Best Dedicated GPS Units
A standalone GPS unit used to be the only way to know where you were. Now it is a deliberate choice, made for specific reasons, and those reasons are worth being clear about.
Do not buy one for navigation alone. Your phone has a better screen, better maps and a better interface, and with maps downloaded it works without signal. For day walks, city travel and most hiking, that is the end of the discussion.
Buy one for these reasons instead:
- Battery independence. Days of use from AA cells or a long-life internal pack, where a phone navigating continuously lasts hours. On a multi-day trip with no power this is the whole argument.
- Durability and gloves. Physical buttons work wet, cold and gloved. Touchscreens do not, and a phone in the rain becomes unusable at exactly the wrong moment.
- Satellite messaging, which is the most valuable feature in the category and has nothing to do with maps. A unit that sends an SOS and two-way texts with no cell coverage is genuinely a safety device. Garmin's inReach line is the usual answer; recent phones now offer emergency satellite SOS, which covers some but not all of this.
What to look for if you do buy: multi-band satellite reception, which is the real technical advance since this category's heyday and makes a large difference in canyons and under tree cover; the ability to load free open maps rather than only paid ones; and a subscription you understand, because the messaging devices all have one.
The honest summary: most people should carry a phone with offline maps and a paper map. People going somewhere remote should add a satellite messenger, and that is the dedicated device worth owning.
Part of the guide to gadgets and power.