Originally Posted by
prathmann
Yes, the eTrex H has a decent trackback feature and the screen is quite usable in place of a cyclometer and to see your squiggly-line path. When you activate 'trackback' it'll analyze your path and identify where you made significant turns (most of these will probably be at road junctions but some will also be where the road has a curve). Then as you approach the turn an arrow pops up showing the direction.
But note that using trackback only works to retrace your path - frequently there will be shorter ways to get back on course which you can see if you have a unit that includes maps of the area. So you might want to consider models like the eTrex Venture or Legend which do have map capability.
Thanks - that's exactly the information I was looking for.
I went for the H, as the UK maps for Garmins have a very poor reputation - there's no way that they'd show the trails that make up a lot of my routes. You can get topographical maps for free, but they don't show bridges and the area I'm riding is crisscrossed with canals and streams. So getting a map screen and "detailed" maps would cost me several times the cost of the H and give me very little in return.
The b&w screen on the H is nicely readable in daylight and by entering 20-30 keypoints and constructing 5-10 routes out of them (which the H will let you do directly, without a cable - its slow but tolerable if you do a few points a day while watching TV) I can provide a network that runs through most of the places I ride. So if I don't want to use trackback I can just aim for the closest point on the network and then I'm on a sure route home (or wherever.)
If I was road touring in new territory, instead of off-roading in the same area most of the time, I'm sure a map screen would be much more attractive. Especially if Garmin's UK maps caught up with their US ones. And even more so if they broke them in $10 chunks covering small areas instead of £100 cards covering half of England.