Light GPS?

In the fairly lightweight GPS receiver category, there is the old Garmin Geko, which weighs around 3.1 ounces. It runs on a pair of AAA batteries.

You can get receivers with smaller displays, but you run out of readability. Those tiny screens are so small that you can't get a lot of information on one, and maps are almost out of the question.

Why do you want a GPS receiver that picks up a lot of satellites?

–B.G.–

If you are unable to get a Garmin Geko. The 301 is not a bad option.

I prefer the 301, because I only use a GPS just to double check my position, otherwise the extra features on the 401 may/may not be worth it.

The big issue here is battery life. The 401 goes about 18hrs on a set of good batteries. If you could do substantially better than that you'd really have something. But I'd be surprised since the gps chip itself likely takes a certain amount of power. Carrying lots of batteries soon outweighs the gps unit.

Garmin Etrex are not near as light as the foretrex, but lighter than most. They also accept a map card. The Etrex 30 has a compass, the 20 does not, but costs significantly less. With lithium batteries they weight is closer to 4.5 ounces than the listed 5 ounces, and with those batteries they are getting well over 30 hours, some have reported closer to 40. I found one on gear swap last week for around $100. Personally, if I were going to carry any extra weight with a gps, I would want one with a full map display.

I too prefer using a compass/map for navigation, but the tech nerd in me appreciates the abundance of useless data a gps offers. I also plan to use one to get my soon to be 5 year old twins into geocaching -seems like a fun way to get them more interested in the outdoors.

Yup, in fact I just bought myself an Etrex 20. After my last trip with a heavier and more full featured (DeLorme) GPS I sold the unit, thinking that in future I would be content with the GPS on my smartphone, but I'm tentatively planning to walk about half of the PNT this summer, so figured a standalone GPS would be worth a modest investment after all.

The Etrex 20 seemed to me like a sort of "sweet spot" in terms of weight, cost, and functionality for a device that I don't use too often. The 20 has a color screen, albeit a small one. It seems enough to me, though of course that depends on the age old question of "how you use it". I don't feel like I need a compass or barometer built into a GPS.

For most trips my smartphone is all the GPS I want or need to carry, but for trips where nav is more challenging, and where it's nice to be able to have a GPS device with its own power source (where I can buy more "power" in any trail town) — an actual GPS unit is worth it. And these days, the maps are free too, at places like http://gpsfiledepot.com/

I have used the Fortrex401 for off trail-wilderness hiking, lake and ocean kayaking and lake and river canoeing. It's great. Very light, durable, waterproof, accurate, energy efficient and incredibly fast to give a fix from power-off.

Derrick