Garmin GPS Receiver

This review is from: Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS (Electronics)

I purchased two of these, one for my kids and one for a friend.

THE GOOD
For my kids, this is the perfect unit. We use the geocaching app on my Iphone as our main geocaching tool to get us into the vicinity and then the kids use their Geomate Jr to get them to the cache. My 6 year old can run into trees with it, fall on it, etc and it takes a licking and keeps on ticking (much better than him doing that with my iphone!) Because we have already been geocaching, we were able to understand how to use this tool after a few button pushes. We did a side-by-side test with my iphone and the Geomate jr and the Geomate updated faster than my iphone and was more accurate under heavy tree cover conditions. Under normal conditions, both the Iphone and Geomate Jr updated at similar times and had readings within 2 feet of each other.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT
This tool is billed as the Grab and Go geocaching tool, so easy that it will encourage everyone to get in the game. Well, not quite. If you aren’t already very familiar with geocaching, trying to figure out what these buttons mean will just be confusing. You will need to read a book or go on the [...] website before you’ll understand what a GC code is or have any clue what those coordinates mean. After you do make a find, you can only mark 20 caches as found. You need the update kit to mark up to 99 caches as found (though they represent that it will eventually be up to 1000 found). However, these issues are not a big deal because after you buy the update kit and do some reading, you’re as good as gold.

NO MAPPING
But perhaps the biggest feature that is lacking that truly prevents this unit from being a true Grab and Go unit is the the lack of a mapping capability. For this reason, this is best as a supplemental unit. Mapping is important in geocaching because trying to find a geocache by going 3.6 miles NNE is about impossible to drive to. Roads generally don’t travel in the direction that your compass happens to be pointing. And by the time you take a road in that general direction, the compass will be pointing .6 miles West. You could drive around like this all day. The Iphone app shows the map of the area and where the geocache is located on the map so that you can drive to the general vicinity and then get out and hunt. The work around for this lack of a mapping feature on the Geomate Jr. is to go to the geocaching.com website and print out the maps to the geocaches you want to seek. Of course this relegates you to only planned geocaching trips instead of geocaching on the go because you happen to have a few extra minutes like you can do with the Iphone.

SUMMARY
This is a great supplemental unit and a must have for kids in a family of geocachers. However, unless and until they provide a mapping capability on the Geomate Jr., this is not a true Grab and go unit and may not be the best choice as a stand alone unit.

This review is from: Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS (Electronics)

Well built, SUPER easy to use! Nothing negative to say…. if your looking for a unit to give to a child this is absolutely the one. It is well built, rugged, and does not cost 200 or more like other GPS units. SIMPLE controls, but has everything you need.

The only drawback (not that it is not clear already with this unit) there are no maps on the display. So particularly if your in a urban area it will give you “as the crow flies” distance to the cache your looking for, without a map on the display it is not always clear which street to go down, or what is between your current location and the cache. REALLY not a big deal.

GREAT family fun!!!!

This review is from: Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS (Electronics)

I read an article in a kid’s magazine about Geocaching and thought my daughter would be into it. The magazine suggestions the Geomate Jr as a good starter. We were so excited when it arrived in the mail! We got it out of the box, read the directions (which is really just a tiny piece of paper with 3 steps on it) and set out on an adventure! What I found is that it is completely unreliable. It would get us in the general location (within 100 feet) and then go haywire. It would say 18 feet in one direction, you would walk that way, and then all of a sudden, it would say to go 25 feet behind you. We thought maybe it was the location we were at (which had some tree cover) and decided to try the next cache. The next one was over a mile away, which sucks when you’re doing this with a 5 year old and the first one produced no results. So we walked on to the next one. The same thing happened. It claimed we needed to go 85 feet in a direction, that lead right through someone’s backyard, so we walked around the box. Once we got there, it said we needed to go over 100 feet in the opposite direction. We tried the 3rd cache, and had the same problem. When we got home I went to [...] and checked to see if maybe they are no longer there. They’re still there! They had all been found in less than a week! We literally walked over two of them and had no idea, because the Geomate told us we had another 50 feet to go!

The Geomate jr is a great concept. It seems unintimidating for newcomers. It was perfect for my daughter to hold, I didn’t worry that she would break it. It was easy for her to read and see where we were going. On our way to the first cache she LOVED it and I thought we had a new hobby. The problem is that it is just not reliable.

I would NOT recommend buying this. It seems like a lot of people have had success, but if it fails to work like ours did, it is going to be hard to get your kids out to try again.

This review is from: Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS (Electronics)

This is the perfect device for on-the-fly geocaching.
I travel alot with work, and I used to find myself wishing I could go geocaching but I didn’t have the time or the means to upload caches. With the Geomate.jr, I can just pull it out, turn it on and go. It travels everywhere with me, in fact it has a permanent place in my bag. I would be more upset if I left it behind, than my cell phone!

I have found over 100 caches with the geomate.jr, it is a shame it doesn’t give the description of the cache, but with the “found’ list, I just log online and read about interesting caches after I have been there. The information it does provide, such as cache size and difficultly is very helpful. I still shy away from small caches! Sometimes I am just not up for the challenge!

I found the navigation to be very accurate, I have never been mis-directed, even in the woods where you would expect coverage to be spotty.

I really would recommend this product to anyone who wants to start geocaching, anyone who has kids and to any seasoned geocachers for the moments when you haven’t planned. It is light weight, small, inexpensive and so easy to use! This would make a fantastic gift for young and old!

This review is from: Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS (Electronics)

The geomate jr. is very user friendly, even for the kids. The coordinates are spot on in most instances. My only complaint is how many local caches are not in the unit. I will be getting the update kit, hopefully it will be easy to use and solve that problem.

This review is from: Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS (Electronics)

It was a sunny pleasant day when we tried this puppy out. We tried five different locations. All of which implied that the geocache was not what we were looking for. We would stand still and the geomate jr would say we were jumping and moving sixty feet. We went into woods and we lost signal the GPS unit seemed to have given up. We set the home base standing next to the car door, outside the door, took three steps (that of a nine year old)and it was up to 61 feet away from home base. Save yourself some money and do not invest in this one. Our scouter was very unhappy with it.

This review is from: Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS (Electronics)

The GeoMate Jr. is a simple and fun device to get started with geocaching (and to get the kids out of the house).

Simply insert 2 AAA batteries, then turn on the device (presumably in an area where caches may be hidden) and the GeoMate Jr. will connect with satellites and give you the distance and the direction to the closest cache from the point of power-on. After you find your first cache, you can mark it as “found” with a happy-face by holding down the small button and then either go to the next closest cache from where you first turned the GeoMate Jr. on, or you can power-off and back on again to find the next closest cache from your current location. If you mark a cache as “found” on the Geomate Jr., you can go back later and see the cache “ID” for your found caches. With this ID you can log your finds on geocaching dot com. The GeoMate Jr. also lets you set a “Home” location if you want to find your way back to a certain point (like your car in a large parking lot!).

After reading the product Quick-Guide and down-loading and reading the extended User-Guide from Apisphere dot com, the controls were easy to use. The Geomate Jr seems accurate to within 3-6 ft and the signal was good out in the open, under tree cover, and even in my vehicle driving between caches. The product itself is well built (Made in the USA!) and comfortable to handle. It also comes with a convenient lanyard.

You will need the optional update cable (sold separately) if you want to load the latest caches that have been placed in your area since the date your Geomate Jr was manufactured. But geocaching has been around long enough now that there are plenty of caches that show up in the area where I live, even without updates.

Advanced users may feel it is missing features, but the best feature in my opinion is the affordable price! And for the price, it has everything you need to get started finding left-over happy meal toys hidden in containers in the woods or under rocks. Do I really need a $200+ GPS with colored maps and rarely used bells and whistles to do that??? Well I guess that is a topic of debate. For me it is the “hunt” I enjoy, and the Geomate Jr. serves that purpose just fine.

Let me also stress: You need to READ the Quick-Guide that comes with the product AND the User-Guide at Apisphere dot com. Otherwise it will just be a bunch of screens with numbers that don’t make sense to you. After reading the guides, the screen navigation will make complete sense to you… well hopefully.

The Geomate Jr. is a fun, affordable GPS to get started geocaching. I highly recommend it.

This review is from: Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS (Electronics)

I bought the Geomate to take on vacation in Maine. It is great for casual, spontaneous geocaching. But, besides lacking any coordinate info, my biggest complaint is that the little arrow doesn’t lock in until you actually start moving….and you have no idea which way to head off. So you end up LITERALLY walking in circles for the first minute or two. Last weekend my family decided to use it….well, it was the funniest thing ever to see a group of 5 moving around the campsite like a swarm of bees moving continuously back and forth, until the arrow finally locked in and they headed off!!!

This review is from: Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS (Electronics)

This is an update to my first review, below…Apisphere responded to my email concern, same day, and on a Saturday at that. Using the update kit required us to turn off Norton Utilities to run the update. It worked and we were off and running. It’s been muddy in our area so we have simply stopped by a place that we know there are caches and tested out our new Geomate Jr. Worked like a charm. Gave us cache size, terrain, distance, and pointed us in the right direction. We can’t wait to put it to field use.
Original post: We received our Geomate Jr two days ago. It may be a great device, however, you need the update kit. The update kit does not work with Windows 7 or Vista. We found that out today. See my review there. This item will be returned if a software fix is not in place. Awaiting response from Apisphere Help Desk.

This review is from: Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS (Electronics)

We actually use two GPSs. My husband uses his and I use this one. This one has been great for geocaching on the fly when we are somewhere and what to see if there are anymore around the area without going back onto the internet. Really easy to use. Only some minor problems when you get into the woods, but problems with all of them. Makes for great family fun and we use it all the time.