[phone app vrs gps device]

The eTrex 10 is a very minimal GPSr, so don't let that unit's performance influence your judgment of GPSr vs smartphone. If you can return the 10 and get another GPSr, then you may begin to see why some cachers prefer GPSr's.

 

When I was researching different GPSr's, I read about the eTrex 10 and realized that it was very bare bones. I ended up buying an eTrex 20 myself. There was a refurb model on sale for a good price. I think the most popular GPSr's are the Garmin eTrex 20/30 and the Garmin 62/64 series. The latter is a bit more costly and they are also larger units.

 

I have used my smartphone occasionally, but I prefer using my GPSr for navigating. My smartphone may not be the best, but it does work pretty well when I use it for multi's and Wherigo's. My GPSr is better for durability, screen contrast, coord accuracy, and battery life. It's much easier for me to switch out a couple AA batteries in my GPSr then to hold my smartphone while it's connected to the external battery charger.

 

Plenty of cachers have their own preferences though, so whatever works best for you.

 

Thanks, this is good advise!

[phone app vrs gps device]

Well, with the classic app, I saved everything to offline lists, no cell coverage needed out in the field. You can sort of do it with the new app, but not with nearly the ease of the old one. I still use the old classic app.

 

I wondered how that worked? I will try that. Thanks!

[phone app vrs gps device]

Well this was my whole question. What am I missing? I don't know the difference between all the GPS's so all I can compare is this little one I picked up. I didn't want to go out and pick up a high end devise only to find out that doesn't do much more then my little one. But if people highly recommend one then maybe I would. Regardless of the devise though it sounds like I would always have to preload the caches so that leaves out spontaneous geocaching. I've read that there are ones that have preloaded caches but can you update this for new finds? I now totally get the advantages of a gps in general when it comes to battery, hiding and reception thanks to all these replies. But I'm not sold on spending a lot of money on another devise if it doesn't offer much more then I already have. And I will still use my phone app in most cases.

[phone app vrs gps device]

I'm very new to geocaching with 42 finds and 9 hides. I have the geocaching app on my phone and I LOVE it. It's so user friendly and the graphics are clear and simple. However I found that some of my hides were not showing up accurate as I was also using my phone to mark my coordinated with google map. So I went out and picked up a little Garmin etrex 10. WELL... I was very disappointed in this little rig. So hard to set up, difficult to figure out and crappy graphics. I thought "why the heck do people even use gps when the phone app is so great". Am I missing something here? When I watch the youtube videos of people hiding or finding caches they all seem to have GPSs, why? What am I missing? Why would I use a GPS over the app (except to mark my coordinates when hiding).