GPS recommendations???

[Tacoma]

Tomorrow I'm hitting the Cabela's in Hamburg PA, where the world's authority on GPS resides LOL.... eh, he's REALLY into GPS and knows too much about them. Anyway, I'm starting to do my research here. Mostly going to use it in the trucks I'd imagine, but handheld sometimes too.

I need:
downloadable maps for different regions
reasonable display size
speed/average speed function highly coveted (for Silver State! yeee ha!)

Other than that I am not at all sure what I want/need. Don't know nuthin bout these thangs. Anyone have preferences/opinions/experiences they want to share?

 

[Rusted]

Hamburg Cabela's makes the Lehi one look small.

Not sure what the latest in Garmin GPS's look like, but from my experience the Garmins are the way to go. Look for the ones with the bigger memoroy to hold more maps.

 

[Greg]

A couple of years ago our company bought each work crew an entry-level Garmin eTrex. I used it pretty extensivley marking/tracking out our territory with a well over a hundred points of intrest.

Just before receiving the Garmin GPS, I bought a 2nd hand Magellan and played with it a ew times, hiking, wheelin, etc.

I found the Magellan a bit diffucult to use, mostly doing the things a GPS needs to do; Marking way points, tracking routes, etc. I thought the inexpensive Garmin was a much better unit. I need another GPS now & it'll be a Garmin of some sort, probably a cheaper one.

 

[Rusted]

I use an old Garmin gps (XL12), it is very simple and does all the basic things really easy. The one thing that I do wish I had was a built in compas. I end up carrying a compas in my gps case so they are always together. The next one I buy will have compas for sure.

I just went to the Garmin site to see the names and features. When you are there have a look at the eTrex Vista ( http://www.garmin.com/products/etrexVista ), and maybe use that one to compare others against.

 

[Kiel]

I recentley bought the garmin legend cx color. It comes with something like 128 of memory and color display. I bought it as a kit with a holder and topo software from cabelas. Very happy, I have all of utah and the edges of the surrounding states in it no problem with lots of memory left. Step up to color makes the clarity great.

 

[waynehartwig]

Color is definately the way to go - they are soooo much clearer than black and white.. Even with a small screen, it's still real clear.

Removable/expandable memory is good, too... Something like a SD card or etc.

Get something that is at least WAAS enabled and that can track at least 10 satellites at once. Doing so will increase it's accuracy a bunch.

In my experience, Magellan is much more accurate than Garmin, but they are more difficult to operate and come with a learning curve. If you picked up a Magellan Sporttrak, you would be very happy. The newer Magellan's have USB instead of serial, making them faster to move maps, etc. back and forth. I have an Explorist 600 that I am probably going to sell off to upgrade to a Roadmate 800 - I think. If you are interested.... I have all of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho on my GPS. They are all under their own file, so I simply select Oregon, and it loads Oregon's map. Topo, cities, and points of interests like campgrounds, gas stations, fast food/restaurants, etc. It's cool too... If you are driving and start getting tired, tell it to find you the nearest campground and boom....Directions right in! It's also Geocache and Trails.com enabled. So if you are out in the middle of knowwhere looking for a trail to run, tell it to find you one and it will search for the closest trail for you. ...Or river, or sand dune, or...etc...

Also some of them take standard double AA batteries (or the like) and some have rechargeable battery packs. Mine is the rechargeable battery pack. While it's handy not having to change the batteries all of the time, but if you forget your car/home charger and the battery goes dead, it's all but a worthless paper weight at that point. It does have a very long life and will last on a all day trail ride (17 hours I think), but...

 

[Caleb]

I recently picked up a Garmin Venture Cx, very nice and has all the basic features you'd need. I have TONS of experience with GPS's, everything from $5K+ units used in planes down to handhelds. The companies I'd personally recommend are Garmin, Lowrance, and Eagle. Lowrance units are nice but tend to be a little more money, Garmin are probably the best bang for the buck and the Eagle's I've used are identical to the Lowrance units. I used to own a Magellan and it got stolen, notice it wasn't replaced with another Magellan

The Lowrance units are very nice for in vehicle navigation, but most are larger than you'd want to be toting around on a hike. They have great large color screens with uploadable/downloadable maps nad are very easy to use. We used Lowrance's on our boats and I could have the new captains trained on the units in about an hour, super simple. The Garmin I just picked up has the ability to do on road navigation (turn by turn) but I have yet to try it out. I think garmin is the most widely used and most of the times when you find downloadable routes they are in garmin format.

I'd personally go with one of the color garmins, they are all USB so hooking up to almost any computer is not a problem (unless it's a Mac ).

 

[Rusted]

.....In my experience, Magellan is much more accurate than Garmin...

When geocaching with my brother (using an older Magellan), and me using my old Garmin, I found that accuracy was the same. I think that they all are capable of connecting to the same satellites, and accuracy between all of the consumer handhelds are the same as far as I understand. But what we did notice was that the Garmin would acquire the position much faster than the Magellan. He would walk around in big 100' circles for up to 5 minutes following his GPS pointer until he found the position, where the Garmin I would walk to the position immediately.

 

[cruiseroutfit]

I have an E-Trex Legend... I've been wanting to upgrade to the newer color version but the only thing you realy gain is color and some memory. I don't think you can go wrong with any of the newer GPS's... Garmin, Magellan, Cobra, Lowrance, Eagle, etc. However the Garmin E-trex unit is one of the most popular and easy to use units out there. I have zero experience with any of the Cobras, Lowrance, Eagles, etc...

As for the memory... I really don't even come close to using the 8mb that my unit has. Why? Because I download all of my tracks, routes and waypoints onto my computer on a regular basis, leaving only important GPS waypoints on the unit. I can always put them back on if I need them.

Why don't I download maps onto my GPS? Becasue there is yet to be Garmin software that will let me download 1:24k maps, in fact both Garmin and Magellan only have 1:100k maps available for download. National Geo., AllTopo and several other programs have 1:24k, but the software is proprietary to the GPS manufacturer, so its not downloadable as of late. At 1:100k I'll just look at a paper map or my laptop (I tuly have pulled it out on the trail ). Which brings up another point... for your race deal... you might want to do realtime tracking, you can have a computer software of your choice show you everything in one big color screen.

There is a free GPS 101 class you can take at an "unamed past supporter of SUWA" that they offer for free once or twice a month. Its a great introductory class for GPS information and model information. They will have a dozen or so unit for you to compare, some float, some color, some big, some small... it really puts things into perspective.

Unamed place is REI

 

[Joe]

I just replaced my eTrex Legend with a Garmin Quest II. The quality and use ease of use is night and day, its a unit worth looking into. Use it on the car, on the motorbike and when hiking...

 

[Tacoma]

Thanks guys.

For now I'm planning on a small deal, as space is at a premium, and also laptops hurt more in accidents... (knock on wood), but also the big screen may be distracting.. or comforting, hahahah. Navigating is TOUGH.

 

[waynehartwig]

Thanks guys.

For now I'm planning on a small deal, as space is at a premium, and also laptops hurt more in accidents... (knock on wood), but also the big screen may be distracting.. or comforting, hahahah. Navigating is TOUGH.

When you decide on one, let me know - I sell them all! Garmin, Navman, Tom Tom, Lowrence, Magellan, Cobra, etc....

 

[Tacoma]

sweet! I'll keep it in the "family" and order from ya when I settle. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[waynehartwig]

sweet! I'll keep it in the "family" and order from ya when I settle. Thanks for the heads up.

On a side note, my dad's fuel injectino project is coming along nicely... He built/designed new stacks, an aluminum distro (to feed the 8 injectors) block to bolt the TPS sensor to and he's using injectors from a 80's Buick V6 3.3l. I'll keep you posted.... Now that i think about it, I should have taken pictures last week while I was there....:-\