This unit was a birthday gift from my wife in 2020. So this is my unbiased opinion on the eTrex 10 and how it works for my purposes.
(I originally had this article ready to go in early summer 2020. However, due to events outside of the bike world at the time, I figured it wasn’t appropriate for a cis, straight, white, male settler to review a dated piece of equipment and post pictures of it all over the internet.)
I have reluctantly been wanting a GPS unit for cycling for a while now. After dealing with battery issues with my phone on long rides, it was starting to make more and more sense that I find a dedicated piece of gear that I can use for longer rides.
The eTrex 10 is the cheapest GPS in Garmin’s range. It is about as simple as you can get in 2022. The GPS has mapping, routes, geocaching, as well as a few features for other outdoors activities such as hunting and fishing. It has an internal memory, takes double a batteries and can withstand water and impacts. You can find mounts for the eTrex series (which also includes some more high-end models that have topographic mapping, colour screens and SD card ports).
What I was looking for in a GPS was something that was not dedicated only to cycling. I also love hiking and other ways of backcountry exploring, and wanted to make sure my dollars were well spent. Cycling computers look at things like cadence, heart rate and other bits of data that I’m sure are important to racers or people on training rides, but are just not interesting to me. The way I use a GPS while riding is to set it and forget it. I want to have it tracking my ride, but I don’t want to look at it constantly. I want to be able to consult it if I’m lost, but not have it show every turn I need to make. I don’t need to see my speed at a certain time. I also need to be able to send my rides to Strava. I am fine riding with a GPS in my frame bag or handlebar bag.
So far I have had no issues with storing longer rides on the internal memory. A 50 km ride only takes up 7 per cent of the internal memory, and I am not envisioning anything more than a 200 km in one go. I am nowhere near that fit, so I don’t think I have anything to worry about.
LONG TERM
I am going on two years (holy shit time flies) with this unit now. What I’m most impressed with is the battery life, but the mapping functionality and ability to keep to your uploaded map really helps in a pickle. I had this thing running basically all day, and it didn’t kill the battery, and that was even when looking down on it and trying to find my way around.
Out of the box there is no way to mount it to the bars, which for some people isn’t great. For me I have not had an issue with it. However, if I do some longer rides where I’m leading the pack and I’m in unfamiliar territory it might make sense for me to get a bar mount.
I also like the different profiles you can have. The way I run it shows me elevation, trip odometer and how long I have until sunset (important for setting up camp/getting home before dark). I also have a map w. compass and where I’ve been so far. If I’m following a route, that shows up too. You can set up a lot of different profiles for it and customize them quite a bit. I haven’t needed to do more than this, but it’s pretty inclusive for the basic GPS.
I also noticed that there was a lot more memory in it than I gave it credit for. I went for a few months without dumping the memory — most of that was one-day rides — but it was quite a lot of storage. I only dumped the memory because 2022 came around and I wanted a fresh start. It connects easily to the computer so you can upload to Strava or whatever really quickly. It basically acts like a USB, but it does play with fancy Garmin software if you’re into that.
It has run out of batteries a few times, but that’s my fault for not checking and using 10 year old rechargeable AAs.
Also good: it’s water resistant and durable, meant for not-biking, so it’ll take a bit of a beating.
I don’t think I’d get anything more than this.
At the end of the day, this is a no fuss GPS tracker for people whose phones aren’t up to snuff anymore. It’s great. It does what it says. It does a bit more than it says and besides issues with me not checking the battery every time I use it, I have no complaints.