Best GPS for walking

[Peteaud]

Seeing as i am doing a lot more walking i am thinking of getting a gps device to load maps onto. I have used my old 205 cycle on but this provided a breadcrumb route and wasn't very good (although for cycling it was ok).

I dont want to spend mega money, maybe £100 - £140.

Any recommendations.

 

[TVC]

Map and compass, so much more fun and a useful skill to learn. I have a basic gps that is only used as a get out of jail free option (only had to use it once).

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Map and compass, so much more fun and a useful skill to learn. I have a basic gps that is only used as a get out of jail free option (only had to use it once).

Yep. Depending where one is and the fog comes down a sat nav might lead one over a cliff. Wouldn't go into the hills without a good map and compass.

 

[winjim]

Garmin Etrex. Does mapping and can be used on the bike too. Takes AA batteries and is pretty tough, mine's hit the tarmac at quite a rate and survived with just a dent. Does geocaching if you're into that sort of thing. Mine was sub £100 on an Amazon New Year deal although I can't remember exactly how much.

You will need to factor in the cost of the maps unless you use the free open source ones.

 

[Peteaud]

Paper maps and compass ive already got.

 

[Deleted member 23692]

Etrex 20 will do mapping, and you can use the free OSM maps. This would come within budget, but relying solely on OSM wouldn't be wise as it is woefully inaccurate once 'off road'. But if you can plot your route on an OS based maps and export to the GPS, then they are perfectly OK

 

[Fab Foodie]

Etrex bundle with Topo light maps?

http://m.cotswoldoutdoor.com/garmin-etrex-20-gps-topo-uk-and-ireland-light-a2110187?id_colour=180

I got one for walking and biking, but gets used mostly for biking.

The few local walks I've done it seems to work well and is ok for geocaching too.
You can load OSM and other map packages.
The Etrex 30 has a better compass IIRC.

 

[Andy_R]

Cant beat paper maps and compass, as others have said. GPS can fail, so I would only ever use it as an emergency backup.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Something cheap like mapyx.com (Quo2) - well it's free in itself - will let you purchase OS maps at 25,000 and at 50,000 at a reasonable price that you can print off at any scale you want and take with you. I seem to have got their printable OSM maps on there too but they're free anyway and they download anyway so they're not on-you-computer-yours. But OS, printed large enough for you, would do the job and you'd need to be fit to need more than 2 tiles for any walk.

 

[vernon]

Yep. Depending where one is and the fog comes down a sat nav might lead one over a cliff. Wouldn't go into the hills without a good map and compass.

That problem's easily solved. Don't go walking where's there's cliffs.

 

[Saluki]

We have a Garmin Oregon and it's great. It's our caching tool of choice. We did have an E-Trex which was great but only has the breadcrumb routing on it but it was quite a while back.

 

[vernon]

I've used the Etrex 20 here, and in France Germany, Austria, Croatia Hungary and Croatia with open source maps and it's never let me down.