Re: Handheld GPS/ Magellan
I have had good luck with the Magellan brand. They sort of went away a couple of years ago and came back under new owners I think. So far, so good for the years I have owned them and my brother in law also has one, which has also been stable.
I have two Magellans- Mo. GPS 315 and a Meridian Gold. The 315 is smaller, less expensive, and but is quite waterproof, with a screw down seal. But the Meridian is larger, has more storage and features, but the battery back cover is held on by a couple clips, but they seem to hold well and are not prone to popping off.
Good ole' Walmart sells the Meridian for about $300 or less, which is a decent price. This model is sold in several variations, many of which may be found at Best Buy and West Marine's catalog featurs them. The Meridian models all have the same case, but vary by color and orientation to marine, outdoorsman or general, which is the Gold model.
The marine version has marine oriented waypoints built in. Also, all sorts of downloads are avail and the Meridian has a port mount point and cable (optional) which puts out NMEA so you can feed the outputs to your boats network, such as to the radar.
Using 2000Mamp rechargeable batts, I get about 3-4 hours of use between charges. If the batts go dead, it does not lose your settings, but instead they are retained in memory.
my 2 cents...
