Topic: n?vi? 255W

[Ken (OP)]

n?vi? 255W
This little unit works great for Geocaching. 

One issue with Geocaching is that like many hobbies it can get expensive and if you're like me and on a small fixed income where there's not any money available for stuff like this, in other words, things that you don't really have to do, this is especially true. So, when I received a little 'gift plastic' I'm thinking, "Ummm, which GPS to get?" The thing is, most of the cheaper handheld GPS units don't really do 'over the road' navigation very well, if at all and most of the cheaper car GPS units are not setup to do walking or trail functions.

So, how to strike a balance?  Getting one of each kind of unit was not going to happen because the gift card did not have that much on it, so some hard research was in order. After some weeks of reading in lots of different places including the Groundspeak Forums, I settled on the n?vi? 255W and found it on sale at BestBuy for $109.00... that's still a lot of money, so that card came in real handy.

And, how did it work out? For driving it works great as you would expect it to do, so the real question is, how is it for Geocaching.
It passes that test with flying colors, I've never used or seen one of the handhelds in use so I'm not able to make that comparison, but for me it was spot on in my first trial run to the Miss Angele's Kids' Kache. That was the first cache that I had ever found and because it was so easy to get to it was the perfect test. Then when I used it to find a newly placed cache not to far from our home it got me to within 10ft of the cache.

If you have one of the Garmin n?vi[nb]this works with most versions in the n?vi series[/nb] GPS units and would like to set it up for 'paperless' Geocaching you'll find all the info you need on this page:

Garmin GPS - True Paperless Geocaching
... it is a long read and there are lots of detailed steps to the process, but it works and is well worth the effort. I would do this with my n?vi even if I had a handheld unit.

[Skhilled]

That might be the next one I'll get. Thanks for the info.

[Ken (OP)]

That might be the next one I'll get. Thanks for the info.

It works great for both point to point in your car and on the trail as well, the more it's used the more I like it.

[Skhilled]

I settled on the n?vi? 255W and found it on sale at BestBuy for $109.00... that's still a lot of money, so that card came in real handy.

Well, it costs $179 at the Best Buy here!  :yikes: