New Geocaching GPS?

[GratefulMonkey]

Hey All,

 

I am truly sorry if this has been discussed previously, but I am in need of your help.

 

I just got in to GeoCaching, and let me say, what a thrill. I have only a measly Garmin eTrex from like 6 years ago, and was deciding to get an upgrade. I think I want to stick with the Garmins, and the same handheld forms as the eTrex, so probably one like the Legend, Vista, etc.

 

However, I noticed on the Garmin website while looking at them that some have the "geocaching ready" icon next to the WAAS enabled and others, and was wondering how much of a necessity that is. Is it just a selling gimmick or is it really worth getting one that is "geocaching ready" versus another one. I am comfortable spending up to 200 dollars, so any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

GM

[alinosa]

i'm not sure what geocaching ready means, but i know that on my magellan explorist 500 i can put the location of the geo cache plus some notes and stuff... maybe that's what they mean. and BTW, at beachcamera.com they've got the 500 for sale for only 175, free shipping, and the 10 dollar offer for mapsend topo 3d... another 6 or 7 dollars for the lithium-ion battery from ebay and you're set, for less than 200 bucks. GL with your shopping.

[-Oz-]

get one of the garmin cx units. Probably a venture cx is the best bet for you. It allows for expandable memory and with any usb cord you can connect to it (thus making it a legend). Memory is cheap these days too. After that go with a vista cx (electronic compass and barometer) then a 60c(s)x. I love my 60csx but its a bit out of your price range.

[+Mach2003]

First Geocaching ready means that you can use the cache box symbol, and mark them as found for easy tracking, and later logging.

 

I have the Legend CX, Topo and Metro maps for all the areass I travel loaded, 500 Caches onboard, and 5200 POI waypoints including caches, hints, and child waypoints.

 

Love it

[+maby]

pretty much all the current Garmin handheld range are good enough for geocaching - the same is probably true of the Magellans as well - so the question really comes down to what else you want to do with it apart from geocaching.

 

In theory mapping should be useful for geocaching, but most caches are well off-road so maps like City Select or City Navigator are not much help and the Topo maps are not particularly detailed either. The trouble with mapping units is that the software is quite expensive and any decent amount of maps fills up a lot of memory. Your $200 budget is certainly not going to cover anything with maps included.

 

If you think that you are going to want mapping in the future, try to find one of the Cx models within your budget - they support cheap memory expansion. None of the non-Cx models come with enough memory to hold a useful amount of maps.

 

Martin