Greetings,
What would be a good entry level gps that's a step up from the Bushnell Backtrack GPS?

Unless you don't have the money I go with the higher price Garmins.

I used the lesser models now I have a Montana 650T. Easy to use well worth the extra money.

Garmin has some of the best customer service and surport I have encountered.

You will not spend as much on a lesser model but you well wish you had.

What do you want your gps to do, and what features are important to you?

Just numbers, or capability to load 24k maps?
High sensitivity antenna or not?
Weatherproof or not?
Is battery size important?
Color or monochrome display?
Unit size?
etc.

Take the ceapest Garmin - You won´t regret, but why a Bushnell? They make a lot of stuff, but Garmin is still specialized on GPS devices - my Etrex (1st gen) is working flawlessly for more then 10 years now! - would like to have a newer one, but the old one does the job as well, so no real need...

Thank you all for the good words of advice. I'm planning a guided hunt to Zimbabwe next year for buff and sable and was wanting to bring a GPS with me for "just in case" reasons.

Hi Monkeyhunter

Maybe I am too much of a navigation freak but I find a GPS indispensable when hunting. It ads a lot to hunting to know where you are and know what is lying in which direction.

Please note that topographic maps for Garmin is available for Zimbabwe, if you need help sourcing them I'll give you the pointers. I always study the maps and Google Earth imagery of an area that I am going to hunt, to me it ads to the on the ground enjoyment of my hunt.

Have a look at a Garmin unit in the Montana or Oregon ranges, the price is a fraction of the cost of your hunt.

Cheers

Martinus

quote:

Originally posted by scubapro:
Take the ceapest Garmin - You won´t regret, but why a Bushnell? They make a lot of stuff, but Garmin is still specialized on GPS devices - my Etrex (1st gen) is working flawlessly for more then 10 years now! - would like to have a newer one, but the old one does the job as well, so no real need...

Yes.

I'm assuming "just in case" means how to get back to your starting point.

If so, consider Garmin's eTrex H or (newer) eTrex 10. No frills, AA batteries, meets IPX7 standard, high sensitivity antenna, cheap.

No map on eTrex H, but worldwide basemap on eTrex 10, monochrome display, can't be expanded.

The eTrex is a tried and true platform. The eTrex line has been around for many years and is still good.

That's makes it a +2 on the Garmin e Trex. You assumed correctly that "just in case" means getting back to the starting point. As mentioned, I will be going on a guided hunt in Zimbabwe but I still want a barebones (but reliable) GPS.
Your comments and advice are much appreciated.

In addition to your GPS, you might want to think through your compass needs too.

The compass that is properly balanced for your homeland may not be properly balanced for a far-away land, if the two locations are situated in different latitude bands.

I'd recommend you consider one of the Suunto Global compasses. I like the M3-G, but Suunto makes good mirror compasses as well. (AFAIK, all of Suunto's global line have set-and-forget declination adjustments.)

eTrex is about as good as simple gets. Mine's close to 8 years old and does every basic function one needs. Good battery life, too.

JFWIW . . . Garmin introduced a high sensitivity antenna in the past couple of years, which they built into their eTrex series (as well as into their more expensive units).

IMHO, that's a big deal. While older units - even some very much older units - are every bit as accurate as the newer ones, the high-sensitivity antenna is a big step forward for those who use GPS under dense canopy (as folks in my neck of the woods do).

IMO, the single most important feature of any GPS is the sensitivity of the antenna. The second is weatherproofing, the third is using AA batteries.

My opinion only.

PS. Monkeyhunter - when you first get to your destination, power up your GPS and give it 20 - 30 minutes to "find" itself. (Interestingly, you'll likely find your location changes by dozens of meters from the time you fired it up to the time you end your initialization.)

I have Q's also.

Never had a gps, I think I'd like to have topo map dl capable with weatherproof capability. What kind of battery life are we talking about? Is an etrex model capable of dl'd topo maps? How bad does it eat batteries?

For what you might spend for a GPS alone, I'd recommend buying a Garmin Rino 120 instead. This is a GPS and a 2-way radio and would serve multiple functions for you back home. Especially if you have some buddies that own them too. It'll show the location of your hunting partners and allow you to stay in communication. They sell for under $200 and have very good GPS capabilities.

quote:

Originally posted by BigNate:
I have Q's also.

Never had a gps, I think I'd like to have topo map dl capable with weatherproof capability. What kind of battery life are we talking about? Is an etrex model capable of dl'd topo maps? How bad does it eat batteries?

Depends on the model of eTrex. You cannot add maps to an eTrex 10 (you're stuck with the basemap). You'd have to go to the eTrex 20 to add topo maps (we use 1:24,000 maps). And to take maximum advantage, you should purchase a MicroSD card (we generally use a 4GB chip).

The eTrex 20 does not have an electronic compass, the (more expensive) eTrex 30 does.

Personally, I find electronic compasses to be more trouble than they're worth. They aren't quite as accurate as a magnetic compass, they can be a pain to calibrate and they can be influenced by exactly the same kinds of things that can influence a magnetic compass (batteries, ferrous metals, electrical lines, etc.).

Garmin advertises a 25 hour battery life with the eTrex 20. If the eTrex is like the Garmin 60 and 62 series, you'll need to tell the unit which kind of battery you're using. (For the 60, regular vs alkaline; for the 62, alkaline vs lithium.)

quote:

Thank you all for the good words of advice. I'm planning a guided hunt to Zimbabwe next year for buff and sable and was wanting to bring a GPS with me for "just in case" reasons.

You likely won't ever actually need a GPS in ZIm, but I always take one for fun. Sometimes the bush is so thick, it's interesting to see how far you are from certain landmarks that you've waypointed.

The one place where the gps is very helpful is cat hunting and baiting. I keep track of each bait site and every track. Eventually, you can start patterning a cat and determine where it's roaming and what baits it's likely to hit.

If you get a Garmin with the world map on it, be careful what you believe on it. My Dakota 10 said I had already crossed a road but I was in fact not even 100 yards from doing so.

quote:

For what you might spend for a GPS alone, I'd recommend buying a Garmin Rino 120 instead. This is a GPS and a 2-way radio and would serve multiple functions for you back home. Especially if you have some buddies that own them too. It'll show the location of your hunting partners and allow you to stay in communication. They sell for under $200 and have very good GPS capabilities.

I have this one myself and it is excellent for the outdoors.

I dont leave home without it.

Its 15 years old and still kicks butt...


cal30

I have the Garmin Oregon 550. I also got the topo maps at the same time and added the ones for the areas that I actually care about. So far it works great and up here it's the only way to fly as a compass will just make it up as it goes along due to the latitude. I forgot it in my pocket turned on and it ran over 24 hours on a mostly new set of batteries. Pretty good performance in this climate.

quote:

Originally posted by sambarman338:
If you get a Garmin with the world map on it, be careful what you believe on it. My Dakota 10 said I had already crossed a road but I was in fact not even 100 yards from doing so.

You could be that far off, or more or less by a variable distance, if your GPS's datum was incorrectly set.

I don't know that your datum was incorrect, but from painful . . . very painful . . . personal experience, I can tell you that an incorrect datum will tell you that you are located where you clearly are not (in my case, I was ~200 meters away)! (I'm assuming that you were comparing coordinates on a map [electronic in your GPS, or paper] to where you were actually standing in the real world.)