Will a Garmin GPSMAP 62 position in thick bush?

That's weird--they're the green ones, right? That's exactly what I use. Is the back-light switched off? Even with the compass, I'd have thought it'd last longer than 8-10 hours unless you constantly have it out in front of you and are playing with it. Someone who owns a 60 or 62 model might be able to comment with more experience, but it could be interesting to see how long it lasts if you fully charge the batteries, switch off the compass and the back-light, then just leave it running on the desk without touching it for a long time.

Tried the little test you suggested izogi . Turned off the compass did a few other little tweeks I didn't know I could do and the batteries lasted 16 hours . Still not twenty, but much better than before . Did the test twice, with two different lots of batteries, and 16 hours seems the limit .

Lithium batteries will probably last the longest, if you haven't tried them. (Personally I prefer to just stick with rechargeables---much cheaper and probably more environmentally friendly, at a guess.) I might run a proper test with my own one at some point and see how much time I get out of it. I just bought myself an eTrex 30 as of a couple of days ago. Still getting the hang of it --- the buttons are even smaller than the Vista HCx, maybe the one negative thing I've found so far. There's another thing in the satellite view where it lets the satellite icons cover the last digit of a grid reference, which is annoying, but that only seems to occur if you have it also tracking GLONASS satellites.