I'm looking at the Garmin iQue M3 and need opinions

[+MonkeyDucks]

Hi, I'm a relative newbie at geocaching. I won a free Explorist 100 and it's been great to get started with, but I would like to go paperless and so I've been looking at Palm units AND a better (more advanced)GPS unit with which I can dowload waypoints. Tonight I ran across the Garmin iQue M3 and it seems like it would be a lot easier to have everything in one unit rather than two. What advice can you give me?

thanks!

[+Sac D]

Hi, I'm a relative newbie at geocaching. I won a free Explorist 100 and it's been great to get started with, but I would like to go paperless and so I've been looking at Palm units AND a better (more advanced)GPS unit with which I can dowload waypoints. Tonight I ran across the Garmin iQue M3 and it seems like it would be a lot easier to have everything in one unit rather than two. What advice can you give me?

thanks!

 

I've had mine for several months and it's a great way to go.... does a great job with voice prompted turn by turn auto navigation to the site, then upon arrival I snatch it out of the dash mount and use it as a handheld to hike to the cache. I've tried most of the software out there, and so far nothing beats the combination of Cachemate and the native Garmin program. Works great! I bought my daughter the same setup and she uses it to geocache in Iraq.

[+Red90]

First, an M3 is a PPC units, not a Palm.

 

They are great. I've had a 3600 for a couple of years and it does do everything. The main downsides are:

 

1) They are not rugged like a handheld GPS. They are not water resistant at all. So no getting it wet and no dropping it.

 

2) Battery life is not long. They work fine for car caching as they can charge while driving to the next cache. They are no good for long hikes and the like.

 

Personally I still have a handheld for the field.