As a new geocacher, spending $400 on a GPSr was a hard decision as I didn’t quite know if I really needed it or if an external battery for the iPhone would be sufficient. I went for the former choice, and I’m glad I did.

The issues I had with the iPhone were not that many, but quite severe. First off, the iPhone uses battery power like you wouldn’t believe when in “geocaching mode”. It makes perfect sense really, as it uses the GPS, GSM radio for 3G connection to get maps, digital compass and the screen- it fires off pretty much every technology it has, in other words. After 2-3 hours of geocaching a couple of weeks ago, the iPhone was down to 50%, so power became a real problem.

Second, the iPhone GPS like many car GPSes and other cell phone GPSes aren’t made to work in forests with wood all around. They don’t have the receiver capabilities to get a good signal in such circumstances, and that isn’t good when you’re trying to find a tiny box in the woods. Just yesterday I was at a cache that was “hidden under a rock”, and well, it was a scree. In such cases, even being 20 meters off can make it impossible to find. One of the first caches I attempted as a geocacher ended with a very frustrating DNF (Did Not Find) log when trying with the iPhone, and when I went back with the Oregon 450 I found it- more than 100 meters away from where the iPhone pointed me.

After coming across it on the weekly specials on a Norwegian website and reading reviews, I jumped on the Oregon 450. As far as GPSrs go, this one is top of the line and has a 3″ touchscreen as well as support for geocaching. Whereas older models of GPSrs need special software to transfer geocaches as waypoints and can support only 1000 of those, the 450 reads GPX files that contain both coordinates and information for up to 5000 caches. It can display hints, logs and description for the caches and is made to be used for geocaching.

Compared to the features of the iPhone software it’s still very limited; you have to buy maps (“buy”, yeah I’m not paying $2500 for topo maps of Norway that Garmin got for free from the government), there are no air photo/satellite photo maps etc, no wireless connectivity to allow logging or searching for caches on the fly etc. However, I still have the iPhone, so the 450 simply acts as a very accurate navigator that lasts 16 hours on a pair of AA batteries that I can carry as many spares of as I want to. It has proven dead accurate so far and I can’t even begin to describe how much of a relief it is to not have to worry about battery life. It’s also more rugged and comes with a carabiner, so I can hook it to my belt loop and have easy access at all times.

All in all GPSrs haven’t quite followed the price drop and feature boost ratios that other electronic devices have and seem somewhat antiquated compared to what $10 software can do on a smartphone, but when you actually start using one you realize why experienced geocachers frown on smartphone use (although frankly some of the geocachers I’ve come across have been so antiquated I doubt they know how to use a smartphone, so that might be the reason as well). Luckily that also means that it will work perfectly for years to come, and seeing 5 year old GPSr models still being sold and bought today shows how the product life cycles of GPSrs make up for the initial cost of getting one. Smartphones are great for getting into the hobby, but once you know this is something you want to do you will gain a lot from a dedicated GPSr.