Budget GPS
Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:11 pm
Hi guys,
I'm half looking to get (may do, may not, may do when student loan comes through - I'm rather indecisive at the moment!) a budget walking GPS and have been looking at some options. The two that seem best in terms of what I'm looking at are the Garmin etrex h and the Garmin geko 201. I was trying to work out what one is the newer / better of the two, some places seem to say the Geko is newer and some say the Etrex h is the newer one. On the face of it the Etrex h seems like the better model, but is there something I'm missing? I'm not after map support or anything like that - just something basic to last well, be waterproof, and give an accurate grid reference. The ability to save points and download them to a PC later would be useful as well.
Also, and more generally, do people find GPS's useful tools or do you find they take the fun out of letterboxing somewhat? I've generally seen it as the latter but especially last time I went out (I'm in south east england so it's a bit of a trek, get down there a couple of times a year though!) we stumbled across more than one box that had a 10 figure grid reference but bearings that were a few degrees out. These sorts of boxes in particular were proving very frustrating to find, and if I do get a GPS these are the sorts that I'm hoping it'd make easier and provide less frustration over!
I'm half looking to get (may do, may not, may do when student loan comes through - I'm rather indecisive at the moment!) a budget walking GPS and have been looking at some options. The two that seem best in terms of what I'm looking at are the Garmin etrex h and the Garmin geko 201. I was trying to work out what one is the newer / better of the two, some places seem to say the Geko is newer and some say the Etrex h is the newer one. On the face of it the Etrex h seems like the better model, but is there something I'm missing? I'm not after map support or anything like that - just something basic to last well, be waterproof, and give an accurate grid reference. The ability to save points and download them to a PC later would be useful as well.
Also, and more generally, do people find GPS's useful tools or do you find they take the fun out of letterboxing somewhat? I've generally seen it as the latter but especially last time I went out (I'm in south east england so it's a bit of a trek, get down there a couple of times a year though!) we stumbled across more than one box that had a 10 figure grid reference but bearings that were a few degrees out. These sorts of boxes in particular were proving very frustrating to find, and if I do get a GPS these are the sorts that I'm hoping it'd make easier and provide less frustration over!