Especially for Troy and anyone else whos interested.
Mountainbiking with a GPS is ace, plotting and then following a route from you PC means you spend all your time on the bike doing what you like best, riding and NOT stopping to check directions on yet another soggy map. With a good one it really is faultless navigation. ITS not a SATNAV, thats for idiots who want to be told where to go, a proper GPS lets you decide and just acts as a map on your bars.
So which one to get.
For a start there's only one place to buy from, a shop with some great prices. Fully recommended. http://www.wsplc.com/acatalog/Handheld_GPS.html
I'd recommend the colour Etrex range, don't even consider a monochrome display, and the best one you can stretch too. Personally I would not bother with the ones that have an internal compass as this just drains the battery life (16 hours with one 40+ hours without) The compass is only missed when you are looking at the unit when stopped, the display tends to spin around because it can only tell which way you are moving when you are actually moving.
An Internal barometric altitude reading seems a good function, but to be honest the GPS reading tells you that anyway when you have base maps loaded.
The new versions have a micro-SD memory slot, my old one has 25Mb of memory anyway, but you can load the new TOPO maps with contours and bridleways on the new ones as its cheap to buy upto 2Gb of memory to upgrade it.
Theres also the added quandary of the Brand new just announced Edge series colour bike GPS's although they wont be released untill December and will be pricey.
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=160&pID=10885
They combine the edge training, heart rate and speedo functions with the colour mapping screen of the Etrex series, seems like the perfect GPS, but it fully depends on what format Garmin do there tracks for this. The ETrex series can show multiple tracks in different colours while the current Edge ones only show one breadcrumb line called a Course. If the new Colour ones carry on using Courses I would not recommend it. Also it might be worth waiting untill they iron out the bugs as the first releases of the current Edges were crap.
Having said that if they genuinely have combined the qualities of the two devices I own , the Edge 305 and the Etrex Venture, then there will be two secondhand units for sale from me.
Troy you can wait and I'll sell you my black and white Edge or you should buy the ETREX-VENTURE-CX Gamin GPS Receiver 256 Colour TFT with optional microSD card
seems the best deal to me at £160. And I'll sort you out with the software.
