4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Best Multi-Purpose GPS for the Money
Date of Review: Sep 4, 2003
The Bottom Line: You'll be hard pressed to find another GPS with this combination of features in this small a package at any price and at $305 it's an excellent value.
My search for a GPS device started as a result of my tendency to get lost in the Chesapeake Bay. I needed a GPS device to tell me where I was and which way I needed to go. I preferred to have a device with mapping capabilities, but after looking at the prices for many such devices ($400 + cost of maps) I was leaning towards an entry level GPS without mapping in the $150 range. Non mapping GPSs are ok for boating, if you have a detailed paper charts to accompany them, since the water is wide open and you can pretty much follow a straight line to your destination. However, they are all but worthless for driving since they simply point "as the crow flies" to your destination and don't help you follow roads. Luckily, I found a mapping GPS at a good price.
The best thing about the Garmin 76s is its versatility. It's small and light enough to carry on hiking trips, rugged enough to withstand a mountain bike spill, it floats (great for the boat), and it has enough memory to store multiple kinds of maps (driving, topographic, marine.)
I purchased my GPS from "Scuba Steve" based on the recommendation of another post to epinions. They are selling these GPSs for $305. I searched froogle, mysimon, cnet, and everywhere else I could think of and this was easily the best price. I was a bit leery to order from him given the not so flashy website, however their sales department was very responsive to my emails (answered in about 10 minutes) and they shipped it out the same day. Even though I only paid for ground shipping, I had my GPS 26 hours later. I highly recommend Scuba Steve both for price and service. www.scubasteve.biz
The only downside that I saw with this product is the fact that you can't upgrade the memory. Ideally I'd like to load all my maps (Base map, metroguide, topo, and bluecharts) on to one device, but at this point that isn't possible with the 76s. I know Magellan has some products out at a similar price point that take industry standard SD memory chips. I think the whole GPS industry will start moving toward using industry standard memory, but for now that's not an option with Garmin. I was also a bit disappointed that no mounting kits or power adapters were included.
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