How much memory does it have? and how large areas of maps do you down load . My goal is to have the entire west on the memory 9 maybe just the wild areas of ca and o.
I use an iPad Pro 12.9 3rd generation with a terrabyte of memory. After trying many versions of different applications on Android and fewer on IOS, I’ve settled on an Gaia GPS. I have the western US covered completely with the following layers and zoom levels. Note that on IOS Gaia has many resources available as vector maps requiring about 15 - 20% of the memory raster versions occupy. Most, possibly all of the vector maps download at zoom level maximum of 14 (but seem to display more detail than rasters at 14).
1. Public lands, zoom 14.
2. Gaia Topo zoom 14.
3. National Geographic Trails Illustrated zoom 16 (all of the NGTI available in the W US - not total coverage of the region).
4. Wilderness Areas zoom 11 (maximum available).
For the following I don’t have all of the western US yet, but I do have most, or all, of NM, AZ, CO, UT, CA, NV and lesser percentages of OR & WA:
5. US Forest Service 2016 Topos zoom 16 (one of the best maps I use if they cover the region where I’m traveling).
6. World Imagery satellite coverage zoom 16 (I prefer the WI satellite detail to the others available at GAIA plus there seems to be no limit on what you can download over time). This is limited to specific regions of interest like SE Utah, W New Mexico, particular mountain ranges of CA, AZ & NV.
7. USGS Topo zoom 16. this is the raster version of USGS Topo quads, the vector version, US Topo, requires less space and downloads quicker, but lacks much of detail for tracks, springs, trails, etc. found on the raster version.
For map types 5 through 7 I’m still downloading as time goes on so the required space is increasing. Currently GAIA occupies 160 GB on my iPad. I suspect that will reach 200 fairly quickly and likely get up towards 400 as the World Imagery and USGS Topo banks increase.
Thus I’d say the minimum memory you’d need to get the western US reasonably covered in layers that would support wandering about anywhere you might find yourself would be 200 gb. Better would be 400 gb if you want a lot of satellite imagery or any of the other raster type maps. My iPhone has less than my iPad (512 gb versus a terabyte) and it is holding the same maps as the pad quite well. I do photo and video editing on the pad that I don’t do on the phone so I’m happy with the greater memory there.
One thing to keep in mind is that GAIA seems to use an underlying database of points for all kinds of things - springs, peaks, towns, etc. that you may not see on the actual maps but that you can search for and then enter as waypoints. I don’t know how that data is downloaded or stored, but I suspect it might be associated with the GAIA Topo.
I think it is much faster and overall more satisfying to have the iPad as a cellular version with it’s own GPS and account on Verizon. In my experience I’m often downloading most of the maps on the iPad via cellular data versus WiFi simply because I’m out of reach of WiFi. I briefly tried using the phone as a hotspot for downloading to the tablet via WiFi, but found that very slow and frustrating.
A setup like this costs a fair amount of money in hardware and unlimited data plans on Verizon. If you are happy with the quality of data provided by Garmin then you would save money with one of their products and an included data package.
Howard Snell
