Best GPS System

Garmin Dakota 10 Waterproof Hiking GPS

Outdoor navigation meets touchscreen simplicity in Dakota 10. This rugged, palm-sized navigator boasts touchscreen navigation, high-sensitivity GPS with HotFix satellite prediction, and a worldwide basemap in one affordable, power-packed punch.

Touchscreen navigation, high-sensitivity GPS with HotFix satellite prediction, and a worldwide basemap. Click to enlarge.

(Click on image below to change view.) 2.6-inch touchscreen with easy-to-use interface.

Touchscreen navigation for the great outdoors.

Touch and Go
Dakota 10 makes outdoor navigation effortless with a tough, sunlight-readable, 2.6 inch color touchscreen display. The interface is easy to use, so you'll spend more time enjoying the outdoors and less time searching for information. Both durable and waterproof, Dakota 10 is built to withstand the elements: bumps, dust, dirt and water are no match for this rugged navigator.

Find Fun
Get into paperless geocaching with Dakota 10 by quickly downloading up to 2,000 caches, with information such as location, terrain, difficulty, hints and description--no more paper print outs and manually entered coordinates.

Explore the Terrain
Dakota 10 comes with built-in worldwide basemap, so you can navigate anywhere with ease. Adding more maps is easy with Garmin's wide array of detailed topographic, marine and road maps, which can be loaded to internal memory.

What's in the Box
Dakota 10, Lanyard, USB cable, Owner's manual on disk, Quick start manual

$239.94

User Reviews about Garmin Dakota 10 Waterproof Hiking GPS

I was skeptical about the Dakota 10 by Garmin because it lacked the SD card port and also lack of compass, but I found that the memory was more then sufficient. I've loaded (being piggish) the entire West Coast topo maps + marine Maps + Navigator city in this unit and no problems. Also my 4 year old managed to get her hands on it and dropped it in the dishwasher when her mom was not looking - and it worked fine after a full wash cycle, very impressive for the little Dakota. The screen has been criticized as being not bright enough - well mine looks perfectly readable in all light. Maybe it's an adjustment issue for some. And lastly I LOVE the touch screen. Best interface ever. I get about 16 hours with rechargeable batts which is ok - a tiny bit weaker then my old 60cs. Overall no complaints and a few nice surprises. -- Tough little GPS

I like the paperless caching. Accuracy is not as good as the 60Cx but is much better than the E-Trex. The maps (which cost extra) are not as good as the Delorme PN 30 (which comes with it), but the battery life is much better. -- Good Geocaching GPS

I at first hesitated to buy this GPS unit. I was one of the first people to buy a Colorado when they came out and I was so disappointed with that unit for Geocaching that I sent it back and lost $50 on restock. So when I saw this unit come out I was not sold. When the GPS came in I took it along side my trusty GPSmap 60CSX to the mountains of Western North Carolina. I fired up both units before we left on a 6 mile 1700 elevation hike. The first thing I noticed in the canyon that we were in was the my trusty 60csx and and older 60c were both having trouble getting a lock, I looked down and the Dakota 10 was already locked and ready for the hike. Once on the hike I was amazed at the ease of use of this unit and how easy it was to get geocaching information out of the unit. If I saw a cache nearby that looked interesting I simply tapped on its cache icon and the cache name appeared at the top of the screen, I then simply touched the name at the top of the unit and out came all the information I needed to find the cache. I also appreciated that you can use the map to find a cache as well as the compass. Before the end of the hike I had put my ToPo card in my old 60 CSX and was using it as my backup and I was using the Dakota as my primary unit. When I got home and connected the unit to my PC I was pleasantly surprised to have the field notes download all the caches with the notes I had made right on the geocaching page for me to log with the time and dates of the finds. There are a few things that I do not like about the unit listed below but they are nit picky at best. I am very impressed with what this little guy can do.

Pros: Easy to use, great for geocaching, compact
Cons: little hard to read the display in some lighting, no audible tones -- Love this little unit