Originally Posted by dan828
I have an Garmin eTrex Vista, which is similar to the Legend but has more memory and adds a barometric altimeter and a compass-- GPS altitude readings don't work very well, and direction info only works when moving, so the extra features can be nice.
Correct. One of the reasons is that the GPS will use the 4th strongest satelitte to determine your altitude while it uses the 3 strongest for your lat/long fix. Quite often, the 4th strongest satelitte is weak. While a GPS can track up to 12 (or even more) satelittes, it only uses the 4 strongest for your current position and changes which satelitte it uses as signals fade or get stronger.
Anyways, you get a "bread crumb" display of your route on the map screen, and so far as I've seen it is pretty much the same from trip to trip, so you can follow it pretty easily.
Yup, even the cheapest units have breadcrumbs.
I just glanced at pricegrabber.com, and it looks like the Vista can be had for around $210, the Legend for about $140, and the color Legend for around $210. Handle bar mount will run you about $10.
Nice to see the color Legend dropping in price. It has a longer battery life, more internal storage (24MB), and uses a mini-USB port instead of a serial cable, auto-route calucation, and audio alerts plus it is smaller. This is the next unit I will get once my faithful Legend dies (which may be never).
But you will still have to fork out 100 bucks for mapping software to get detailed maps uploaded on the unit.