Garmin Forerunner 205 and geocaching

[+HaLiJuSaPa]

To compliment my Lowrance IFinder GO2, I got my wife for her birthday and Mother's Day (both the same day this year!) a Garmin Forerunner 205. She wanted a Forerunner to have on her wrist to measure the speed and distance of her rollerblading and biking jaunts, as well as thinking it may be a 2nd GPS conveniently on the wrist (to complement me and my GPS) to have during the cache hunt.

 

I am helping her go through the setup and instructions and was wondering how good this unit is for caching? Keep in mind that that wasn't the main purpose of getting this, so I'm just curious if that's a nice "extra". From what I've seen I would guess yes and maybe even better than what I have because:

 

1) It uses an even more sensitive SIRF III over my handheld's SIRF II

 

2) It seems you can enter a waypoint (in fact even use Easy GPS and download them which my unit mostly doesn't (no Easy GPS and for the most part not downloads)).

 

3) It seems the "map" is only like that on an Etrex (shows you in relation the the waypoint but nothing else), but that is good enough for this and looks like you can add MapSource to it, etc. anyway.

 

But somehow I would think more cachers would use this if it was really good for caching, I mean having this on my wrist is a lot more convenient than having to hold it (or does that somehow kill reception/accuracy? From what I read, "Yes" on the Forerunner 201 and below, but "No" on the 205 and beyond because of the SiRF III). Maybe price has kept more cachers from using this, though it's a lot less than most of their "X" series handhelds.

 

Anyone have any thoughts on this or actually used it in this manner? Thanks!

[+tands]

Hi,

 

I use my Forerunner 305 which is the same exact unit with a heart monitor. It works great for caching. The downside is that it only holds 100 waypoints, but that's not biggie at all. Our other GPS is a 60CS. We like the 60CS because it has the built-in compass so we can sit it on the ground and let it settle, but the Forerunner works just as well on cache hunts, and I always have it with me because I run every day. This means if we're somewhere without the 60CS and a new cache pops up we can still try for the FTF!

 

- T of TandS

[+tands]

Also, the better chipset really is an advantage under dense foliage. And the battery life is spectacular. I have a car USB charger so I can keep the battery topped off no matter what.

 

- T of TandS

[+HaLiJuSaPa]

We tried it today on a cache find and it worked wonderfully! Thanks!