New here, need help with buying gps

[+Alan1414]

Hello all, I just started geocaching about a week ago with my son. Him and I absolutely love it. I'm looking at purchasing a handheld gps device because I feel like my gps on my phone runs amuck sometime's. I'll be standing in one place and my device will jump from I'm 7 feet from the cache to 30 feet and does all other weird things sometimes. My questions are what's a decent gps for a price range of $100-200. I don't care about logging caches from it or all the other bells and whistles. I just want to be able to get as close to the cache as accurately as possible before starting a hands on search. And another question is are the caches already on the device our if a new cache is placed does it automatically show up on the device our do you have to purchase them? Any other advice will be much appreciated for this new geocacher. Thanks in advance.

[+lee737]

My $600 Garmin jumps like that sometimes......

 

Anyway - I use a Garmin Oregon, but have seen folk using, and admiring the etrex 20 and 30's. A GPS unit won't automatically show up on your device, nor do you need to purchase them, you make up pocket queries on the website, then copy them onto your unit, that way you can put up to 1000 caches at a time on it, free......

 

You will also see better battery life with a GPS than your phone, and obviously it doesn't need network coverage, which is good and bad.....

[ohgood]

Hello all, I just started geocaching about a week ago with my son. Him and I absolutely love it. I'm looking at purchasing a handheld gps device because I feel like my gps on my phone runs amuck sometime's. I'll be standing in one place and my device will jump from I'm 7 feet from the cache to 30 feet and does all other weird things sometimes. My questions are what's a decent gps for a price range of $100-200. I don't care about logging caches from it or all the other bells and whistles. I just want to be able to get as close to the cache as accurately as possible before starting a hands on search. And another question is are the caches already on the device our if a new cache is placed does it automatically show up on the device our do you have to purchase them? Any other advice will be much appreciated for this new geocacher. Thanks in advance.

 

they all 'jump' when there is reflecting pings from the satellites... ie canyons, tall buildings, walls, etc

 

waypoint averaging can get you a much closer location, and give you an idea which direction the cache really is.

 

make sure you're using ONLY gps triangulation, NOT cellular/wifi/googleservices. << this is the #2 misconception of smartphone usage, the #1 being "it won't work out there in the woods away from cellular 'signal' ".