I went with a Magellan eXplorist 210. It tracks my location, shows me on the map, differentiates the roads and my trail with a solid and dashed line (respectively) it is only 2d, has lots of software to buy (if you ever want it) built in memory, grayscale, came with a usb cable, "jeep" power cable (sorry, didn't want to kill a kitten today), full USA map, and carrycase for under $150. It is discontinued, but that is why the price is so low. I love it.


http://www.magellangps.com/products/....asp?segID=355

 

Thats actually a nice rig! I wonder are most handhelds a lot cheaper than dash mounts?

 

TOPO maps are different from your street maps, They will show you elevation contours, See the sample maps below,
This first picture is of my XOG near Moab, Standard Base map ( red dotted lines are Tracks Displayed)


Now this is with the TOPO map, you can see elevation Contours

 

May be the TOPO works in Florida, but out west it sucks, The Garmin TOPO is all to cluttered and all you see is the Contour lines and it is next to impossible to see any roads or trails..
One of the main problems I have with the Quest is it's lack of track support, and you can not change the color of your track either ( ACTIVE LOG)
It is just not as easy to use as other Garmin units like the 60/76 series
JMO

Here are some samples of the same map area and you can clearly see the minor roads in both the Delorme and Lowrance maps but the Garmin is all topo lines ,look close and you might find a road or trail.

 

i dont know what you mean by "long trail tracking" but just yesterday, i recorded a trail that was not in the mygig. i was in the san bernardino forest and came across a us forest road that was not coming up on the nav screen. i got onto the main menu and pressed the "record new trail" key and drove about 10 miles into it. my new trail came up on screen as a yellow line. at the end of the trail, i pushed the "stop/save trail" key then the "stop and save the current trail" key. the new trail was automatically named with the date and time i saved it. at that time, the screen asked if i wanted to change the name (i did). the trail was saved in the "saved locations" menu. now when i want to go back to that location, i just go onto the nav menu and pull it up under the "saved locations."

so far this is working out well for me.

 

I'm thinking about one of these.
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?...2&locale=en_US

Dual purpose, both water and land maps.

 

Very nice albeit very pricey, the 276/376/ series are also very good units.
The bad thing about them are it uses an older gps chip and proprietary garmin memory cards.
Garmin should be updating this line soon.

 

I really like that idea, Sounds user friendly anyhow! By long trail runs I mean would it record your path for say... 50 miles or more.

 

Thanks for that reply rwamf, that makes much more scence!!!

 

rwamf your knowledge of the various gps units seems to be pritty insane!

so for a dash mount and tracking abilities you still recommend the lowarnce?

also, any ideas if the unit does a GREAT job on the US maps, and a not so great job on the Canadian Maps? As I'll be looking for a unit thats great in Canada.