You'll Like it, Your PC won't

After talking to several GPS users and reading a handful of reviews, I decided on the Garmin eTrex Summit. I wanted a handheld unit to take along on hikes, ATV outings, hunting trips and snowmobile rides in Montana.

When the unit arrived, I was immediate impressed by the unit's design. It's small and light, and fits comfortably in your hand. The screen is only black and white, but is backlit and is fairly large, with good contrast. Three buttons on the left side of the unit provide "up/down" and "select" functionality for the user interface, and a single button on the right side provides "Cancel" and "Page Select" actions. If you're right handed, this is handy, as the "Cancel/Page" button is convenient for the right thumb, and the index and middle fingers fit nicely onto the "up/down" and "select" buttons on the other side of the unit.


Setup is a breeze. Stand outside for about five minutes and follow the directions and you're ready to go, the map, altimeter and compass are calibrated for the hike. The unit has a simple-to-use "breadcrumbs" feature that will keep track of your wanderings automatically, and allow you to save trails that you want to keep.

Marking waypoints is trivial as well, and there's enough storage here for a lot of them. The otherwise terrific user interface is a little clumsy here if you want to change the symbol used for the waypoint on the map, though, or edit the waypoint's name. A complaint I have about the unit is that it only allots for a six character name for a waypoint. I'd prefer to have a few less slots for waypoints and a little more room for an informative name.

The unit had no trouble keeping track of where I was, even as the unit was swinging back and forth across my chest as I hiked the trail with it hanging from my neck. It even kept track of the drive to the trail head, with the unit sitting on the dashboard.

In the course of a 6 hour outing, though, including the drive to and from the trailhead and of course the hike, I burned up nearly all of the 2 new batteries that were just put in. I think the manual claimed 22 hours of use on average, but several outings have demonstrated that I can expect 6-8 hours of use from a pair of AA batteries. This is the first GPS unit I've owned, but I expected more endurance from a "hiking" unit like this. If you're going to pack in for three days, you should pack in several pairs of fresh batteries as well.

The altimeter function is easy to easy, and very handy.

My biggest complaint with the unit has nothing to do with its performance on the trail, or in the boat, but rather its performance back at home base. I was hoping to download some of the GPS waypoints and trail data so that I could map them on my PC. Over time, I expect I'll find a lot of different uses for the GPS data I collect. But as far as I can tell (and I've looked pretty thoroughly through the documentation) there's no way to get your GPS data out of the unit, short of writing it down while looking at the screen. I'm not yet experienced enough with competitive units to know if this is reasonable to expect, but just about every other gadget I've bought in the past several years has a port of some kind that allows it to communicate with my computer.

So fair warning on this unit: It looks cool, it's easy to use, it performs great on the trail (provided you tote some extra batteries) and has all the features you could want (altimeter, compass, etc.) But if you're buying a GPS as much for its "gadget value" as for its trail utility, you're likely to wish you had bought a unit which could talk to you PC. If PC integration isn't a requirement, then there's plenty to like about the Garmin eTrex Summit, and very little to dislike.