Wife buying me GPS need advice.

[Justice R]

The wife is buying me a GPS for a late Fathers day gift and I am looking for advice from you guys. So I'll lay out the budget and what I'm looking for and hopefully you guys can recommend one. Right now I have an old hand-held e-trek, which works but am looking for a better & larger display.

Budget: $200-300

Requirements (or wants) good sized screen, vehicle mounted, but it would be nice if I could disconnect and take with for short hikes. Pre-loaded Topos, good street map interface. I'll be using a late model Macbook-pro to interface at home to load waypoints etc if thats possible.

Maybe asking too much for the budget? I just want an all around good unit to use in my 91 Montero, which is a daily driver as well as a backcountry rig. TIA.

 

[rambrush]

I am partial to the Delorme PN series. You should be able to find a PN20 pretty reasonable with Topo 7 or 8. The Garmins do not come with maps and have to be purchased separately though there are sites to upload maps to it.
The Nuvi series are not practical for out of the vehicle. I use the LT 40 in the truck connected to laptop and the PN 40 for hiking or geocaching.

 

[redbeard]

Well, I'm not sure how compatible delorme is with mac. Double check that first. Garmin's mac support seems to be decent.

Sites like gps file depot has topo maps for the garmin. So for me, the Garmin will probably be my next gps. Some garmins come with the maps, some dont. It's usually about $100 more for the ones that come with the topo maps.

Garmin brand maps are available for $99 at the store.

You can also display google .kmz raster files on certain garmin models, which is a plus. There are free programs that can convert your raster imagery/maps to the google format to display on a garmin.

 

[Driver-Navigator]

DeLorme doesn't really have Mac support IIRC. And I respectfully disagree about the PN-20 which is a complete dog, especially unsuited to vehicle use.

Large display + out of vehicle really limits the options, and even more so once you add pre-loaded topos and good street maps. Also, lugging around a full-size car GPS isn't so great for hiking, so nothing is going to do both of those things well by definition.

Your best bet might be to get a good large-screen auto GPS like a Nuvi, and stick with your eTrex for those short hikes.

 

[Justice R]

NUvi

I was looking at the Nuvi's. I might go with one of those.

 

[paulj]

At gps-planet, Garmin Nuvi 500 and 550 just fit your budget, and include topos and/or hiking mode, in addition to the regular highway travel capabilities.

 

[mountainsoul]

You should be looking at a Nuvi. Just download the topo maps separately.

 

[Justice R]

Tx

Thanks guys. The wifey ordered the Nuvi 500 for me today. 199 on Amazon.