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Gps60 (yellow) Vs Explorist 210


acey

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I want to get back into caching and need to get a GPS again (sold the Merigreen a while back). I'd like to spend around $150 or so. The 2 options that look best are the plain GPS60 (non-mapping yellow) and the Explorist 210.

 

From my reading it appears the Explorist firmware is a bit buggy and certainly not as polished as Garmin's. The 210's mapping feature would be nice but it's not a deal-breaker (I only want it for topos if at all since I have a PocketPC for routing to the parking lot). The 32MB and mapping makes me feel like the 210 is a better deal but the Garmin has longer battery life and a bigger screen as well as a better and more configurable interface.

 

Anyone have experience with both of these? Any thoughts or recommendations? I'm having a tough time deciding. Thanks in advance!

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I have GPS 60 and I am very satisfied with it.

For area where I live maps from Garmin and Magellan are not available. Therefore I have to make my own maps. And this is possible (as far as I know) only with Garmin units. GPS 60 supports maps with POIs only. 1 MB is more than enough - map with 1000 points is only 30 KB.

Now, I think, I made small mistake - I had to buy GPSMAP 60. It supports polylines and polygons too.

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Bigger screens are nice, but generally the point (to me) would be to see more map detail. Since both units are pretty basic, I wouldn't worry too much about the bug risk or relative lack of configurability in the Explorist. Mapping is quite nice; it's the screen I use the most.

 

Still, if you've got a little time it might be worthwhile waiting until the first wave of 210's are out enought to get a sense of how they are faring (I think the early adapters have been pretty happy).

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Regarding the description, buggy, to describe the eXplorist. I would not use that word. There are things, we would like, things they should have done better, but everything works. I have a eX500. The receiver might be the best currently available. The file system/SC card memory is better than all the rest. We are hoping for improvements, but it will work now for caching.

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I've been using my 60 for several weeks now (upgraded from a yellow eTrex). I love it. The screen is big and crisp. You can customize the pages to get the data you want to see. The avergaing feature for marking a waypoint is very helpful. Accuracy wise, it is not uncommon for me to get below 15' in typical terrain. While in Georgia on a pier, I got 7' accuracy.

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I own gamins and I own an explorist. If your on a budget the explorist 210 is hard to beat. It will do maping with auto routeing. Those are things that the yellow 60 can;t even dream of doing. Also, with the built in memory, you can hold tens of THOUSANDS of waypoints, with hints. far more than any garmin will, even their best units.

 

yes, the garmin will show more info at the same time, and is more customizable, but the memory features of the explorists are very very very usefull.

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How do you get tens of thousands of waypoints into built in memory? That is usually a feature of removable memory cards.

 

You can hold multiple files on the internal memory. A 200 cache file is about 32K in the geocache format. One hundred of these files would be 20,000 waypoints and be about 3.2MB of memory

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Garmin could easily impliment multiple waypoint files in units with internal memory, and a lot of what I want SD memory for goes away.

I feel the same way. I keep hearing rumors of a new garmin with SD coming next year, but no real info. I think a Vista C with SD, allowing multiple waypoint files would rock. Especially if it allowed direct opeing of GPX files, instead of a prorietary format.

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