best gps device
 

hi everyone,
looking for a good gps system for my stock klr 650.
any opinions?
dave

I used a Garmin 60cx on my ride to South America and loved it. Good for using on and off the bike, color screen, uploadable world maps onto an expandable mini-SD card. They are not too expensive and buying a new one on Ebay they are even cheaper. Though, if I were to buy a new GPS it would upgrade to the very similar 60csx that has an electronic compass and barometer(altimeter) Thus, I could track my elevation gain/loss through out each day. I do recommend using a power cord instead of AA batteries(even if you use the rechargeable ones)

You can track your alititude using the 60Cx ... may be not with the same level of accuracy (and that only if you recalibrate frequently for weather changes to the barometic pressure). The 60Csx also uses more battery power = shorter battery life. I have the 60Cx too .. would not spend the extra for the 's' version!. Happy with the 60Cx. But it depends on what you want to do with it .. if you want to use it on and off the bike then I'd say the 60Cx is it.

The question is like asking - What is the best bike?

You are correct, you can track your real time Altitude with the 60cx, but it will not store your min. and max. altitude and display the vertical gain and loss over the entire ride on a nice graph. A feature I wish I had while riding through the Andes. It is a feature that is far from being necessary, but then again so is a GPS in general. Its just another toy and convenience that I love to have. Don't get me wrong, the 60cx is the only way to go for a "basic"(in todays world) GPS and I don't regret my original choice.

As for the 60csx being more power hungry...I understand it doesnt use up batteries that much faster, but then you wouldn't need to worry about that if it was plugged into the bikes battery. I highly recommend this anyway. If you use any GPS on its own batteries, then you will have to take precautions to secure the batteries inside to protect from vibration and the arcing(?) and pitting that can occur. This leads to battery contact problems. Do a search on the HUBB for the necessary mods if you choose to run of the AA's. A power cord bypasses the AA batteries, thus no vibration issues.

The built-in compass in CSX is good only if you hold the unit completely horizontal, so when mounted on bars (usually at angle) it reports wrong direction.
I recently got 60CSX and first tests indicate that I get 2+ days on 2600 mAh Panasonic re-chargeable batteries. The feature I really like is the ability to log track in GPX format onto microSD card, so track memory is basically unlimited and can easily log entire RTW-like trip without downloading into computer in between. There is a separate GPX log file for each day.

The amount of memory avalible on the card depends on teh cards size, the totoa size of the maps you have loaded to it .. for instance City Nav Europe is around 1.5Gb .. so a 2Gb card would have 500Mb left for tracks. I find my tracks average about 0.3 Mb per day (some more, some less -set on automatic most detail ) so that would be about ummm .3 * 360 = 100M per year .. 5 years ... hummm why am I trying to save data space by setting the loging to automatic?

I prefer to have seperate cards for each contient ... and maybe a couple of spares..

--- The battery holder mods are already done on the 60 x series .. well the main oine of rubber behind the contacts. Bit of grease and you should be good to go.

---As for ploting the altitude .. well not something I do, so I had not looked for it.