I am considering puchasing a GPS. I hate to start an entirely new search and research into GPS's. Would you fellas and Ladies please help direct me toward an affordabe and functional unit. I just mant a nice model. I would use it mostly for atving off road. I don't wish to learn a complete new disipline for small usage. Thank you for your input. jlewis
I mostly ride in the NW. Oregon, Washington, Idaho etc.

 

I have had several GPS's and I prefer the Garmin. I have the Garmin GPSIII+. I've had it for years and it's great. It has maps, and you can mount is horizontally. I got a "Ram Mount" for it and it is solid. I know they now have a GPSIIIV that is even better. Any GPS is good now days, I'm just like the ease of use with the Garmin. They have great customer service too. One time one of my GPS's got filled with water (While I was on my SeaDoo watercraft). Warranty was up by about a year. I just wanted to know if they could fix it. They sent me a brand new one, no charge. I even told them it was my fault because I didn't secure the battery compartment. Now that's good customer service. Look into the Ram Mount mounting systems for what ever GPS you get, they're real nice. I know the real small cheap ones are good for hiking but are hard to see while driving or ATVing. Good luck.

 

I have a Lowrance Ifinder H20. It's pretty simple to use just turn it on, get a fix, and it automatically will track your trail plus it accepts memory cards like those used on digital cameras etc. so you can download city streets or topo maps to them. I have a 512mb card in mine loaded with all city streets rural and urban areas included for MN, WI, ND, SD, and IA and it only used up about 128mb of space on the card. You can also buy very hi def. lake maps on memory cards that work great in this unit also, way more defined than paper lake maps. Check out Lowrances website for more info. as it does way more than what I listed here.

 

I have the lowrance Ifinder HUNT with the maps and it works great and you can get color now and I think that is what I would do because you can make trails differnt colors so you can see them easer as you or going down the trail. but the Ifinders or nice ones

 

i have the garmin etrex legend. small with 8mb memory a good starter. bizrate.com for $128 map source disc cost extra. i have used the garmin v 19 mb memory, larger screen and auto routing for $234. it comes with city street disc. i will have soon the garmin 60c with 56 memory and color $334.
there are so many out there to choose from its hard to get it right the first time you buy. i used the legend for 500 miles of trails in utah and 3000 miles on the hiway and was amazed at what these things can tell you. pick your price get one and use it, the more you use it the more you will like it. good luck

 

Fellow riders and navigators, Thanks for the info. At least now I can narrow my search down. I noticed that nobody mentioned Magellan, I suppose that is good. Magellan was one manufacturer I was looking at. I have heard that Garmin is considered tops by it's users. I was hoping to spend under $300.00 but maybe I should re-think my price range.
Redmtn thanks for the heads-up on the Ram mount. I will slow my search down and concentrate on usages instead of price. I already figured to get one large enough to read.
So much to learn and my brain is so small. I will take everyones response and tailor my thoughts to your input. Thanks again fellow-riders, jlewis

 

Dirtdobbertwo, You mentioned a color viewer: Why is that a good thing? I have tried to figure out the advantage.........But couldn't. What is your take? Thanks, jlewis

 

You're on the right track, you might want to go where they sell GPS's and hold it in the light outside about the same distance as if it was mounted on your atv. I like my Garmin GPSIII+ even though it is a couple of years old. If you want to go back to camp or want your speed displayed, you have a setting that shows large numbers and arrows. I'm not sure if the others have this setting, they probably do. You can have a free Megellan if you can find it. About 5 years ago a friend and I were hunting in Arizona and I had a Garmin and he had a Magellan. After about an hour of trying to get his GPS to work, he threw it off a canyon. Now this was about 5 years ago and GPS's have come along way. I think Magellan now makes a decent one. My GPSIII+ is a little outdated compaired to some of the new ones, but it works great for me. I still have my first GPS I bought in 1989 (Garmin 45) it still works like new.

 

Garmin Extrex Legend mounted to my SP500 with a RAM MOUNT kit. If you watch my video about halfway through you can see it.

It came in real handy on the Hatfield McCoy trails becuase i left it on with "tracks" on which basically traced the trail we drove on, we used that to compare to the map so we knew where we were. Worked excellent!

Legend was $130 at Walmart and Ram Mount was $30 online.

Dont really need to download maps as it comes with enough for me.

If you get one dont forget to try some Geocaching!!! What fun that is!!!

 

Thankyou fellas, Good information about Geo-caching and reading in the sunlight. The Guy at Sportsmans Warehouse wants to sell me a Garmin for $450-$600 dollars.ouch... I will write down the units you folks have been talking about. This will narrow my search and show the guy< I have an idea of what I "really" need. Thankyou for all your input. Now to find them on sale, I hope LoL, jlewis