Stryker

Hi Folks,

So, I am rather new to the world of GPS but I have recently had my interest peaked by Geocaching. I have been looking around at different units and I think I have settled on one (the GO 720). However... I just heard from a sales guy that the 720 is not suited for Geocaching and can only be used for roads, highways, etc... He said that the 720 will not work anywhere other than on the roads and if I take into the "great outdoors" it will not have any information. This doesn't really make sense to me because it's using a satellite and I would think I could still find coordinates in the forest.

I would like to have a unit that is useful for road trips and travel, but also enjoy it in the outdoors (I'm in the middle of nowhere quite a lot). Is this not possible?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!!
Stryker

Max

Hi Stryker,
I'm not a cacher myself so I'll leave the recommendations to the pro's here, but I do know the TomTom units in general are a consumer-grade "a to b" type of unit. I am not sure if they'll follow live coordinates, but odds are even if they do - they are not going to be as politically correct as one of the purpose built adventuring units is.

Im a Garmin fan, had a 60csx for awhile that was pretty darn nice and had some tools for geocaching as well as the ability to load street-level navigation/routable maps, etc. It was nice...even though I never used 1/235th of it's caching capabilities.

As far as being a good all-arounder I have heard good things about the Magellan Meridian Platinum (from another member of this forum actually). I'll sit back and let someone who knows what they're talking about take over from here though. I just wanted to let you know it IS possible to accomplish what you're after, but the GO 720 will probably not suit you very well in the wilderness.

__________________
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dav

Another couple considerations.

Automotive units expect to be plugged in. Their battery life is quite short (2-3 hours max), so handheld use is limited.

Not that you can't do it, I use my nüvi 750 for geocaching. It is just not the optimal solution.

Another is automotive units have NO weatherproofing. The better outdoor units are actually waterproof. You don't even want to sweat near a nüvi.

Last, if you go with selected outdoor units optimized for geocaching, you can do "paperless" caching because the GPS not only displays the maps, it displays the info about the cache. Size, type, all the stuff you see on geocaching.com.

etop

My favorite GPS for geocaching was my Garmin III+. It always got me to within 10 ft. of the cach. I now use a TomTom 930 and a Nuvi 350, both not suitable for geocaching.