Garmin eTrex SE GPS Handheld Navigator

As an entry level GPS unit you can not go wrong with this. I bought this to help navigate walks when I started to struggle using a phone. This is so much easier with a bright screen and superb battery life which lasts months. You have to create you routes in the Explore app first and sync to the device as there are no preloaded maps here. Otherwise a great starter unit that does not cost a fortune or require any subscription costs.

My old Garmin 12 finally died after 25 years of abuse at sea. I looked at several GPS apps, but they're garbage - and how can you rely on a phone signal in an emergency? Simple setup with this Etrex , does everything needed for navigation. Particularly like the long battery life.

I bought this to replace a long serving Garmin Geko unit which has served me well for about 20 years, but which has now finally given up the ghost. As you might expect, the eTrex SE is superior in many ways to the Geko, with many more functions, easy connection to the smartphone app, fantastic battery life , excellent screen clarity and fast GPS connectivity, it is a great basic GPS unit for those who carry a paper map and don't need onscreen mapping, I mainly use mine to track mileage and time elapsed, it is far more accurate than a pedometer. Being able to access the OS Grid Reference is invaluable as well, but these functions were also available on the Geko. But my problem with the eTrex and the reason I can't give it 5 stars is - why does it have to be so big and clunky? It's almost twice the size and weight of the Garmin Geko! You would have thought that it could have been smaller and lighter than the models it replaced, the Geko could be slipped into a pocket and you would forget it was there. The screen display area of the eTrex is quite small and only takes up about half of the front of the unit, so I'm not sure why the design is such a backward step. But despite this, the eTex is a well made, reliable and functional device at a decent price and if it lasts me as long as my Geko I'm happy.

Great price of about £105. Although it doesn't display a map, it does connect to your phone where your phone will show the map on the Garmin app. During my first use I used the Kamoot app to plan my walk and then quickly uploaded it to the GPS device. Battery lasts for ages and following the route on the map was easy. The screen is very clear and easy to operate. All I had to do was follow the line which was my track. My route planning app (Kamoot) was still being used but I didn't have to kick it to my phone out to look at the map or directions.

Went trekking across Cornwall for a month, and this worked perfectly.

Straight after turning it on for the first time it started freezing and then restarting, but only with battery power. It worked fine when using the power cable. I used YouTube and Amazon for help but nothing explained the restarting problem. I even paid out for expensive high capacity AA batteries in the hope it was the cheap multipack AAs causing the issue, but no. Although I had the issue above I would of probably returned the GPS anyway, I found the screen really difficult see and the feel of it was quite cheap.

I remember the classic garmin legend, fairly basic but had everything you wanted, this unit is an update of that unit, does everything you would expect and more. But has one or two issues, the internal memory is poor and lacks one or two functions, however for the price very good value.

this has been quite a frustrating device to replace an existing eTrex 10 which I thought I had lost but I've actually found again since. the e-trex se is a complete redesign and I guess a replacement for the original eTrex 10 device with a number of improvements including even longer battery life and a really clear high contrast screen which really does look the part. however it is worth noting that Garmin have removed the joystick navigation stick so using things like the zoom and looking around a track is a bit more fiddly than it used to be with the zoom itself being in the menu and the up and down arrows being used for moving around up and down all left or right depending on what you have selected in the menu. anyway full stop the device is definitely an upgrading in terms of technology the compass is very very responsive and they have added all the usual modern features that were not there before such as pairing to a mobile phone. in fact this is where the device got really frustrating. as many other reviewers have mentioned the device actually froze on me nearly every single time I used it and it took me a while to realise that the reason for this was that the device was paired to the phone and was actively connected via Bluetooth. if I uploaded a route to the device and disconnected it from the phone there was no more freezing whatsoever. since then there have been a couple of firmware updates so maybe this has been fixed I don't know because I know longer trust the device to be used while paired to the phone. another book bear is that the old eTrex 10 when connected to a computer used to show up as a master storage device which meant that no matter what the computer was you could drop a GPX file into the etrix and use it. it seems that garbin have changed this so that the device shows up as a serial USB device i.e the same as if you connected a USB to serial interface and then plug something like a modem into the computer a. this means that the routes are sent via some custom Garmin protocol rather than a standard file transfer which may make things more reliable but it means that you need to use the garment software to transfer routes or transfer routes from the Bluetooth on your phone. the problem is I created a quite detailed 50 mile track to use on this device while cycling and I noticed that the root that was uploaded to the device had massively fewer points on the track (or course as we are calling them these days in Garmin land) and not only did it take absolutely ages synk the track from the phone to the device but when I came to ride the course it was almost unusable due to the low definition of the course i.e it's only saved very sparse numbers of locations specifically around turning points etc but where the same course would have shown curves in the road making it very easy to stay on track this course was now straight lines between very sparse points making following the course very very confusing indeed. I don't know if there is something in the Garmin app that when a course goes over a certain size it's simplifies it so it fits into memory but I have never had this problem what I have transferred courses manually older all the Garmin devices before. you can however connect the device to your computer if you have a Mac or a PC which isn't very useful to me because I primarily use Linux and maybe transferring the courses in this way keeps the detail I don't know however I shouldn't have to try to deal with a course that is ridiculously simplified for me without asking. on the plus side I do find the operating system on the device to be easy to use very very clear to read and feels nice in the palm of the hand. however the absolute downfall of this device when compared to the e-trex 10 is that it is supposed to be a rugged outdoor device but the LCD screen is bonded to some kind of gorilla glass like on a mobile phone. not only that the whole massive bezel around the screen is the same piece of glass that the screen is bonded to. unfortunately the device fell from the bike onto the road and the glass cracked which immediately smashed the LCD screen are made the device completely unusable. I have had exactly the same thing happened a couple of times on the eTrex 10 with no problems whatsoever because the LCD display is not bonded to the shell of the device. in fact the displace its behind a clear plastic screen that is the part of the case on the eTrex 10 which means that even if you are to crack the plastic screen there's a very high chance that the LCD display behind it will not be affected for stop I cannot believe this design has been brought in for an outdoors device such as this. the impacts to the screen glass wasn't even on where the display is i.e if they had used a small screen bonded to the glass and then used plastic for the rather large bezel around the screen, the screen would never have broken in the first place. it is absolutely mind boggling that the glass covering the bezel can be shattered and then ruin the LCD screen that is bonded behind it completely needlessly. they have basically made what was an incredibly rugged outdoor device into a slightly less fragile version of a mobile phone. this is absolutely unacceptable. I have included a photograph of the device after its first and only drop onto the hard surface and as you can see it is immediately unusable from that point on. obviously I should have been more careful both these things happen and I have owned multiple garmin devices which have all been subject to some pretty rough treatment including similar drops onto hard surfaces and I have never ever had anything like a screen failure such as this. luckily as I have found where I misplaced the original eTrex 10 I will simply be returning to this device as it is a far superior device for using outdoors and I noticed that these are still on sale and they are still more expensive than the newer fancier modern replacement.

تعليق الجهاز

El Garmin eTrex SE es un GPS sólido y confiable que ofrece una excelente duración de la batería, una pantalla clara y fácil de leer, y es perfecto para aquellos que se inician en el uso de dispositivos GPS. Su capacidad para sincronizarse con el móvil lo convierte en un complemento perfecto para cualquier aventura al aire libre. Estoy completamente satisfecho con mi compra y lo recomendaría sin dudarlo a cualquier persona que esté buscando un GPS confiable y fácil de usar para sus actividades al aire libre.

Produto travou devido a versao do software, que foi corrigido com atualização.

Super une fois qu'on s'y retrouve

Ich benötige für meine Touren ein ganz simples, einfaches, unkompliziertes GPS Gerät, was einfach nur die Tour aufzeichnet und für den Notfall als Back Tracking dient. Und da mein bisheriges Gerät( Garmin eTrex e10 ) nach vielen Jahren jetzt wirklich langsam, seinen gummierten Geist aufgibt war ich auf der Suche nach einem genauso simplen und einfachen Nachfolgegerät. Und für genau diesen Zweck ist genau dieses Gerät, das absolut richtige. Wie gesagt, ich lasse es während Wanderungen lediglich parallel mitlaufen, um einerseits die genaue Strecke aufzuzeichnen und Distanzen und Höhenmeter und Bewegung Zeit zu messen und für den Ernstfall ein Back Tracking zu haben. Über sämtliche anderen Funktionen wie Geocaching oder das anlaufen von vorprogrammierten Punkten kann ich daher hier keine Auskunft geben. Für meine Anwendung Zwecke allerdings ist es wirklich absolut perfekt. Es hat eine nahezu unendliche Batterielaufzeit (ich nutze im Gerät die großen Akkus von IKEA, die angeblich ja Eneloop Akkus sind und auch beim permanenten mit tracken der letzten fünftägigen Outdoor Tour hat sich lediglich ein Einzigster Akku Strich verabschiedet. Zweimal habe ich probehalber auch geschaut, ob das Back Tracking wirklich funktioniert und habe mich vom Gerät über die mit geschriebenen Punkte zurück navigieren lassen und bis auf einige minimale Abweichungen im Bereich unter 2 m vom ursprünglichen Weg funktioniert das wirklich einwandfrei. Wer also ein einfaches simples Gerät ohne große Spielerei und komplizierte Bedienung sucht, an dem er trotzdem das Display nach seinen Vorlieben einstellen gestalten und mit Daten belegen kann, der ist bei diesem Gerät genau richtig.