I'm looking to get a hand held GPS. Garmin eTrex, or a Magellan sporttrack. What do you recommend? The soul purpose, it to measure top speed. Are these hand helds able to pick up a signal at speed around 80 MPH? Do they have a memory, so you can go back and check the speed. The Garmin is a little less money. The Magellan has (WASS) ?

Thanks, Kirk

If you are concerned with navigation get a WAAS capable unit. If not, they all do pretty well at measuring top speed. And most have a top speed saving feature. I personally am a Garmin fan, I own two (hand held and dash mounted chart plotter). The both show speed with immediate changes noted and I knw they measure WELL over 80 mph. I've used my hand held to get top speeds on land vehicles at times too. To date Rambunctious has had mine the fastest while in Europe for work. Something like 123 mph or something.

Mike

I've got a handheld. I think any of them will pickup fine at 80 mph, just be sure the display is big enough to read at that speed. With mine mounted on top of the dash, between waves and wind in my face, it's tough to read above 40. I've got a 3 year old Garmin. My old boat had more of a windshield and the gps was mounted about 12" closer to me. It was easier to read. It would be nice if they had one Page that simply showed speed, then you could keep your eyes where they are suposed to be.

If all you want is spped then the garmin e-trex can be had for $99. It reads just fine at 90, at least in the truck and 60's when I had it in the beak boat.

Numbers are small on most hand helds a mounted unit with the larger numbers is sure nice. I also have a maping hand held and have come to the conclusion that for ease of reading my next maping unit will be color.

Thats also a marine unit, very easy to use and LOVE IT! It has a memory for trip odometer, stopped time, moving time, overall average speed, total time traveled, max speed, and odometer for total distance. It will remember this info indefinitely until you manually clear it. I bought and returned 5 different units and 3 makes before landing on this one, and it has mapping capabilities with local marine maps that are downloadable into the unit, plus it lets you plot a course on your computer before leaving so you can load it into the GPS. Price was $369.00, a little more pricey than some, but its like buying engine parts... spend the extra money. Also the dealer I bought from has a 30 day trial so you can find a unit you are comfortable using to fit your needs, and thank god or I would have been stuck with a white elephant.You can also watch where you are in detail on a laptop, a lifesaver in fog, and it's accurate as hell.

http://www.garmin.com/index.html

Thanks for the reply's, The Garmin is $99.99 and Magellan has a $50 rebate untill the end of September on all medallion models. Making the sport $109.99. I was concerned about the memory recall, I want to be concentrating on driving, not looking for a tiny number on a 2 inch screen.

Thanks Kirk

I've got the Garmin GPSMap76 and love it. The charting is great as is the trip computer info. I bought mine Here for 314 + actual shipping.

ttt

Make sure you measure both ways and take an average.