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1. electronics guy

   March 14, 2012

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   18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Really Cool And Great For Hiking, May 27, 2011

   By 

   electronics guy (USA) –

   This review is from: Bushnell BackTrack D-Tour Personal GPS Tracking Device (Sports)

   Amazon will note that I got this through Vine but I really do like it. I just saw the price, though, and people will need to decide for themselves if they want to pay that for this.

   You can see for yourself with the product description what the features are but just a few observations…

   It does not provide a track until you are connected to a computer and also connected to the Internet. All you get on the device itself is an arrowhead that points to your waypoint. You get 5 waypoints you can use as well – easy to select and easy to mark. Each waypoint gets its own display but all that provides is the pointer to the waypoint, the distance, and the time (plus a battery and GPS indicator). So finding your way back to the waypoint may be a bit more difficult if you are in rugged terrain. It does constantly tell you where it is, though. With only 5 waypoints, you need to make sure not to overwrite them if they are critical. Shouldn’t be too bad, but you need to keep that in mind.

   If there was a disappointment, it’s that you can’t display your path on the device and zoom in or out to see detail or a big picture view. Likewise there is no stored map. It’s just an arrow. It stores complete path information and has a huge memory, but again, you need a computer and an Internet connection to see it. When you do display your track, however, it’s on Google Maps and you get the same controls where you can zoom in, see the terrain, satellite view, etc. From when I was driving, my track overlaid beautifully with the roads on the map down to the side of the road I was on so the absolute accuracy of the unit is pretty good too.

   Also, this thing has a built-in magnetic compass that it uses in conjunction with the GPS location so the arrow really does always point to your destination. It’s pretty cool because if you rotate the unit itself, the arrow also rotates so it keeps pointed the correct direction. You also get a display of temperature and altitude, and another of trip distance, average speed, and instantaneous speed.

   It has a compass display that works essentially like a real compass. The arrow points north and the display itself has a compass rose with a digital compass readout and lat/long.

   Construction looks pretty good. It has a gasket around the battery compartment (3 AAA) and the buttons are rubberized so it should hold up to moisture pretty well. The display has a backlight too for night use.

   The only real negative I see is that it won’t display the track on the device itself. I am not sure why. They have the graphics capability because of the rotating arrow and compass rose displays. It may be processing power or something else, but they call it a “Backtrack” when really it’s only “DirectionBack” The next revision might give that capability or maybe a more capable and expensive model already does if one is available.

   I took it on a dog walk and marked some waypoints to see how well it did taking me back. There isn’t much to this exercise, but I was surprised that it took me back to each one with 3 foot accuracy. That’s pretty remarkable. It was clear sky with no obstructions, and I don’t know how many satellites it uses, but still, three feet? One other thing – the smallest unit of measure is in yards or meters. Not feet (except on altitude). That’s where the three feet accuracy comes from. When it counted down the distance to waypoint to 0 yards, I was right where I had marked them. Distances autorange to miles when appropriate.

   If you can live with 5 destinations/waypoints you are golden and will probably find this very handy. For longer cross-country hikes in rugged terrain, you might want something that gives you an actual path display instead of just waypoints. I’ve also got a Garmin eTrex H Handheld GPS Navigator. It is cheaper than this unit and gives you a graphical path display (no map) and a lot more waypoints. Mine doesn’t have a compass, though, and it seems they still don’t. You have to move it in a line for it to figure out your path so it can tell you which way is north. You also have to be moving for it to properly point to your waypoints. The Bushnell is much more capable in that respect and is a lot more natural with the build in magnetic compass.

   But this unit also has a bigger display than the Garmin, is thinner, though a little wider. I think it is also lighter but on units this small that may not matter.

   So four stars for me only because of the lack of a graphical display of your track and only 5 waypoints. Otherwise this is a really nice unit.

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