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How Bad Is Zire 31 For Geocaching?


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Read other posts on this and they had good info, but am trying to get a bit more..

 

I am looking at going paperless and do not want to spend an arm and a leg on it.

 

I am looking at the zire 31 because it would be nice to play mp3s (music while I cache?). Can people provide me feedback on how bad is the unit in the outdoor light? Is it a complete waste? How frustrating will it be?

 

If I throw away the mp3 ability and go for a memory expandable monochrome what unit would you say?

 

Finally, I read that the zire 31 can not talk directly to the GPS -- what functionality am I loosing by that lack of direct communication?

 

Thanks,

 

TheHFamily

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I use one for geocaching and it works fine. Not too hard to read in direct light if you turn the brightness up from the default. Stores more caches than you will ever need. Works fine with Cachemate. No serial port so you can't easily communicate direct to a GPS but if you're only using it for paperless geocaching there is no need to. And it's cheap enough that if it does get broken on the trail it's no great loss. That said I have it in a soft case and have dropped it several times and it hasn't broken yet.

 

Be aware though that if you keep it on playing music you'll run the battery down so need to get back to a power source to charge it up - it will charge in the car (with an inverter) or via the USB port.

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Both my wife and I use the Zire 31 while caching. We mainly use the memo feature to read the cache pages and any logs that may help. We've also used the photo log to download spoiler photos if a cache is proving to be very difficult.

 

In bright sunlight you will need to play with the contrast setting to be able to read the screen. Most of the time I just find a shady spot and everything is fine.

 

Semper Fi

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