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Trying To Decide On A Gps?

jonesturtle

By jonesturtle
in How do I...?

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jonesturtle

+jonesturtle

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I also have a GARMIN GPS 72 that I started using first. It is part of my flight gear in case I have to land my aircraft in an unsecure area (again, I'm in Iraq) and have to evade on the ground. That is what I used to try out geocaching in Iraq. It's pretty easy to use, but I think the battery life could be better. I always tape an extra set to the back of the unit in case I turn it on and it is dead or near dead.

 

Jonesturtle

FHEnight.com

Edited by jonesturtle
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briansnat

+briansnat

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I really like my Garmin 60CS, it has excellent antenna and incredible battery life. I'm getting 20+ hours on rechargables and close to 30 hours on Duracells. The color screen is very nice and I also like the geocaching feature. Very handy on multiple cache hunts. I also like the way the various displays and menus are highly user customizable.

 

I still have my eTrex Vista. It gets great reception and I love its compact size and the fact that its easy to use in one hand. It fits in my pocket and is great for those times when I don't want to cart around a larger GPS like when I'm backpacking or doing serious hiking. The Vista does eat batteries though. I'm lucky to get 6-8 hours out of of a fresh pair.

 

My wife's Gecko 201 is also pretty decent. Very basic, but gets excellent reception (better than my Vista), is very compact and weighs in under 3 oz.

Edited by briansnat
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BlueDeuce

+BlueDeuce

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I wish I could try some Magellan GPSs just so I have a valid opinion about them.

 

I have three Garmins: The 76cs, Vista and Legend.

 

I use the 76 to get me around town, but I'm more than satisfied using the Legend on the trail.

 

The 60cs is a good choice for a 'power user', if you want every thing from auto-routing, topo maps and an external antenna.

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jonesturtle

+jonesturtle

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Wow! After seeing these posts and some others in other topics going on, it seems like Garmin is a huge favorite. I think the Garmin 72 is a few years old so I'm guessing the newer ones are better. I do notice a difference in reception between the Garmin 72 and the Magellen SporTrak. The Magellen's signal is much more predictable. I haven't had the chance to try any others yet though.

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Renegade Knight

+Renegade Knight

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Magellans use some kind of averaging though I'm not sure the exact method they use. It tends to cause certain issues when using them, and also keep them a bit more stable as you wander around in things like forests where your signal can cause your GPS to wander.

 

Garmins don't do this and so the are not as stable under a canopy, but they don't cause you to wander past the cache either.

 

It's probably sixes but I'd like to know what exactly the Magellans are doing so it can be factored in to the caching expericne easier.

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jonesturtle

+jonesturtle

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I have noticed the wandering you are talking about, but more pronounced under canopy. The furthest off I have been after walking a mile was 50 ft. I just got used to it so when I arrive at the cordinates and I don't see something that just jumps out at me as a hiding spot, I walk 50-100 ft further and come back from the other direction and usually am right on then. I think I will have to test someone's eTrex when I have the opportunity.

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jonesturtle

+jonesturtle

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I see Garmins mentioned a lot. I'm new to this sport and haven't bought a GPS yet. I saw Amazon.com advertising a Garmin Geko 101 for $49.99. Is this a good functional GPS or would I be wasting my money?

With all the research I did when I bought my GPS, the overall info that I found was that basically all GPSr's work. They pick up a signal and get you really close to where you want to go, just like they are supposed to. The three things I saw that seperated a good GPS from a great one where ease of holding satallite signal, battery life, and ease of use (user interface). I don't know about the Geko, but I'm sure it will allow you to Geocache just great. If you don't see lots of great things about it on this site, you may want to spend a little more to get you a GPSr you will be happy with for a long time instead of not being satasfied and then buying another one anyways.

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JohnnyVegas

+JohnnyVegas

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I have used Magellan and Garmin, though I have not used a garmin for quite some time. I now own 3 Magellans, Meridian Gold, Sport Track Map and Sport Track Color. My number one choice is the Meridian Gold for a few reasons,

Expandable memory

 

Magellan Topo software includes street names (Garmin does not) this means if you want to save money on software you can pass on buying the street map software, the only diff. with be the points of interest. The Magellan topo software will also display terrain projections

 

You can store caches/waypoints in groups on the SD memory card-this is nice

because if you want to have lots of caches stored you do not have to scroll through everyone in your GPS memory

 

I like the larger size and It will fit into my pocket.

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Sputnik 57

+Sputnik 57

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I see Garmins mentioned a lot. I'm new to this sport and haven't bought a GPS yet. I saw Amazon.com advertising a Garmin Geko 101 for $49.99. Is this a good functional GPS or would I be wasting my money?

The Geko 101 is a fine basic unit to see if you like the sport. Hard to beat the price. The main disadvantage, from what I've heard, is that you can't hook it to a computer. If you do much caching, you will want to download multiple cache coordinates into the GPSr, and doing this by hand can be tedious and prone to error.

 

I started with a Garmin 12, and entered coordinates by hand. My girlfriend looked over my shoulder to make sure I got them right. Sometimes, this meant that we didn't end up going caching right away :unsure: . Not a bad system, really. :unsure:

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briansnat

+briansnat

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I see Garmins mentioned a lot.  I'm new to this sport and haven't bought a GPS yet.  I saw Amazon.com advertising a Garmin Geko 101 for $49.99.  Is this a good functional GPS or would I be wasting my money?

Its a good, functional GPS. Very compact, accurate and easy to use. Sputnik is right in that it doesn't have a data port and that can be a major issue if you get even semi- serious about geocaching. There is no way to download waypoints directly to the GPS. Not a problem for the occasional geocacher, but if you're doing a bunch of caches in a day it can be a downer to have to manually enter all the waypoints.

 

Still, at $49 its a good way to try the sport without making a major investment. If you get serious about it, you can always upgrade and give the Gecko to your partner or kid or use it as a backup.

Edited by briansnat
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Mudfrog

+Mudfrog

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Im partial to the Garmin line as well, but i know that both companies make good units. Some of the Magellans seem at first to have better reception than Garmins, but i too have watched those units take their operators right past caches several times. The Garmin "goto" arrow just seems to react faster.

 

I like the big screen on the Garmin 76 series so thats what i ended up with. The regular GPS 76 is my favorite to use in the woods, but those mapping capabilities of the GPSMAP 76s are so nice to have too... Sure was excited when the 76CS came out but they made the screen smaller on it so that turned me off. Guess i dont need another GPSr right now anyways,,,, [:grin:]

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sbell111

+sbell111

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I still use the same Garmin 3+ that I bought used on ebay in 2001. It is an awesome unit and really takes a beating.

 

I would stay away from the geko 101 because you can't download coords to it. This may not seem like a big deal, but it can get tedious to enter these by hand. You will be blown away the first time you dump a PQ into a GPSr. 500 coords in less than a minute is a pretty cool feature. I've been considering buying a little 201 for a field unit, however. This way, I could leave the 3+ mounted in my Jeep when I 'take a hike'.

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IVxIV

+IVxIV

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My first 2 GPSr's were Magellan (4000XL then a 315) and liked them a lot, so at that time I thought I would wind up becoming a "Magellan guy" into the future too.

 

But when it came time to purchase an upgrade from the 315 (I wanted a GPS that had maps) I left the house with a totally unbiased attitude about brands, and just wanted a dependable reliable unit that did what I wanted without making me (too) poor. If my next unit turned out to be a Garmin then I had no problem with that either.

 

But, surprise surprise after research I wound up picking up a Lowrance iFinder Pro (the "third" brand lol) and to this day could not be happier with the purchase. It has loads of great features (ie. 10000 plot points!) and the map cartridges were very detailed. (& that also means the unit accepts memory cards, meaning "infinite" memory capacity). It even had neat features like "autozoom" to the target coordinate as well as a nice backlight, and pretty good on batteries too.

 

So don't forget about Lowrance in your thoughts. They've recently came out with a new version of iFinder that incorporates an MP3 player (yawn), but which also includes a voice recording feature so you can log your finds into it vocally & playback once you get home :o

Edited by IVxIV
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briansnat

+briansnat

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I just went out and got a Magellan eXplorist 200. It seems like a great little unit but inless I am missing something I can't figure anyway of entering waypoints. Does anyone have one and if you do can you tell me what I am doing wrong.

Thanks

Well you can't download them directly from you PC because there is no data port...a major flaw in the eXplroist series right now. I read that future, more expensive models will have this capability.

 

So you have to enter them manually. I don't have an eXplorist, but the common method is to mark a waypoint, then edit the coordinates. Your user manual will explain how to do this for your unit.

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NavySparksandtheMrs

+NavySparksandtheMrs

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Hi Everyone,

 

I started out with the yellow Garmin etrex and a couple of months ago I purchased the new Garmin etrex Vista C with the color display.

 

The Vista C is a great GPS and does everything I would want for geocaching. It also seems to work well under tree cover and a bit better than the yellow etrex.

 

Garmin is the only brand I have any experience with but I am very happy thus far.

 

By the way, I got mine from http://www.offroute.com/index.asp?ref=E041007 and their prices are very good....MUCH better than REI.

 

Cheers! <_<

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hukilaulau

+hukilaulau

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I just went out and got a Magellan eXplorist 200. It seems like a great little unit but inless I am missing something I can't figure anyway of entering waypoints. Does anyone have one and if you do can you tell me what I am doing wrong.

Thanks

I also just got an Explorist 200. As others have said, you can't download waypoints, but putting one in mannually is not that hard. Once it's up and running, just hit "mark", then scroll up to the coordinates using the joystick (the middle button with the arrow on it) then hit enter. The cursor will flash over each number. Go up or down with the joystick til you get the right number then push enter and it will move on to the next number. When you're done hit enter and "yes" for save and you're off! I did half a dozen in about 5 minutes. Not as good as instant download but it gets the job done! BTW I am very pleased with my Explorist! No doubt I will want to upgrade in the future but for now it does everything I want and then some! (Downloading the users manual to your desktop and digesting it a bit at a time might be helpful, it sure was for me!)

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Jeeping Family

+Jeeping Family

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I guess we are odd man out here. I have used a number of different GPS units in the past. All have been great for me. Currently we are using Garmin Rino's, but some days we are all together when caching, other days we go seperate ways with the kids. So, we needed to have the ability to talk as well as needing the wife a GPS, the Rino series covered that nicely. Bought a 110 and a 120, the 110 sucks. Now that my oldest is able to use a GPS I passed on the 110 and got another 120 for me. Now that the 2nd child is able to use the GPS I am looking at getting the 130 and giving the 120 down to the 2nd child. After that I am hoping that they make another upgrade before the final child gets old enough for a GPS.

 

Plus, we take the radio's 4 wheeling with us and it helps us keep in contact even when we are not able to see each other.

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