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I've got a Meridian Platinum and a Garmin GPS V at the moment - I traded an eTrex Legend (one step below the Vista - less memory and no built-in compass/altimeter, but otherwise identical) for the GPS V. I wanted the navigation capabilities of the GPS V, but was otherwise happy with the legend.
I can say without hesitation that the Meridian is a piece of crap. Seriously. The screen is low resolution and difficult to read, the unit is huge and awkward, the buttons feel like crap, and it's generally miserable to use. On the plus side, it has an SD memory card slot, was cheap given the large feature list, has an excellent 3-d compass and altimeter, very fast and accurate satellite lock, and great reception. But it can't make up for the crap interface, in my opinion. But, for what it's worth, I value interface over just about anything else - if it's a pain to use, I hate it.
The eTrex Legend, on the other hand, was beautiful - excellent, crisp, high resolution screen, relatively fast map drawing, quick and accurate satellite acquisition, decent reception, which you could improve with the patch antenna by pointing it toward the satellite you want. User interface was intuitive and easy to use.
I bought the Meridian because I wanted a compass for geocaching without having to carry a separate compass. But the interface is so bad and the low-res screen so irritating, I use my GPS V now and the meridian is shelved. If the Vista were a little cheaper at the time and the place I got the meridian had a decent return/exchange policy, I would have traded it for a Vista in a heartbeat. I've heard good things about the Vista's compass and altimeter, but the bad things I heard were 1) The compass isn't a 3-axis, so you need to keep the Vista level and down to get a reading, and 2) The altimeter takes precedence over the GPS altitude, making it useless on airplanes or anywhere else barometric pressure isn't "correct". The second one may have been taken care of in a software update - this was a few years ago that I had the legend and looked at the Vista, and I know Garmin has been very good with frequent software updates to fix bugs and add new features.
Also, my GPS V came with the wrong (eTrex-style) serial cable when I bought it, and my experience with Garmin tech support was great - they overnighted me the proper cable for free, and let me keep the eTrex cable.
So, if you buy a Vista and want an extra serial cable, or if you decide you want to buy my Meridian Platinum with 64MB memory card and the MapSend USA package (cheap!), let me know :-)
posted by 66.92.168...
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