I have a 5-year old Garman GPS unit, an Etrex Legend, it’s a hand held unit as apposed to a car unit. It’s made more for off road then it is for road navigation. And that’s good because that’s where I mostly use it. It has at times not gotten a satellite lock while under some trees that was easily fixed by moving some and it then locked in. And again when I was hiking in a very steep canyon (almost a cave, in an area called “Old Man’s Cave state park” (a very cool place to visit by the way, it’s in central Ohio) the walls were 70 to 120 feet tall and it was only about 30 feet wide. It’s unrealistic to expect it to work in this environment.

Other then these few times it has been very reliable and told me just where I was at. It has a basic set of maps in it and when I cross a road or stream it shows that on the map. My brothers and dad have a newer GPS made for car traveling and while I don’t like the map layout, they do work well. I recently drove my dad to Cleveland (from Toledo) and we typed in the address of The Cleveland Clinic and it took us right to the drive for the parking lot. Then again on the way home it took us right to my dad’s home address.

I still like maps and always have a good idea where I’m at and what direction is north, but I don’t seem to have the problems (with all 4 of the GPS units I use) some of you are saying you have with them.

I like them. I actually like my older hiking GPS unit more then the newer ones my brothers and dad have, but that’s just because of the features. My GPS will run 22-hours on a set of AA Batts. The car units are only good for 5-hours and then have to be plugged in for several hours. If my unit gets a dead battery, I just put in a new set of 2 AA batts and I’m good for another 22-hrs. Also it’s waterproof and shirt pocket size.

Being able to pop new batteries in it and then have it running again in seconds for another 20 + hrs is a strong argument for it in a survival situation. Having one go dead in 5-hrs and no way to get it up and running without a time consuming charge (assuming you have a place and the power to charge it) sucks.

Also my dads GPS doesn’t seem to allow for lots of tag points like my unit does; this is a very big reason to not want one like his. I think my unit has the ability for 500 of them.