Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting GPS Topo Program & Tablet

First a little background. I own an old Garmin eTrex Summit. It works fine. Simple to operate and reliable. I decided to upgrade to a unit that has Topo maps on the screen.

So I bought a Garmin gpsMap64st and I also bought the high definition topo maps. That was $500 down a rat hole. The screen is too small, the topo doesn't include names of features like mountain tops, creek names, etc., so it's difficult to locate your position on the topo map. The "Go To" function operates so slowly that it can actually send you off in the wrong direction. What a scam!

I'm back to using my little eTrex Summit. But I still want to get a system that combines GPS location with topo maps. A friend has a program on his smart phone but the company has announced that they are planning to discontinue servicing the program.

FIRST QUESTION: What tablet should I buy?

SECOND QUESTION: What program should I buy?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

KC

Can't help too much on the first question except to say that we own an iPad Air 2 and it's been just fine, but we don't use it for anything like you're suggesting. As far as programs, I've been using Gaia GPS for a little over a year on my smartphone and been pretty happy with it. The only flaw I've found is that if you're logging over a long period of time the app starts to get a little slow, it's probably a function of how often it's set to log location, but I haven't messed around with it enough to remedy the issue.

OnX Maps. Works great on an iPhone. Satellite imagery with topo lines is nice!

+1 On this. I have it on my android and it works great. You can plot points on your computer and save them and have them show up on your phone when you open the app. Turn everything off except the GPS when out hunting and the battery lasts pretty decent. Plus, while your out you have a phone too.