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Tomtom Start 60
by daddyumyum
When we were looking to buy a sat nav, I instantly thought of tomtom. It's a well known brand, and it's pretty catchy too, tomtom. Tomtomtom...
I didn't want to spend a lot of money on the sat nav and I wanted something that I could take with me when we go camping abroad. Not that relying on my wife to navigate with a paper ... map isn't fun, but it would probably be more fuel efficient if we went from A to B without visiting C D E and F first.
~Cost~
I acquired my little tomtom for the princely sum of only £120. This seemed to be a reasonable price for a TomTom, with some going for over £200, so I considered I'd found a good deal.
~Appearance~
I instantly liked the nicely sized 6 inch screen, plenty big enough to see even while driving. It doesn't look top of the range, but it's sleek and black and not to clunky.
~Features~
The main feature that attracted me to this tomtom was the inclusion of European maps. We like to go driving through Europe camping and I felt this would make it much easier, plus the promise of frequent (and free) map updates. My last satnav had no updates and wouldn't even recognize half the postcodes in the UK, no matter navigating me through Europe.
Like most Sat Navs, it comes with voice guidance, which like most Sat Navs can be rather annoying, especially when it keeps repeating itself over and over again until you wish to throw it out of the window on the Motorway.
It also tells you where the nearest car park i.
Speed camera information is very thorough, not that I would even consider speeding, but it's always useful to know, just in case my foot gets a bit heavy.
~Good Points~
The screen is clear and isn't too reflective even in sunlight, so you can see what you are doing.
It finds signal pretty quickly and the screen seems reasonably responsive.
It seems to recognize most addresses, I've had one or too problems, but nothing major.
It's easy to use and set up, you can literally use it out the box and mostly it gives clear and concise instructions.
~Downsides~
The voice could have been a bit louder, sometimes I find it hard to hear what the voice is saying when I have chatty people in the car with me.
Sometimes the speed limits are out of date, especially on certain sections of the motorway, I haven't tried to update it yet, but I've heard it can be complicated, so I've been putting it off.
Occasionally I've been led astray by my dear TomTom, down one way streets, onto pedestrianized areas, straight over roundabouts as if they didn't exist. Luckily I don't trust it completely, and due to quick thinking haven't got myself into too many scrapes - apart from perhaps driving through the odd pig farm in remote Wales.
There is no manual. Some people do like a bit of paper with instructions written on it, why do companies seem to forget something so vitally important? There is a manual, but it's hard to find and definitely not easy to understand.
~Overall~
It does the job, it (usually) gets you from A to B, without too much faffing around in between. It has it's problems, but for the price it isn't a bad bit of map.
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Garmin Edge 200
by scmk6868
This amazing little device has helped me keep an accurate track of my mileage in such an easy way! I've been using my Garmin Edge 200 for a few weeks now, and I still can't believe how easy and useful it has become.
Setup was pretty simple. I took the GPS out of the box, and while it was charging, set up the mount on my bike. The ... instructions were a little light, so I had to pull up a video online to show me how to do it correctly. Once I figured it out, I had the mount on my bike in under a minute. It fit nicely on the stem of my road bike, and doesn't interfere with any function of the bike.
After the unit was charged up, I took my bike out for a spin to test the unit. The unit itself is very easy to setup. There are a few options you might want to customize, like turning auto-pause on and off and what speed you want it to stop at. Once I turned it on outdoors, it only took a few seconds before it picked up my signal and I was ready to go.
During the ride, the unit displays the time, distance, current speed, and average speed. This keeps me informed of the important information during my ride to make my workout more effective.
The GPS itself is very basic. It has 4 buttons, and all of them are multi-functional. They are large, easy to press, and very responsive. The buttons mainly control the 4 options on the home screen: Courses, ride, history, and settings. The courses option is something you can program into the GPS to race against previous rides to compare times. Ride is where you go to track your current ride. History brings up your previous ride information, and settings controls the couple of options inside the GPS.
Transferring data from the GPS to the computer is easy. It requires a GarminConnect account, usb cable, and internet connection. The GPS is recognized by a browser plug-in installed through Garmin, and all you have to do is transfer the rides you want, and it uploads them to your profile. From there, you can see how many rides you've done, your distances, and even the elevation gain during your ride. If you want, you can export the info via a .csv file, and analyze it in a program like excel.
The garmin edge 200 is the most basic unit in the edge series, but for me it works very well. It's small, easy to set up, does what I need it to do, and the least expensive. Overall, I'm very happy with my purchase and will continue using this unit.
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Garmin eTrex Summit HC
by cha97mw
One of the hobbies we do as a family is geocaching. For those of you who have not heard of the hobby before, it is basically a treasure hunting game using GPS. You register at the website geocaching.com to find out where the treasure is hidden, you plot the co-ordinates into your GPS device, then set off to find the treasure. As a family ... hobby it is really brilliant as it encourages you to get out in the fresh air and also use your brain to spot likely places the treasure is hidden once you reach the location the GPS takes you to.
As hobbies go, it is not an expensive one really. You can register with the site for free or spend about $30 a year being a premium member. Then all you need is minimum, a pen and some paper to write some information down, and a GPS device. You can get apps for your mobile phone if your phone is a smart phone. The first time we went out we had a friend with us who was an experienced 'cacher. She had a handheld GPS device which was basically a bit like a compass. Her screen showed a needle which swung round to show you which way to go. She told us tales of having to climb fences and negotiate ditches to get to the place she was going.
Our first time out alone, we tried using the car sat nav. This was a bit pitiful as it tried to direct us to the nearest road and got itself very confused. So we were wanting to buy something that was a bit more complex than my friends device so we didn't end up pushing my buggy into a ditch by accident. We decided the device needed to have some mapping capability so that was could see what the lay of the land is before stumbling into any obstacles in the way.We usually print out an OS map of the area we are caching in, and roughly plot the locations of the spots we are aiming for, so that we have less chance of getting lost in areas we are unfamiliar with. This is usually a back up in case the batteries go in the device while we are out.
We bought this in October 2009. The RRP on amazon is £199. It varies in price tremendously though. It can go from around £121 like it is today, and I am pretty sure I paid about £140 for it.
The device is handheld so it is comfortable to sit it in the palm of your hand while you are using it. It weighs about 150g, and comes with a neck strap to wear round your neck while walking. We don't tend to do this, but the kids always like to if it is there turn to hold it till the next treasure. We bought a clip to attach this to a bike handlebar. This was a bit of a waste of time. It did work ok, and I used to attach it to the little trailer we had for the kids to sit in at the back of a bike, and we also tried it on my sons handlebar on his little bike. For some reason, the compass will not work on this when near my son's bike. It goes a bit scatty.
The device is rubberised round the edges, and has a covered port at the back to connect it to your computer via USB port. You need to do this to download the GPS co-ordinates onto it. You can do this manually, and we have tried this when out and about, but when you do it via the computer it transfers other information like the name and number given to the cache, so it is just quicker and easier to plan your trips before you go out. I find it easier to then work out when we get back which ones we managed to find so I can log it on the geocaching.com website.
The device works with 2 AA batteries. We find it is best to take batteries with us when we go out for the day, as if your batteries fail on you when out and you can't replace them then that is the end of your day out. Turning on the device, you just squeeze a rubber button on the right hand side with your thumb.
The device firstly needs to search for satellites to work out where you are. This can take a little while if you are inside as the signal is weaker indoors. The top button on the right takes you to an options menu which you can then scroll through using the joypad on the front of the device, and select by pressing the joypad down.
The device can enable you to select a particular geocache or to just use it to find the nearest one to your current location. Once you have selected a cache, you see a screen which shows a compass and tells you a distance to the cache, your speed and an estimated arrival time. You could also use this as a walker as it has the capability of putting in a route to follow. You can also use this for waymarking by putting in specific landmarks you want to navigate a route between. Additionally, there is a calendar, a calculator and a stopwatch, and you can use it to find out information about a walk such as tracking where you walked, how far you walked, time taken, how long you rested for, what your average speed was. This can look really funny from a caching point of view, as you can really walk in circles sometimes doubling back on yourself to get to your destination. There is also an altimeter on the device. Another great feature is you can add a marker such as when you park up somewhere new to go caching, mark the car park on the GPS, and then you can always find the quickest route back if you give up mid-way through. Eg. once we went out with the bike trailer and got a puncture so needed to get back to the car rather than shred the tire by continuing, and we could exit the circular walk quite easily. My friend has travelled extensively, and uses hers to mark places she has visited in Australia and Asia.
Our impression of this device is it is fairly simple to use. It has a large enough memory to store all the points we have needed in the past few years. We have never had to delete any yet. It has 24 MB of internal memory. It can be quite heavy on batteries, as it needs to be on the whole time you are hunting. Rechargeable batteries last the longest.
The map that is on the device is nowhere near as good as what we were expecting. It basically shows major roads but nothing as useful as footpaths. The accuracy of finding the point we are looking for is good. When it beeps to tell us we have reached the given co-ordinates, we are usually within 5-10 feet of the device. This would be closer but sometimes if tree coverage is a bit dense we find it hinders the satellite signal a bit. This is also the case if you are near tall buildings. Most of our caching has happened in rural locations, but we did some when we went to Liverpool and some of these were a little harder to find.
We would prefer to have a better map still to work with, and we may eventually upgrade to a newer device with this on it, but for someone just starting out on geocaching this is more than adequate to get you going. We sometimes also use a GPS on my husbands phone, as this is better in the middle of a big field, whereas his phone is better when we are in a built up area.
This is really a mid-range device in my opinion. The Garmins are reliable devices and I do recommend the brand, and I would have no problem buying this again or upgrading to a newer Garmin device. It seems to be popular as the geocaching.com site recognises our device and sends data suitable for it.
I would say this is fine if you are willing to also use traditional OS maps in unfamiliar rural areas. To go out with just the GPS with young children would not be sensible.
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