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Paperless GPS Units


rocket1lf

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Could someone please help me. I now have a Magellan Explorest XL. I love the size of the screen. Does anyone know of the best bang for the buck paperless GPS I could replace this with. I don't do as much caching as I would like to so new or slightly used would be OK. Maybe possible trade with cash?

Thx

Edited by rocket1lf
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Could someone please help me. I now have a Magellan Explorest XL. I love the size of the screen. Does anyone know of the best bang for the buck paperless GPS I could replace this with. I don't do as much caching as I would like to so new or slightly used would be OK. Maybe possible trade with cash?

Thx

 

I love my Delorme PN-20, they can be found around $170 on sale or $120-150 used. The main complaint is that the processors are slow, so if you try and use if for street (driving) navigation you won't be happy. It does a great job in the field and with the "Cache Register" software it does a great job of handling pocket queries. Using the Field Notes and other geocaching features has been a great introduction into paperless geocaching.

 

The PN-30 has the faster chipset and I've seen them run from $180 to $240 from various suppliers. After I put a few more miles/caches on my 20 I plan to upgrade to a 30.

 

There are probably better units out there, as I'm sure others will be quick to point out, but I threw these into the mix because you mentioned bang for the buck. I've looked around and for the price range they fall into they are hard to beat.

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I've recently upgraded from a Garmin eTrex Venture HC to a Garmin Oregon 450, and I gotta tell ya - this thing rocks!

 

I'm loving the touch screen, and (with a premium membership to geocaching.com) I enjoy being able to download pocket queries of 500 caches at a time into the unit, and then punching up the nearest cache wherever I am at and then being able to read the full description, hints, and even the past few logs.

 

I think the 450 is a better deal than the 450T because there are lots of free maps out there to download (such as the Ibycus US maps) as opposed to paying $100 more for Garmin's maps. Also I didn't think the 550 was worth the extra $100 because, really, do I need a crappy camera on my GPSr? My phone already has a crappy camera, and if I really want to take some decent photos, I'll bring along my Canon.

 

:o

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I have a Garmin NUVI 500 i got off ebay for 200 bucks. it seems perfect on the street and has an off-road or walking mode. both modes support paperless geocaching. loggs, descripton, hints.. it's great. i'm sure many of the other unnits do the paperless thing great as well.. i was ready to replace my magellan crossover and used that one mostly for driving, but was ready for an upgrade. i'm super happy with the nuvi 500. when i plug in the usb cable it shows up just like a flash drive, i drag over my gpx file and i'm off.

 

others may be better.. but i'm happy with what i have. the only change i think i'd make is a place for a lanyard. it'd be nice to put it around my neck like my etrex legend. but the nuvi fits in my back pocket.

 

get educated before you make your purchase and i'm sure you'll be happy

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I have the colorado 300. I dont use all the bells and whistles but I love it paperless is the way to go. Shows description, hint adn logs. Can't tell you how many times by reading the logs I got a smiley instead of a frown. You can add field notes, log as found,not found,and go to next closest cache. hook it up to your computer load caches , delete caches and access field notes. I think the Colorado 300 is very cache friendly. cw

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I have a Garmin NUVI 500 i got off ebay for 200 bucks. it seems perfect on the street and has an off-road or walking mode. both modes support paperless geocaching. loggs, descripton, hints.. it's great. i'm sure many of the other unnits do the paperless thing great as well.. i was ready to replace my magellan crossover and used that one mostly for driving, but was ready for an upgrade. i'm super happy with the nuvi 500. when i plug in the usb cable it shows up just like a flash drive, i drag over my gpx file and i'm off.

 

others may be better.. but i'm happy with what i have. the only change i think i'd make is a place for a lanyard. it'd be nice to put it around my neck like my etrex legend. but the nuvi fits in my back pocket.

 

get educated before you make your purchase and i'm sure you'll be happy

 

I've been considering replacing my Magellan 2500T with this unit. How is it for accuracy Geocaching?

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Might also consider a Lowrance Endura Out&Back. Excellent Geocaching features and a very accurate unit. It is missing a few features found on other units and no ability for autorouting but each new firmware release makes this unit better and better for Geocaching.

 

+1 for the Endura Out and Back! This gps is a terriffic low cost gps that was intended for getting gps's into peoples hands for very little cash. The geocaching features are very, very good, incomparable on any other brand of gps. The filtering features alone make this unit standout head and shoulders above the rest. I choose my Endura gps over any of my other gps's for geaocaching because of the ease of getting the kind of geocaches I want, with all the information available for those caches, and then when found, logging it from the onboard field notes utility straight to geoaching.com. Couldn't be much easier. Give it a look-see!

 

Best of luck with your search.

 

N

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Might also consider a Lowrance Endura Out&Back. Excellent Geocaching features and a very accurate unit. It is missing a few features found on other units and no ability for autorouting but each new firmware release makes this unit better and better for Geocaching.

Does it have an electronic compass?

Thanks

 

No it does not.

 

N

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I have a Garmin NUVI 500 i got off ebay for 200 bucks. it seems perfect on the street and has an off-road or walking mode. both modes support paperless geocaching. loggs, descripton, hints.. it's great. i'm sure many of the other unnits do the paperless thing great as well.. i was ready to replace my magellan crossover and used that one mostly for driving, but was ready for an upgrade. i'm super happy with the nuvi 500. when i plug in the usb cable it shows up just like a flash drive, i drag over my gpx file and i'm off.

 

others may be better.. but i'm happy with what i have. the only change i think i'd make is a place for a lanyard. it'd be nice to put it around my neck like my etrex legend. but the nuvi fits in my back pocket.

 

get educated before you make your purchase and i'm sure you'll be happy

 

I've been considering replacing my Magellan 2500T with this unit. How is it for accuracy Geocaching?

 

My Nuvi 500 will put me right on target every time!

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Might also consider a Lowrance Endura Out&Back. Excellent Geocaching features and a very accurate unit. It is missing a few features found on other units and no ability for autorouting but each new firmware release makes this unit better and better for Geocaching.

Does it have an electronic compass?

Thanks

 

No it does not.

 

N

 

The Out&Back does not, but the Safari does. And the Sierra model has a 3-axis one! Also the Sierra & Safari are capable of giving VOICE turn-by-turn auto routing, they're they ONLY handheld GPSr's on the market that can do that, I mean ones that are "truly rugged" for outdoor use.

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Might also consider a Lowrance Endura Out&Back. Excellent Geocaching features and a very accurate unit. It is missing a few features found on other units and no ability for autorouting but each new firmware release makes this unit better and better for Geocaching.

Does it have an electronic compass?

Thanks

 

No it does not.

 

N

 

The Out&Back does not, but the Safari does. And the Sierra model has a 3-axis one! Also the Sierra & Safari are capable of giving VOICE turn-by-turn auto routing, they're they ONLY handheld GPSr's on the market that can do that, I mean ones that are "truly rugged" for outdoor use.

 

Both the Safari and Sierra have 3 axis magnetic compasses. The prices are dropping on both units $299 for Safari and $399 for Sierra.

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How much is the auto routng and Topo maps?

 

The Turn by Turn software for the US & Canada is $99.95 and the detailed Topo software, with 20ft contour intervals is $99.95 per region, there are 7 regions that cover the US.

 

If you are looking for basic topo detail you can look at either the Safari which has a 500' contour interval for it basemap and the Sierra has a 100' contour interval basemap with 1.7 million POI's.

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Might also consider a Lowrance Endura Out&Back. Excellent Geocaching features and a very accurate unit. It is missing a few features found on other units and no ability for autorouting but each new firmware release makes this unit better and better for Geocaching.

Does it have an electronic compass?

Thanks

 

No it does not.

 

N

 

The Out&Back does not, but the Safari does. And the Sierra model has a 3-axis one! Also the Sierra & Safari are capable of giving VOICE turn-by-turn auto routing, they're they ONLY handheld GPSr's on the market that can do that, I mean ones that are "truly rugged" for outdoor use.

 

Both the Safari and Sierra have 3 axis magnetic compasses. The prices are dropping on both units $299 for Safari and $399 for Sierra.

 

Since when did the Safari have a 3 axis compass?? The Lowrance website just says "compass" for the Safari and "3-axis compass" for the Sierra... :(

 

Well I guess you should know lol. So what are the big differences between Safari & Sierra then? Just the amount of internal memory?

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Might also consider a Lowrance Endura Out&Back. Excellent Geocaching features and a very accurate unit. It is missing a few features found on other units and no ability for autorouting but each new firmware release makes this unit better and better for Geocaching.

Does it have an electronic compass?

Thanks

 

No it does not.

 

N

 

The Out&Back does not, but the Safari does. And the Sierra model has a 3-axis one! Also the Sierra & Safari are capable of giving VOICE turn-by-turn auto routing, they're they ONLY handheld GPSr's on the market that can do that, I mean ones that are "truly rugged" for outdoor use.

 

Both the Safari and Sierra have 3 axis magnetic compasses. The prices are dropping on both units $299 for Safari and $399 for Sierra.

 

Since when did the Safari have a 3 axis compass?? The Lowrance website just says "compass" for the Safari and "3-axis compass" for the Sierra... :(

 

Well I guess you should know lol. So what are the big differences between Safari & Sierra then? Just the amount of internal memory?

The only difference between the Safari and Sierra is the basemap. The Safari has a 500' contour interval topographic basemap and the Sierra has a 100' contour interval topo basemap, as well as 1.5 million more POI's. Yes, the Sierra does have more internal memory but 3.6 GB is used by the more detailed basemap and POI's. Both units have about 200MB of user avail memory.

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500 can hold 500 per the Garmin site.

Actually the site says 500 waypoints/favorites/locations.

 

Someone mentioned once that it supports the same number of GPX/geocaches as the Oregon 300/400 (which is 200 GPX or 2000 geocaches, whichever comes first). I couldn't find that information in the manual. Hopefully an owner can confirm.

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I finally got this reply from Garmin this morning. I don't own a Nuvi but still thinking about it.

 

"Thank you for contacting Garmin International. I see you have a

question about the geocache capacity of the Nuvi 500. The Nuvi can

store around 2000 geocaches at a time.

 

Let us know if you have any further questions and thank you for choosing

Garmin.

 

With Best Regards,

 

Christopher Tr

Product Support Specialist

Automotive Team

Garmin International"

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