I have the etrex vista, and my experience with this unit has been frustrating to say the least. (I am touring north and south america . currently in chile)

I have the touratech mount.

I also have the external power supply.

The unit I bought had a fault with the little toggle button that controls everything - it would not work in some directions sometimes and was very hard to push. But I managed to swap it for a new one (thanks to REI - highly recommended store)

The touratech mount just broke (it lasted about 30,000 km)- vibration caused a tear in the thin metal spring that holds the bottom piece - the bottom piece simply dropped off. Strangely enough the unit can still be held in place by the top piece, and vibrates a lot less now...

The power supply, be it battery or external is fickle to say the least.
There was an intermitent vibration problem with the external supply above 4000 rpm where the power would cut out, and now it doesn´t work below about 3500 rpm either ... :-(

Fiddling with cables sometimes helped the above 4k problem but now the power supply is useless.

The batteries last just 2-3 hours - and that is with genuine duracells not the cheapo batteries you usually get here in south america. and the compass switched off.

The little toggle button that controls the whole device stopped working properly after about 1 month, and only randomly will work in all four directions and will click. i.e. I cannot save my tracks because I literally cannot press the button to go left. worse still I cannot press the button to enter the track mode anyway.

even on the slowest recording mode the vistas memory for recording your tracks does not last a full day. more like half a day. so you have to remember to save your tracks 2 times a day. if you can move that toggle button that is...

That said, the functionality of the unit otherwise is awesome - especially the plotting of your route over time, and height. When you upload your tracks you get data of your travels in 3 dimensions, and although mapsource is pretty crappy I am sure that in the future you will be able to get a great 3d picture of your route.

Garmin themselves seem ok - they will "fix it so it is like new" for $125, + $25 if you are out of the USA. But they don´t have local support here is SA...
Lance

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