Hey guys I have been doing some lobstering last couple of years with charters gets expensive. Im looking to do my own thing now I need to purchase a good handheld are portable gps with sd slot for uploading waypoints any suggestins ???????
I'll throw out some suggestions but I'm by no means a handheld GPS expert. Get a unit marketed as marine. I think most units are decently waterproof but one thing I learned when I bought a non-marine Magellan (Triton 2000 - great features but old tech now) is that units meant for hiking or geocaching may not work as ideally for marine use. The default waypoint mode on that unit was to put the waypoint where the cursor was, not at the current location. Not a big deal on land to navigate through a few screens to put it at the current location, but something else on the water, in bright sunlight, with spray, and busy with your hands full. That one also opened maps by default to the highest zoomed-in level, which I hated.
Handheld units are a real compromise for map navigation. They're glorified electronic compasses with a pointer and range feature and gigantic trade-off between detail and perspective on their small low-res screen. That's all you really need for finding dive spots, so even a fairly inexpensive unit should work fine. If you want chart navigation as well, get the largest and brightest color screen you can afford, and bring extra batteries. Sunlight performance of some screens is awful, even in text mode. I have a Garmin Montana 600 now that has a "big" nicely bright screen, and I think the Oregon and Colorado units are similar, though smaller. If conditions permit, a tablet with a navigation app seems like a better way to display charts on a portable unit, though the apps are not as refined for navigation features as the dedicated units. The Montana can upload a very limited number of free charts, for most other units I'm pretty sure you pay for having any variety of maps or charts, so look into that if its important to you. IMO the Tritons were in a class by themselves for user map and image flexibility, but maybe for obvious revenue reasons they didn't last long, and had horrible screens for sunlight use.
I find touch screens to be far from ideal for boat use, but maybe conditions are more leisurely there in sunny FLA!
If you don't need a handheld unit, an installed marine unit is the way to go by far.
