Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board GPS Reviews

Looking for a small, light, bright handheld GPS that I can download maps to (hiking not driving). Any suggestions? any websites with GPS reviews?

There are lots of sites out there. I have not used any recently because I am happy with my GPS receiver, but here are a couple I used in the past.

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/
http://gpsinformation.net/

You can also go to a store like REI, A-16, or Sport Chalet and check out a variety of handheld units. One spends more for map capability. For hiking, loading waypoints using a map program like TOPO! works very well, in which case you can go with a much cheaper receiver.

By the way, I have not seen that many jackalopes in California. I thought maybe the cougars did them in. They seem to abound in the Midwest, though. :-)

Having both a Magellan and Garmin I like both, and there are things I don’t like about both. Regarding trail use I have liked my Explorist very much and it’s ability to out perform my friend’s Garmin ( we compared our results on our last year’s hike up the NF trail). Though the battery type and usage created challenges/annoyances for me. The topo software is accurate and very easy to use and the displayed topo maps and data are very readable and intuitive to use. The base map included had major street level detail.

The newer Garmin with the new receivers are very good tracking, even in high noise levels (trees, buildings, cars). The Vista cx has a memory card and usb interface that their models generally lacked previously. The GPS unit has nice flexibility in the screen displays. It uses AA batteries and supposedly lasts 30+ hours (haven’t seen that yet, must be with the screen dark the whole time). However, the topo maps are not displayed or drawn very well. Some people claim they are incomplete. The topo lines are converted from a metric database and read at odd intervals. In addition, there are a variety of annoyances in how it displays names and marks. I have the 24k topos for the National Parks –West and found it decent on my recent hikes on Yosemite main trails. But I don’t seem to be alone with being annoyed with how the data and map information is handled and transferred between computer and GPS. The base map included had freeway level detail.

The biggest expense other than the GPS unit is the software, topo or streets. At this point I will primarily be using my Garmin rather than the Magellan because it is new and I like it’s general feature set. Though I still have an affinity for the Magellan due to the many miles I carried it.

Joe

I have used the Garmin Geko for more than 2 years and love it. It's very basic, small, lightweight and simple to use. It does not support maps but I have never felt the need for GPS mapping since I always carry a topo map with me. (I would never rely solely on GPS in the wilderness -- what if the juice runs out, etc.) It also has an altimeter which is in general quite accurate.