Geomate.jr

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.

If you get the geomate jr… you need this as well.

The geomate comes with something like 250,000 preloaded caches, however cache’s are a very dynamic thing…. many come, some go away the updates are important. Even with the best updates you will occasionally go to a place where there “should” be a cache it is gone, current data is important.

The Other up-side is that with the updates, you can get specific regions, as well as additional cache’s that are not included with the pre-installed database.

The downside, for what it is, this cable is expensive…. I wish the geomate simply had a standard usb interface, and did not require a special cable, but even with that, I would put this as a necessary part of the unit and well worth getting.

This is a great GPSr to start geocaching with for two reasons:

1. This s an inexpensive piece of equipment nessessary for the hunt, so if your’e not sure it’s a hobby you are going to stick with it’s not to much of an investment.

2. I was having a difficult time learning how to use a traditional GPSr. I bought a Megellan and ETrek, I am sure it was me but had a difficult time learning how to use them..anyway the GMjr is literally a plug, update and go. Very simple to use and understand.

There have been very few caches in what ever area we happen to be in that was not preloaded into the GMjr. We had one situation that coordinates were updated on the Geocaching website but didn’t get updated thru the GMjr update website. dont know how that works either;)

All in all we really love the Geomate Jr. and we plan to stick with it but dont have plans at this time to do any further investing in a GPSr as we feel this is all our family needs. We are not the survivalist type and dont plan to do any hard core mountiain/valley terrain type of hunting.

It’s a great way to get your kids outdoors (our kids are 8 and 11)

Works great and I got it long before I expected it to arrive. I’m now a happy geocacher.