most recent reviews on amazon rate this 1 out of 5 stars.
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Bushnell ONIX 400 GPS with XM NEXRAD Weather [New, Retail Box] - $79.99 + $5 shipping
1 * Bushnell ONIX 400 3.5" GPS w/XM NEXRAD Weather and Georeference Satellite Photography
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In my limited experience with geocaching, the GPS is only needed to get you to the coordinates. From there, your powers of reason and deduction are what get you to the cache. As long as you can manually enter coordinates, you should be fine.
The only exception I can think of might be the overly elaborate riddles sometimes included with them, covering multiple miles (necessitating driving), where road data would make life easier.
I purchased three of these GPS units from woot in early December, 2009. All of the units tend to hang when they start up.
The price has dropped from $99.99 to $79.99. The ONIX 400 GPS comes with a one year warranty from Bushnell.
could this also be used for roads?
Is this the gen 1 or gen 2 model?
Although I have no personal experience with this device, according to the description, this only does topographic data and satellite imagery. So unless the roads you’re traveling on are included on the satellite imagery, I’d say no, it’s probably not very useful on the road.
Bought one of these last time they were on Woot. All in all its a decent little unit, but there are some things that I wish they would have mentioned (or I would have researched) the first time around.
The unit is great for day trips and hikes. There is a special geocaching function if you’re into that kind of thing that makes it fun and easy.
The satelite map that is pre-loaded on the device is adequate for hiking and the like but cannot be used for turn-by turn city navigation effectively. Even if you were to purchas more detailed maps they have a limit of a 3km radius (i believe).
Also, the subscription to the XM service for weather is ridiculously overpriced. There is only one level of service with an activation cost of $100 and a further charge of $99.99 for every month of use. This is above and beyond the much cheaper price you’d pay to have it act as a radio reciever.
All in all, its a decent device for day to day users. Wasn’t all that hard to set up and the battery life is decent (which is great cause you cant replace them). If you’re looking at the amazing weather functions, don’t plan on being able to use them unless you are willing to shell out double the price you pay for it within the first month.
Probably gen 1. I got one in my last BOC and it was a gen 1. From what I understand the gen 1 and gen 2 are identical hardware, just different firmware. I’ve downloaded the gen 2 firmware but haven’t gotten around to installing it. As far as I can tell from the docs the gen 2 just adds an almanac feature that might be good for hunters and fishermen, but I don’t do either.
Otherwise, it’s a moderately decent unit. Maps and satellite overlays are way overpriced, as is the XM service. It should be serviceable for geocaching, and certainly better than my ancient Cobra GPS. Hopefully I can get out and find a couple caches this weekend.
Can I load this with nautical charts?
I just pulled the trigger. Taking a risk, I’d say the reviews were 50/50. For 80 dollars, I think it’s worth a try. Bushnell is a trusted name in my house.
Had problems with it hanging then got it back and the XM reception sux. Don’t recommend this until Garmin or Magellin jump in.
…oh, and they wanted to charge me $10 bucks to fix it when it didn’t work out of the box!
“(accepts microSD cards up to at least 512mb )”
Can you even buy a sub-1Gb SD card any longer? How old is this thing?
The XM NavWeather Pricing is as follows acoording to the XM web site.
XM Radio Only $12.95 monthly
XM Radio + XM NavWeather $16.94 monthly
XM NavWeather Only $9.95 monthly
I have one of these from a previous wooting. So do my dad and my brother. The thing has a bit of a learning curve, and there are bugs and annoyances in the PC software and map website, but overall I’m really happy with the unit.
I have used it for hiking, my brother uses the XM weather when flying, and my dad listens to the the XM radio when he’s hunting… pretty much any outdoors-y person can find something to love about this unit (except the PC software).
The last time this was offered, woot had a special on an extra battery and car charger for dirt cheap. I was stupid and didn’t get it; don’t make the same mistake I did if they do this again!
“up to at least”
Haha love it
Does anyone know the scale of the base map? Is it enough to be useful as long as I’m not expecting detailed topo maps?
No.
The basemap only shows major highways and you can’t use the map for routing.
If anyone gets one for geocaching, be sure to check out GPS Babel. It’s the best way to convert .gpx waypoints to the Bushnell format. And don’t expect anything resembling “paperless caching” - all you get is the GC code and coordinates. As paractical limit, I’d stay below 400 or so waypoints, the bootup time is very slow if you try to load too many.
Similar situation with the downloadable maps. A couple square miles is OK, try loading 100 square miles and the boot-up is painfully slow and so is loading the map screens.
I bought this item back in december for 99 bucks. It truely suck wang!. The barring arrow is off by about 65 degree making it worthless. Woot would not give me my money back and told me to settle with Bushnell. I retuned it to Bushnell and 6 weeks later it came back with the same problem! I have to now send it in a second time. Total regret!