One for the Gipper

[ornoth_cycling]

A new GPS has been on my wish list for at least five years. My old GPS was a Garmin eTrex that I picked up no less than eight years ago, back before GPS’ could even display maps!

I’ve been holding out for a while, waiting for the next generation of GPS’ to come out. I’ve had my eyes on a couple specific units:

Garmin has had a GPS designed specifically for cycling, but it doesn’t have maps, making it little more than a glorified cyclo-computer. They’re planning on coming out with a mapping unit, the Edge 705, but they just postponed its release into 2008, which is frustrating.

DeLorme, a company based in Maine, has a unit called the PN-20 that maps against aerial photography. That’s cool, but it’s also dog slow, which eliminated it from consideration.

Magellan is coming out with a line of handhelds called Triton, which look really interesting. But I heard rumors that they, too, were going to delay the Triton’s release into 2008. Sigh.

There’s also the Garmin eTrex Vista HCx. The Vista’s been out for a while, but they’ve made incremental improvements in it, including color maps and a much higher-sensitivity antenna. It’s also pretty familiar to me, since it’s the most advanced version of my old eTrex base model. And it has the advantage of already being commercially released.

Well, about the time I heard that the Edge 705 and Triton were being delayed, REI announced a sale on the eTrex Vista where they cut the price by $80. That was enough to get me to jump, so I picked one up on my way back from Maine last weekend.

I used the Vista the next day on a road trip to Connecticut, and again on a 40-mile Thanksgiving day bike ride. Here’s my first impressions…

The unit’s still acceptably small. In fact, it’s a tiny bit smaller than the original eTrex.

The display is quite a bit smaller than the old eTrex, but it has better resolution, and is color, so it’s a net improvement.

The old unit often took quite a long time to locate satellite signals. The new unit is noticeably faster, although it still can take several seconds.

Another annoyance is that the old unit only allowed six characters for waypoint names. The new unit allows about fifteen. Yay.

Naturally, the lack of maps was the biggest shortcoming of my old eTrex. This unit displays color maps, which is a huge improvement.

Still, the unit isn’t very useful without buying a memory card and Garmin’s supplemental map set, which will run you another $150.

My other major complaint about my old unit was that the batteries and electronics weren’t securely seated, so the smallest bump would cause the unit to power off. Not only was that inconvenient and annoying, it also put gaps in my tracklog. In 40 miles of biking Boston’s notoriously rough roads yesterday, the new unit didn’t shut off on me once. The battery compartment is very noticeably a tighter fit than before.

Battery life still seems great. I’ve been running two AAs, and have not had any issues with juice, even when running WAAS and the backlight all the time.

So far I’m pretty pleased with the unit, although I’ve only barely begun to put it to use.