Customer Reviews

Apisphere Geomate Jr. Handheld Geocaching GPS

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I purchased two of these, one for my kids and one for a friend.

THE GOOD
For my kids, this is the perfect unit. We use the geocaching app on my Iphone as our main geocaching tool to get us into the vicinity and then the kids use their Geomate Jr to get them to the cache. My 6 year old can run into trees with it, fall on it, etc and it takes a licking and keeps on ticking (much better than him doing that with my iphone!) Because we have already been geocaching, we were able to understand how to use this tool after a few button pushes. We did a side-by-side test with my iphone and the Geomate jr and the Geomate updated faster than my iphone and was more accurate under heavy tree cover conditions. Under normal conditions, both the Iphone and Geomate Jr updated at similar times and had readings within 2 feet of each other.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT
This tool is billed as the Grab and Go geocaching tool, so easy that it will encourage everyone to get in the game. Well, not quite. If you aren't already very familiar with geocaching, trying to figure out what these buttons mean will just be confusing. You will need to read a book or go on the [...] website before you'll understand what a GC code is or have any clue what those coordinates mean. After you do make a find, you can only mark 20 caches as found. You need the update kit to mark up to 99 caches as found (though they represent that it will eventually be up to 1000 found). However, these issues are not a big deal because after you buy the update kit and do some reading, you're as good as gold.

NO MAPPING
But perhaps the biggest feature that is lacking that truly prevents this unit from being a true Grab and Go unit is the the lack of a mapping capability. For this reason, this is best as a supplemental unit. Mapping is important in geocaching because trying to find a geocache by going 3.6 miles NNE is about impossible to drive to. Roads generally don't travel in the direction that your compass happens to be pointing. And by the time you take a road in that general direction, the compass will be pointing .6 miles West. You could drive around like this all day. The Iphone app shows the map of the area and where the geocache is located on the map so that you can drive to the general vicinity and then get out and hunt. The work around for this lack of a mapping feature on the Geomate Jr. is to go to the geocaching.com website and print out the maps to the geocaches you want to seek. Of course this relegates you to only planned geocaching trips instead of geocaching on the go because you happen to have a few extra minutes like you can do with the Iphone.

SUMMARY
This is a great supplemental unit and a must have for kids in a family of geocachers. However, unless and until they provide a mapping capability on the Geomate Jr., this is not a true Grab and go unit and may not be the best choice as a stand alone unit.

I read an article in a kid's magazine about Geocaching and thought my daughter would be into it. The magazine suggestions the Geomate Jr as a good starter. We were so excited when it arrived in the mail! We got it out of the box, read the directions (which is really just a tiny piece of paper with 3 steps on it) and set out on an adventure! What I found is that it is completely unreliable. It would get us in the general location (within 100 feet) and then go haywire. It would say 18 feet in one direction, you would walk that way, and then all of a sudden, it would say to go 25 feet behind you. We thought maybe it was the location we were at (which had some tree cover) and decided to try the next cache. The next one was over a mile away, which sucks when you're doing this with a 5 year old and the first one produced no results. So we walked on to the next one. The same thing happened. It claimed we needed to go 85 feet in a direction, that lead right through someone's backyard, so we walked around the box. Once we got there, it said we needed to go over 100 feet in the opposite direction. We tried the 3rd cache, and had the same problem. When we got home I went to [...] and checked to see if maybe they are no longer there. They're still there! They had all been found in less than a week! We literally walked over two of them and had no idea, because the Geomate told us we had another 50 feet to go!

The Geomate jr is a great concept. It seems unintimidating for newcomers. It was perfect for my daughter to hold, I didn't worry that she would break it. It was easy for her to read and see where we were going. On our way to the first cache she LOVED it and I thought we had a new hobby. The problem is that it is just not reliable.

I would NOT recommend buying this. It seems like a lot of people have had success, but if it fails to work like ours did, it is going to be hard to get your kids out to try again.

This is the perfect device for on-the-fly geocaching.
I travel alot with work, and I used to find myself wishing I could go geocaching but I didn't have the time or the means to upload caches. With the Geomate.jr, I can just pull it out, turn it on and go. It travels everywhere with me, in fact it has a permanent place in my bag. I would be more upset if I left it behind, than my cell phone!

I have found over 100 caches with the geomate.jr, it is a shame it doesn't give the description of the cache, but with the "found' list, I just log online and read about interesting caches after I have been there. The information it does provide, such as cache size and difficultly is very helpful. I still shy away from small caches! Sometimes I am just not up for the challenge!

I found the navigation to be very accurate, I have never been mis-directed, even in the woods where you would expect coverage to be spotty.

I really would recommend this product to anyone who wants to start geocaching, anyone who has kids and to any seasoned geocachers for the moments when you haven't planned. It is light weight, small, inexpensive and so easy to use! This would make a fantastic gift for young and old!

It was a sunny pleasant day when we tried this puppy out. We tried five different locations. All of which implied that the geocache was not what we were looking for. We would stand still and the geomate jr would say we were jumping and moving sixty feet. We went into woods and we lost signal the GPS unit seemed to have given up. We set the home base standing next to the car door, outside the door, took three steps (that of a nine year old)and it was up to 61 feet away from home base. Save yourself some money and do not invest in this one. Our scouter was very unhappy with it.

This is a great GPSr to start geocaching with for two reasons:
1. This s an inexpensive piece of equipment nessessary for the hunt, so if your'e not sure it's a hobby you are going to stick with it's not to much of an investment.
2. I was having a difficult time learning how to use a traditional GPSr. I bought a Megellan and ETrek, I am sure it was me but had a difficult time learning how to use them..anyway the GMjr is literally a plug, update and go. Very simple to use and understand.
There have been very few caches in what ever area we happen to be in that was not preloaded into the GMjr. We had one situation that coordinates were updated on the Geocaching website but didn't get updated thru the GMjr update website. dont know how that works either;)
All in all we really love the Geomate Jr. and we plan to stick with it but dont have plans at this time to do any further investing in a GPSr as we feel this is all our family needs. We are not the survivalist type and dont plan to do any hard core mountiain/valley terrain type of hunting.
It's a great way to get your kids outdoors (our kids are 8 and 11)

Let me start by saying it does function well, gives me good information on the caches it has stored, and is a hearty little unit, plus the price is great, but...

1. I have found that a lot of the caches that I am searching for are not stored in it, so if want those I will have no choice but to spend an extra $25-$30 to get the update kit.

2. It has started to eat batteries for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I've gotten to the point that I'm not leaving batteries in it, because even with the unit turned off, I would have to replace the batteries everyday, if I didn't.

3. It doesn't come with an instruction manual. You can get one online, but, obviously, it's not as convienient as getting one in the package, so you can start using the unit, even if you don't have immediate internet access.

4. It's not backlit. This means, if you night cache you have to hold a flashlight as well.

5. You cannot input coordinates. I knew that buying it, and I'm ok with that, just passing that info along.

Overall, I DO like this little GPS. My son and I use it to geocache. He's 5 and it's not simple enough for him to use all the functions on it, but he can certainly use it to cache with me. It's resiliant, and colorful so if you drop it in the woods you do have a half-decent chance at finding it again. It does take it a minute to figure out where in the world it's at, but not too awful long. Perfect for caching with kids if they are a little older (8 or 9ish on up) and want to be the guide.

I think I'm going to contact the company about the battery issue, otherwise I'm going to keep the unit. Though I will be getting a grown-up version of it very soon.

The geomate jr. is very user friendly, even for the kids. The coordinates are spot on in most instances. My only complaint is how many local caches are not in the unit. I will be getting the update kit, hopefully it will be easy to use and solve that problem.

We bought two of these for our grandsons for Christmas. We also ordered one update kit so we could update them for them periodically. Since it is winter here they haven't even had a chance to use them yet other than to find some "dummy" caches that we hid prior to Christmas for them to find. Today there is a notice on the Geomate Jr website that the unit is no longer available for purchase and the update service has been discontinued. They do say they have made software available that will enable a user to load a pocket query from geocaching.com. Had we known this was going to be the case we would never have bought the units. I can't say how well the units will work, but I am not happy about the purchase and would not recommend them to anyone.

I purchased this unit for my son, after being an experienced geocacher. We were truly disappointed.It lacks the maps and has prepogrammed caches. It actually has very few listed. At first we thought that it just needed to be updated, but that was not the case. It becomes very frustrating if used as a stand alone. The same money would be better spent for a true gps unit that uses maps and coordinates. They package info is deceiving. Not for the beginner.

Being new to geocaching and not very high-tech we were looking for an inexpensive kid-friendly experience. The Geomate Jr. fit the bill. As soon as we took it out of the package and put the batteries in, it started working. We followed the pointing arrows and walked to find our first geocache, how exciting!

It's true it doesn't have a map of the geocaches, it works more like a compass with arrows telling you how far you are to the next cache. We can drive along in the car with it and when the distance gets closer to a cache we park and walk to find it.

We have other geocaching friends who use GPS or phone devices but we have found the Geomate Jr. to update coordinates faster and give better results. The Geomate Jr. comes programmed with geocaches. If you want an update you'll need to buy the update cord. With the update cord you can also program custom caches from your area.

We have been very pleased with the Geomate Jr. and it's kid-friendly appeal.