While you can't hold the world in your hand, the Garmin GPS 76 lets you hold the power to navigate it. It comes loaded with the location of major world cites, so you can travel the globe. But if you prefer staying closer to home, you can replace these with local points of interest.

Unlike most electronic devices, the case of Garmin GPS 76 is not only rugged but waterproof. And since it also floats, you can take it out on the water without fear of losing it. With a weight under 8 ounces, the slender case (1.2" x 2.7" x 6.2") fits easily in your pocket, backpack, or tackle box.

Along with world cities, the GPS 76 comes with marine navigation aids and U.S. tide data loaded in its 1 MB of memory. The navigation aids include such things as buoys, milemarkers, beacons, and hazards. Using a computer and data from a Garmin MapSource CD, you can also store you own points of interest. The points of interest include places to eat or sleep, dock your boat or get gas, see a movie or a historic monument, and much more.

A good GPS receiver should be usable anywhere and anytime, even in the dark. And since the Garmin GPS 76 has a high-contrast backlit LCD screen, you can do just that. The 1.6" W x 2.2" H (2.9" diagonal) 4-level grayscale screen has both adjustable backlighting and contrast for optimum viewing under any conditions.

Even though the GPS 76 is a basic model, its guidance is up to date. It can receive Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) signals to calculate a location that's off by less than three meters. With an optional Differential GPS (DGPS) beacon receiver, position accuracy within five meters can be obtained if WAAS signals aren't available.

While knowing where you are is important, sometimes you need to also know your exact path in getting there. The Garmin GPS 76 has an automatic track log that records and saves your movements. So if you want to repeat a previous route or retrace your steps later, you can. The receiver has space to store 10 trips from the track log.

The nine keys of the GPS 76 keypad are used for data entry and controlling what's displayed on the screen. There are five main display pages. The satellite page shows the position and signal strength of the local GPS satellites. The map page displays your position, waypoints and other points of interests. The compass page has your current heading, speed and distance to the next waypoint. When traveling on the road or other straight courses, there's the highway page to provide you with a combination of map and compass page information. The last of the main pages is the route page. This is for planning, editing, and displaying a selection of routes.

To create a route, the Garmin GPS 76 gives you several options. Each route is allowed anywhere from 2 to 50 waypoints with space to store 50 routes. One way to create a route, is to use any of the existing points on the map page. Or you can make new waypoints on the map and use those. You create a new waypoint by placing a marker on the map page or entering the location coordinates.