I'm resurrecting this old thread because I now own and have extensively used a Garmin Etrex 20 with one of those famous transflective displays. With the backlight turned on, it is no brighter than the AMOLED display on my Nokia N8 in bright sunlight. With the backlight turned off, it is dimmer. In the shade, the Nokia N8 blows away the Etrex 20 with backlight turned off. Both devices have glass fronts and hence reflect sunlight like a mirror if positioned at the wrong angle (easy to fix by simply moving slightly). So this is the final word on the subject. The Nokia N8 is now almost 2 years old, and I am sure there are other smartphones which have equally high quality AMOLED displays at this point. The posters who argued that the transflective display is somehow superior to the best AMOLED displays are either deliberately misrepresenting the truth (perhaps shills for Garmin) or else they simply don't know what they are talking about.

I bought the Etrex20 (with the supposedly amazing transflective display) bundled with Garmin's 100K maps ($249 at REI, before member discounts). Those maps use the Census TIGER road database, which is less accurate than the Navteq road database used by the Nokia N8's builtin offline maps. Garmin's 25K maps supposedly use Navteq maps, but I'm not interested in paying for 25K maps for all the states I plan to tour in (California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, possibly parts of Oregon, Idaho and New Mexico). And the zoom and pan capabilities of the Etrex 20 suck compared to the pinch to zoom, pan to scan capabilities of smartphones. On the other hand, the Etrex 20 maps have topo information, which I really wanted, whereas the Nokia N8 offline maps do not (the online maps do offer very nice terrain relief shading, but that is a moot point because I plan to be offline most of the time and anyway don't feel like paying for data downloads). Also, the Etrex 20 has a high sensitivty GPS receiver, which is essential for getting the GPS to work in forests (like those of the Lassen/Plumas forests where I recently toured) whereas the Nokia N8 has a regular sensitivity receiver, which works fine in the open desert (where I did my previous tours) but not in the forest. Also, the Nokia N8 isn't really a substitute for a true GPS, since it lacks things like support for map datums and different coordinate systems, etc. Finally, the Etrex 20 is more shock and water resistant and has a nice handlebar mount and runs on replaceable batteries (25 hour life for 2 AA batteries) so no need to worry about running out of power in the field. Given that I was traveling in an area with a huge number of dirt roads, with no signs at the intersections, I really needed a GPS to supplement my paper map, and the Etrex 20 fit the bill. So I'm not sorry to have bought it.

For someone who mostly sticks to paved roads, a better option would probably be a smartphone which has: (a) offline maps (i.e. maps which are loaded on the phone's memory, so they can be used without a network connection); (b) high-sensitivity GPS receiver. Topo information and ability to setup map datum and coordinate system (lat-long vs UTM vs British national grid, etc) would be nice, but not essential if you are mostly on paved roads.