New To Gps And Need Recomendations

[xecutioner]

I am thinking about getting into the GPS world and need some advise as to which unit to buy. I am looking at a few : Magellan Meridian Color Traveler Pack 450.00, Garmin 60cs 395.00, 76cs 424.00, GPS V Deluxe pack 299.00 and so on. What do you think of these and what would you recommend. I want to get driving directions and maps and start geocaching. I know I can get cheaper for a beginner but figure I will want to up grade later anyway. Thanks for your help.

Edited August 12, 2005 by xecutioner

[+Miragee]

I recently got the Garmin Vista C. I love the auto-routing feature and the Geocaching feature that selects the next nearest after you click the "Found" button for the one you just found.

 

It has half the memory of the 60CS, but is smaller -- pocket-sized in fact.

 

I got the beanbag automount with the City Select software (which you have to buy separately to get the auto-routing function for small streets.)

[+IVxIV]

Consider the Lowrance iWay 100m it's the only GPS currently on the consumer market that has TALKING autorouting and is rugged enough for the rigors of Geocaching. Dual processors makes for very fast screen refreshes as well as fast auto-rerouting if necessary. Plus it supports MMC/SD memory card for virtually unlimited memory capacity.

[+badlands]

Special pricing on the Explorist 600

 

If you're looking at the Magellans, the Explorist series is the way to go v the Meridian Color.

[+JohnnyVegas]

You may find the color on the Meridian not all that great. If you want a small GPS with a color screen the Magellan Explorist 500 is a very nice GPS and it will do auto routing with Magellans Map send direct route, If you shop around it should run you about $400.00 with software. The Ecxporist 500 has the came features as the Explorist 600 but without the Magnetic compass and Barometer whic are two features that are not really needed for geocaching.

 

If you do not need color West Marine had the Garmin 76map for $199.99 now. That will not include the software.

[+Renegade Knight]

On your list, everthing but the Meridian Color will do fine. The GPS V is the best bang for the buck on the list, but it's also the only black and white GPS. The newer color screens (60 and 76 plus explorist color) are all great. I know the Garmins are better than the black and white for contrast and visibility. I expect the Explorist are the same. The Meridian Color is an older style color screen and not as good.

[xecutioner]

I think I have narrowed it down to the Garmin 60cs or 76cs. How much memory do I really need. I am sticking to 1 state and probabbly major cities like Houston. I would like detailed road maps for travel. Do these have the geocaching features?

[+ZingerHead]

I have a 60CS. I can load all the street maps for the entire state of CT (about the size of Houston? ) and bordering sections of MA, NY, and RI. Then I add topo maps for the same area. And then the 24K topo section of the AT in CT. That pretty much maxes me out at 56mb. I'm planning a trip to Nova Scotia (several hundred miles), and so far I have street maps from here to there and plenty of memory left over.

If all you want to load is street maps you should be able to cover all of Houston and its outlying areas with no problems.

 

The maps vary in memory consumption based on the density of streets. The map blocks in rural areas are bigger in area covered, but consume less memory than blocks closer to cities.

 

I thought I read somewhere that the Xplorist series use a rechargeable battery (please confirm this, I'm uncertain). If it is true, I'd think twice about buying one. In the field, when the battery runs low, you'd have no way to repower. With the Garmins you can swap out the AA batteries easily. The other thing I like about AA batteries is I have extras in my flashlight and camera in case I really need a backup.

 

I considered the 76 when I bought my 60. It all came down to "feel". I'd suggest visiting a local retailer, or finding some local cachers who have those units and give them a heft. Weightwise they are comparable, but I liked having the buttons located below the screen rather than above. I can operate the 60 with one hand, although it's not nearly as easy to operate as my eTrex Vista. But then again, the 60 doesn't lose lock as soon as it sees a pine tree, either . Of course, if you do a lot of boating, the 76 will float if it goes overboard, whereas the 60 will sink unless you have lithium batteries installed.

 

HTH

[+briansnat]

Stay away from the MeriColor. The screen washes out in sunlight. The GPS V deluxe package should be a bargain, but not at $299. I've seen it for $200 and one person in the forums reported finding it for $150.

 

Ya can't go wrong with the 60CS. Great unit, but you're talking bigger bucks when you buy the mapping software. Also consider the Lowrance iFinder H20. Its a great unit (read my review at www.todayscacher.com) and the Plus package includes a memory card, card reader and mapping software for around $260.

[+BoomerFZ1]

You should visit any posts from me since I pretty much inondated these poor people recently while trying to decide what unit to get . I decided on the eXplorist 600 based on expandible memory and all the bells and whistles as much more costly units. For instance I was able to get the 600, handlebar mount, 512mb sd card and Topo 3D software for about $50 over what I'd pay for the 60CS alone. Though that unit was serioulsy in the running as it seems to be the mother of all Outdoors GPS units. Cost and memory were the only hinderances. Good luck.

[+Munin]

I think I have narrowed it down to the Garmin 60cs or 76cs. How much memory do I really need. I am sticking to 1 state and probabbly major cities like Houston. I would like detailed road maps for travel.

I fired up MapSource and checked out the Houston/TX area. A few numbers to ponder for your area:

 

CitySelect (detailed road maps): Full road info for all of Texas was 110.1 MB. Geez, that really is a big state, isn't it? But if you're mostly caching in the Houston area, you can get all the Texas roads within 150 miles of Houston loaded up in 39.6 MB.

 

US Topo (USGS 100K topo maps): If you were planning to put Garmin's topo maps onto the unit, it'd take 73.5 MB to cover the entire state. Storing just the topos for parts of TX within 150 miles of Houston only needs 14.1 MB.

 

The 60CS has 56MB of map memory, so that'd be enough to store both the road and topo maps for the parts of TX within 150 miles of Houston. (39.6 MB for roads plus 14.1 MB for topo)

 

The 76CS has 115 MB - still not enough to store both full road and full topo maps for the entire state. But it's enough to store, say, full road maps for all of TX plus topos for a couple of smaller areas.

 

Keep in mind that you can always go back into MapSource later on, alter your selections, and download a different set of maps to your unit. So, for example, even though the 60CS can't hold detailed roads for the entire state, you could go and tweak your map selections to cover just those parts of the state you cared about for a given roadtrip. Once you've played with MapSource a couple of times, it'll only take you a few minutes to fire it up, tweak the maps, and download a fresh set to your GPSr.

 

If you're mostly caching within 150 miles of Houston, either unit will easily suit your needs as far as map support goes. If you rove around a lot, the 76CS can hold more mapping info, but even the 60CS would handle it with some occasional tweaking of its maps.

 

Do these have the geocaching features?

Yes, both the 60CS and 76CS have the geocaching features.

[xecutioner]

Wow Munin that was really some great information. Thanks so much for taking the time to check alll that out for me. What does a topo map do that the street maps dont? It sounds liek the 60 would do but the 76 is only $30 more so I may still go that way unless there is another benifit to the 60 over the 76. How much memory do you normally need for caching activities. Thanks again for the help.

Edited August 14, 2005 by xecutioner

[+Munin]

Cheers, xecutioner, happy to provide the info!

 

What does a topo map do that the street maps dont?

Garmin's "City Select" street maps provide detailed roads along with travel-oriented points of interest - restaurants, gas stations, stores, etc. The "City Select" maps also include the information needed by the GPSr to do automatic routing along these roads. Garmin's "US Topo" topographic maps provide contour (elevation) information, some (but by no means all) trails, larger streams and ponds, and outdoor-oriented points of interest, such as names/locations of prominent summits, boat ramps, campgrounds, etc. Although the topo maps show streets, they're just for display - ie, the topo map streets don't include the extra information needed by the GPSr for auto-routing.

 

The topo maps can be somewhat useful if you're going to mid-/large-sized parks, state forests, and the like. The contour lines can show you things like which side of a hill the cache is on (or if it's up near the top). Larger trails, such as those suitable for emergency vehicles (so-called "fire roads") or 4WD tracks are typically shown, and may provide some ideas on where to hike/drive to get near the cache. I haven't seen any of the smaller, single-track type trails show up with the "US Topo" maps. (Frankly, there's not many of those smaller trails shown even on higher-resolution maps, like the 1:24K TopoZone or USGS paper maps. And Garmin's "US Topo" maps are much lower resolution - 1:100K scale.)

 

Garmin does sell more detailed series of topo maps at 1:24K scale - "National Parks, East", "National Parks, Central", and "National Parks, West". These do not cover the entire country - they focus in on specific national parks and forests. I haven't bought/used any of these yet, since I haven't gone caching in any of the spots covered by these maps.

 

For urban caching, or trips to small parks, my own opinion is that having topo maps on your GPSr is probably overkill. If you can walk across the entire park in 15 minutes on the single paved jogging trail that runs through it....well, it's just not terribly likely that terrain is going to be a significant issue in locating the cache.

 

For medium/large parks, I've been treating the 1:100K "US Topo" maps as a handy convenience, but I've still been bringing along a TopoZone printout and/or a trail map if I can find one online or at the park entrance. The nice thing about having topo information on your GPSr in parks large enough to contain varied terrain is that you can quickly tell where you are in relationship to the surrounding area - ie, that you're hiking up the east slope of Mount Doom, and roughly halfway to the top. That can be a bit easier than, say, digging out your paper USGS topo map, checking the lat/lon on your GPSr, then tracing down and over on the paper topo to find the corresponding point, and finally figuring out that you're on the east slope of Mount Doom, roughly halfway to the top. Either way works, but it's faster if you can figure this out with one quick look at your GPSr.

 

Freebie trail maps often lack contour lines, so having that info on your GPSr can help you tell that the "Billy Goat Trail", while the shortest path to the cache, is approaching the summit from the north, where the terrain appears to be nearly vertical in spots - while the "Little Lamb Trail", a much longer walk, ascends from the south where the slope is considerably gentler. Depending on whether you're a billy goat or a lamb, choosing the appropriate trail might greatly enhance the enjoyment of getting to the cache.

 

I'll still usually bring along a backup paper map on any non-trivial hike though - they're higher resolution, so you see more detail (smaller hills, etc) on them. If you're handy with a compass, paper maps can give some level of guidance even if satellite reception gets spotty. And of course the batteries never run down on a paper map, and they don't crack open when accidentally dropped on a pointy rock.

 

General idea is: you want the "City Select" road maps for road-based navigation - those maps will fill in the smaller roads that're missing from the "base map" that comes built into the GPSr, and the "City Select" maps contain the extra information that the GPSr needs for automatic route planning along these roads. If you're heading off into the woods (and the woods are reasonably extensive), the "US Topo" maps will provide you terrain information that might be useful for figuring out where you are relative to the surrounding hills and suchlike, and can sometimes help you decide which of several potential approaches looks best for getting to the cache.

 

Oh, something I just remembered: you can get an idea of what the various Garmin map products look like and the areas they cover by heading to:

 

Garmin's Map and Chart Products page

 

and selecting one of their packages from the "MapSource Map Viewer" pulldown menu on that page. It'll pop up a window that lets you zoom in and pan around the various maps. It's not quite as detailed or interactive as the real software is, but it'll give you a decent feel for things.