portable gps units, which one is best?

[tkjeeper]

Whats your opinion guys, what have you used, what are the good reports and bad, what do you recommend?

 

[1998xj1985]

i have the lowrance ifinder explorer. great buy for the money. expandable memory, available super detailed maps with topo and points of interest for city navigation. seems to work great too. i will be taking out to the desert new years, so we'll see how it holds up

 

[casm]

Whats your opinion guys, what have you used, what are the good reports and bad, what do you recommend?

Garmin eTrex Legend. Check the results from that search; there's a lot that's been written about that unit over time.

 

[hippymill]

I have a garmin vista cx. its great. got a 512 memory card on newegg, and now i have the topos for the entire western US in the unit. next project will be city maps for the western US on another card. I bought delorme's topo software as well, to make accurate waypoint lists and routes. it has a cool feature allowing a 3d flyby of the route, or a set of previosly traveled waypoints downloaded from the gps

 

[Saratoga]

I have the Garmin Explorist 500 colour, Love it! have all the canadian Topos for it. Does OK in tree cover too.

 

[jeepnuts311]

X2 on the e-trex legend. i have one and i love it. got a car charger on ebay for it and it hasnt left the jeep.

-Tim

 

[Red97XJ]

I have been researching this exact topic for a long time.... finally about a few weeks ago I decided on the Garmin 60CSx. It is awesome. Depends on the coin you wanna spend and what you wanna do. If your just looking for a way to find your way out when lost, a lower end Garmin would be the way to go. I got the 60csx as it does autorouting AND it is amazing off road. I have been geocaching some, it is a blast. It has an AMAZING mapping ability. I also bought City Vavigator NT Version 8 with it, and a RAM car mount and 12v plug. It will find anything you want from your location, you can be flying down the road and need gas, food, hotel, airport, hospital, etc etc, the list goes on. then it will get ya the fastest route by road or offroad. I have been testing it around my home area, it picks the exact "back road" way I would about 85% of the time, and the other 15% of the time it is just a slightly different route than I would drive, but not out of the way at all. I expected more of a lat/lon with compass, the 60csx goes way beyond. BUT, they are not cheap. There is a $50 rebate till end of the year. They retail high, but you can get em on E-bay pretty good. Just be careful on the auction if it list a rebate, some of the auctions can't do rebate.


Any questions let me know. Also, check out www.geocaching.com it is a ton of fun to go exploring looking for Cache's. I have logged 14 so far in a few weeks. I think its the perfect thing to do with a Jeep!!

Later,

 

[Starboard M]

I have been researching this exact topic for a long time.... finally about a few weeks ago I decided on the Garmin 60CSx. It is awesome. Depends on the coin you wanna spend and what you wanna do. If your just looking for a way to find your way out when lost, a lower end Garmin would be the way to go. I got the 60csx as it does autorouting AND it is amazing off road. I have been geocaching some, it is a blast. It has an AMAZING mapping ability. I also bought City Vavigator NT Version 8 with it, and a RAM car mount and 12v plug. It will find anything you want from your location, you can be flying down the road and need gas, food, hotel, airport, hospital, etc etc, the list goes on. then it will get ya the fastest route by road or offroad. I have been testing it around my home area, it picks the exact "back road" way I would about 85% of the time, and the other 15% of the time it is just a slightly different route than I would drive, but not out of the way at all. I expected more of a lat/lon with compass, the 60csx goes way beyond. BUT, they are not cheap. There is a $50 rebate till end of the year. They retail high, but you can get em on E-bay pretty good. Just be careful on the auction if it list a rebate, some of the auctions can't do rebate.

How is that while driving? That display seems rather small? Im thinking about getting a GPS and that sounds almost exactly what I want, but Im kind of turned off by the small size.

Is that what she said? :twak:

 

[Red97XJ]

I also was concerned about that, but it is not a problem at all. I have a RAM mount (awesome) and it is suctioned to the windshield to the far left near the A pillar.... it is within reach and very easy to read. With my Garmin 60CSx, there are a ton of ways to set up each screen, so you can customize it to your likes. but the font size is plenty large.

Plus, now I know how fast I am going!

FYI, there is a big difference between the 60CS and 60CSx, so be careful, the 60CS is the "old" model, its not bad, just doesn't get the satalites as well and some other differences... from the comparisions I read, the 60CS is not worth the money when the csX is just a little more.

Anybody else go geocaching?

 

[tkjeeper]

I do a lot now, bought my explorist basically for finding hard to find addresses at work and to not get lost while exploring four wheeler trails at buddys cottage with the jeep, but it turned into so much more that that! Geocaching is such a great way to get out on the weekend with the family for some exercise and find trails we never knew existed! It took a lot of experimenting but I have the thing pretty much figured out now. Instructions that came with it are poor but I found a website that was perfect for gps's in general. http://www.gpsinformation.net/waas/Mag3-D/eXplorist.html
What a blast! How many jeepers out there are into geocaching?

 

[GroversXJ]

I go geocacheing a little here and there with the family. I have young kids so a lot of them we only drive as close to them as we can, and just go to the next one if it involves a hike to get to it because the kids won't do it.

I have a couple GPS units, a cobra hand held unit that has no base maps but I use it for geocaching because its so easy to enter coordinates on even though thats all you see. I also have a magellan road mate 700 or something like that and its OK for paved roads but it has very few dirt roads in the maps. My favorite by far is my hand held PDA & gps named MIO by Digi Walker. It has a SD card slot in the back so you can add maps or MP3's to. It has almost every little dirt trail on it out here and being out in the middle of the Cali Desert there is quite a few around. It is a little anoying trying to enter coordinates into it so thats why I still use the other basic Cobra unit.

 

[PolishX]

I have the Garmin Explorist 500 colour, Love it! have all the canadian Topos for it. Does OK in tree cover too.

You dont have a Garmin Explorist ... ITS A MAGELLAN ..


My choice Garmin 276 C or the Garmin Quest . loads topos and has all the street atlas crap and will talk to you if you want