks. Not that this matters much, but I also like the transluscent blue plastic. I haven't tried any of the external software yet, as it is pricey at around $100. (Garmin is crazy to ask this much for it. Do they think people don't realize how much it is going to cost? If they priced their extra maps at about $20 per country instead of $100+, they would sell a lot more of everything)

I have a friend at work who bought a Legend over a year ago. He just sold it on the bay and got most of his money back and put it towards a Vista C. He says the reception is drastically more reliable. He said that in his bathroom with a roof overhead, he was still able to pick up satellites and get good accuracy. With his Legend, he complained about losing satellite reception when he put it in a chest pocket of his jacket while riding dirtbikes in the desert. He likes that there is 24 MB of memory instead of 8. He likes the display. He also makes about 3X more money than I do, so he can afford a GPS that costs 3X as much as mine! (They're around $360 vs $140)

I went for a 3 mile hike in the forest preserve today and had it hung around my neck with the supplied strap. It worked great, even though it was about 5 degrees Farenheit today. The LCD was getting pretty slow, but everything worked very well.

Some notes if you're also considering the entry level (yellow) eTrex: The built-in USA basemap of the Legend is useful, but it doesn't cover down to street level. Realize that the basic etrex doesn't have this, so it will not be very useful for the car. It has major roads. Generally, anything with a state or interstate # will be on it. If you plan to use it only for outdoor activities where you will never need a map (topographic or street), the basic eTrex has the same hardware but with a smaller LCD screen. I know someone who has a yellow eTrex, and I think her main complaint is that it doesn't have the clik stik. She is an avid hiker and geocacher, and when she enters waypoints (manually, since it doesn't have PC interface capabilities) she doesn't bother to name them since it take so much longer without the clik-stik. She just leaves them numbered.

If you want more information, check out the groundspeak forums. Please do an honest search of the posts that are there before asking questions, as newbies show up and ask the same questions week after week. Someone has already asked your question, believe me.

Bottom line, if you have the dough, buy one of the higher-end Garmins for the reception and memory. If not, you will be very happy with this Legend as long as you realize its limitations.


The Best Way To Go For GPS   June 29, 2001
 87 out of 93 found this review helpful

The Etrex Line is by far the best handheld GPS for the money and size. There is a model that fits every user's needs and budget. Unless you need a magnetic compass and barometric altimeter, the Etrex Legend is probobly the best option.

In addition to excellent waypoint and track management functions, the Legend features full mapping functions. The Unit includes a fairly detailed basemap of North America, but for more detailed mapping, data can be downloaded from a MapSource CD-ROM. These discs are availible in many flavors, from Waterway Details, to Topographical, to MetroGuide, which features address and business locating functions (Like Handheld Mapquest.com!)Downloading is easy, and thanks to the unit's high resolution LCD display, maps are suprisingly readable. The waterways disc features a complete database of aids to navigation, cataloging every bouy, daymark, and light in US waters.

As far as GPS functions, the unit preforms beutifully, maintaining a good position fix under moderate tree cover, and inside of a car. Heavy foliage can create a problem, but the unit performs better than most handheld GPS do in this situation. WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) increases accuracy to within 9 feet in good reception areas! Although this is at the expense of battery life. To save power, leave WAAS turned off and you will still get accuracy within 20 feet.

Because the unit uses 2 AA batteries instead of four, life is reduced; expect to change batteries at least every 14 hours, with the unit on continuously. Still, this is less often than my old garmin GPS 45, and that used four batts.

The user interface is very friendly, intuitive, and powerful. This is a great achivment, usually powerful interfaces are not user-freindly and vice versa. It bears quite a similarity to Operating Systems such as Windows and Macintosh, so if you know how to use the computer you are reading this with, you should be right at home. Besides the buttons for Page, Power/Light, Find, Zoom In/Out, there is a "Click Stick" as a pointing device. It works like a joystick or the trackpoint on a laptop to control the cursor on the screen. Pusing it in is like a mouse-click. One strage note on this: it is placed on the left side of the unit. This means that operating in with your'e right thumb blocks the screen. Many people think this is a mistake, making one handed operation with the right hand near impossible, but it makes goos sense to me: operate the GPS in your left hand, while steering the boat with your left. It is not that hard to learn to use the GPS with your left hand (if youre righty), so you can have your right hand free for other things.

In All, The Etrex Legend GPS is your best Buy in a handheld mapping GPS. If your'e looking for more features, check out the more expensive Etrex Vista and Garmin Gpsmap 76, or the very expensive handheld cartographic units, but if you just want a very good, inexpensive, handheld mapping GPS, The Legend is the best around.


Garm;in Legend   November 29, 2002
 44 out of 48 found this review helpful

I bought this GPS specifically for hiking and mountaineering. It's small and lightweight which makes it easy to carry on a long ascent. I bought Maptech Terrain Navigator mapping software and use the combo to locate trails, landmarks and waypoints on the maps then upload them to the gps. I've also used it for the reverse, hiking then mapping where you've been. The system together works great. I've also used the gps for geocaching which I discovered by accident and I'm having a blast with it. I tried it out in my truck and I'm finding new ways to use it every day. Last week The freeway became backed up and I used it to find a way around the accident using the legend.

Is this gps the best one out there, probably not. Does it have the best built-in map, no. Is it the best value for the money and the best all-around gps system out there, you bet. Don't buy this one just to use in the car as the screen is too small. The Garmin mapping program is too vague, spend the money and buy Maptech Terrain Navigator or National Geographic's Topo State series. If you hike, climb, bike, jog, canoe or kayak get this one. It comes with a basic built in map good enough for most driving locations and allows you to download 24mb of additional info...


Lousy Product For Automobile Navigation   November 17, 2002
 40 out of 66 found this review helpful

The Etrex Legend appears to have been designed by engineers without user feedback. Operation is counterintuitive. Processing speed is slow. It is virtually worthless for automobile navigation without the optional MapSource data--and this data is so ancient the street where I live isn't even included. My street was constructed nine years ago!

If you like to read operation manuals, you'll enjoy this product because the controls are truly bizarre. You'll find, for example, that a single button serves as both the on-off switch and the backlight switch. Buttons with up and down arrows don't let you scroll through the tiny-hard-to-read menus--these button are used to zoom-in and zoom-out on the map page and adjust the screen contrast on the satellite page. Dual function buttons are a hallmark of this product. A button marked with a magnifying glass icon has nothing to do with zooming! The controls are simply counterintuitive. You will need to read the manual just to learn how to turn-off the unit. I'm sorry Garmin, but it shouldn't be that complicated.

Processing speed is slow. It seems to take forever to locate enough satellites to navigate. When I transferred MapSource data to the unit, that took a whopping 1 hr. 47 minutes.

The highway and street information packaged with the Etrex Legend contains only major highways. The roads it included in this area were limited to 4-lane highways.

I had to purchase the MapSource data just to make the Etrex Legend at all useable for automobile navigation. The MapSource product is not inexpensive, and it sucks. As noted earlier, it does not even include the street where I live and this road was constructed nine years ago. In my local area, it lists maybe 1 of 5 gas stations and about 1 of 10 restaurants. MapSource is a shoddy product that Garmin should be ashamed to put their name on. It's a real rip-off.

The Etrex Legend might be able to let boaters locate a harbor or help a hiker return to his starting point, but it's a real bust for automobile navigation. And no matter what the application, the unusual controls and hard-to-read screen are challenging. I received this GPS receiver as a gift. Frankly, it's going in a drawer and I'm going to buy another product. And definitely not anything from Garmin.