Garmin eTrex Venture Reviews

I purchased this unit several weeks ago, have used it a lot so far, and I'm very pleased with its performance.

The Venture has an easy to see and read color screen and comes pre-installed with a basemap that is basically entirely useless. If you want to do any serious hill and hiking geocaching you need to get the topographic maps that Garmin offers. These are expensive, but are pretty much necessary when navigating terrain and trails with changes in elevation. I can recall several instances when I needed to check elevation levels to make sure I was on the right trail to get to the cache I was chasing.

The Venture HC is also great for amateur astronomers. My computerized telescope needs to know lat/long/time to accurately slew to and track objects in the sky. I can get coordinates on standard addresses on geocoder.us, but if I just want to set up at a dark site somewhere, a GPS is a must.

I think those are the major differences in the newest eTrex models, they basically work the same and have the same receiver. Garmin's website lets you compare features on different models, and you can read the manuals there.

If you need a great unit for caching, consider the Venture HC.

Garmin eTrex Venture Review