The Maryland Geocaching Society

OK...I had been hooked on my TomTom for several generations of their product. I dropped my last one and demolished the screen so I am in the market for a new GPS. Went to BB and picked up a nice new TomTom unit.

Brought it home, fired it up and started playing. I decided to see how well it did getting me to a cache. I flipped through the menus...uhmmm...where is the option to navigate to a set of coordinates? Ummm...guess I need to call customer support.

"Ring...Ring...<explanation of the my problem>...Why would you want to enter the coordinates? It is so much easier to enter the street address. <me> um...I geocache and have coordinates...not street addresses...<befuddled woman>...you what??" Long story longer...TomTom has removed the option to enter coordinates as a destination in its new software release because, and I quote the lady on the phone, no one uses that option.

So. I am in the market for a new unit that will allow me enter coordinates as a destination. I saw that the Nuvi's allow this...but I could use some advice from those in the know.

What brand would your recommend and why?

BTW...one that I could load caches on and it would tell me when I was getting close would be great!

Also...I own an Oregon 400 that I love. I am not in the market for a hand held unit. I am looking for the unit that is meant for automobiles and will get me to the closest parking!

Thanks,
Czar7

Don't own one but everyone, and I mean everyone, tells me they LOVE their Nuvi.

A garmin Nuvi is hands down the best GPS unit for your automobile. Sadly I don't know allot of specifics about the newest models and their differences. Your best bet would be to go to garmins website, see what all new models are available and do a price and option comparison to pick which one fits your needs best.

There are many choices but if you PM or email what you're willing to spend along with some of the features you'd like I can make some recommendations of Garmin Nuvi's

JC is definitely the right one for that. Nothing like seeing where all the caches and red light cameras on your screen as your driving.

Garmin NUVI, hands down. Try ebay for deals on discontinued/refurbished models. My refurbished model worked great until I left in on my roof then saw it bouncing down the road in my rear view mirror. No worries, $50 charge, and a box from Garmin it was replaced. Good thing it was in a case when it went flying. BTW, I use a Garmin NUVI 650 widescreen.

Also, NUVI's are much safer to use than your handheld GPS while driving. It keeps your eyes on the road and not on your lap.

jfigel.

Nuvi, by far. We're a three Nuvi family now. I let my wife use mine (before we were married) to take her daughter college visiting a couple of years ago. She liked it so much that I got her one for Christmas. Her daughter liked it so much that I had to get her one just to get mine back! I suspect I'll have to get the step-son one if he ends up with wheels of his own (that's his dad's responsibility).

As for geocaching, it sure came in handy during CAM, when I was making big loops.

I recently bought the Nuvi 500 for $200 on ebay ($299 direct from Garmin). Has all of the typical features of the car GPSrs (routing, traffic capability, POIs, etc.) plus the added benefits of downloading geocaches directly and being able to route to them via driving or walking. Coordinates can be entered as well. It is also the only Nuvi that is Wherigo compatible. It also has both street and topo maps pre-loaded.

While it has not been as accurate as the 60csx, it can get you to the cache area. The geocache entry includes the coordinates, title, size, difficulty/terrain, description, hint and last five logs.

As others have stated, the nuvi is well regarded and this particular model is the most caching-friendly.

The Garmin Nuvi 500 is a nice hybrid unit. While the Oregon is a nice handheld unit, the Nuvi 500 is a nice back up for in the car. As dsquared noted the features, I won't bother repeating them. the more I use it, the more I like it. Topo maps are also a nice added bonus.

LPYankeeFan

I've been using the Nuvi 205w for two years now. I can link it up with GSAK and have it set to alert me when I'm within 500 ft of a cache. I can also view POI's and see how far the next cache might be. Between GSAK and POI loader I can view the same data on my Nuvi as though I was reading the info off the site (keeping in mind the data is only as current as the last query). At one time I had every cache in the state of MD loaded onto this thing.