Gps recommendations for newbie.

[Britt]

Any suggestions for a gps for a newbie who is not very tech savvy? Is ok to buy a used gps? I will be using it for bikepacking. Thank you.

[Bobonli]

I suppose it depends on where you are riding. I think many backcountry travelers prefer the hiking Garmin products, though I suppose you could also use a cycling unit with OSM maps.

There's a fair body of knowledge being developed that the smart phone might be a pretty good choice given the variety of apps available for off road travel; for example, RidewithGPS uses OSM mapping that includes trails; Gaia GPS etc. The trade off is battery life. Many smart phones don't have the battery life of a stand alone GPS. But you can overcome that by having a dynamo charger or carry a battery brick with you.

I have a Garmin 800 and so far have been happy with it on trails in terms of getting a signal. I get the relevant OSM maps for the region I'll ride and upload them and the route into the 800.

[Endless Trails]

The Garmin Etrex series is probably the most used GPS, it's a general outdoor GPS series so it's not a bike GPS and doesn't have some of the features that dedicated bike GPS's have but you can get a handlebar mount for it. I have the Etrex 30x version which is the most powerful one, but there's also a version with a touch screen. As much as I like the touch screen on my smart phone I decided to not go with it since sometimes wear gloves and it's quite hard to operate the touch screen while riding, even on gravel roads.

Buying a used GPS shouldn't be any problems, they are often fairly rugged but as always you might be in bad luck. Just make sure you get a fairly recent one. Finding maps online, creating tracks and transfer them to your GPS might be a bit daunting at first, Garmin is quite far away from the fairly user friendly software we are getting used to these days on smartphones but if you google it or just look here at the forum there are some good guides about how to do it.

[bakerjw]

+1,000,000 for the Garmin eTrex 30x. I just used one on an upper part of the TD route and it worked flawlessly.