Can I Use My Garmin Nuvi 350 For Geocaching?

Can I Use My Garmin Nuvi 350 For Geocaching?

For regular, more intrepid off-road geocaching, it's a much better economy to simply buy another GPS that is waterproof, robust, and either has long battery life or batteries that can be changed.

Your Garmin Nuvi 350 can find geocaches. No question about that.

The Garmin Nuvi 350 is perfect for geocaching in soooooo many ways:

• It is very accurate. And that's the name of the geocaching game. You want to be able to find your target, be it wedged in a tree, tucked behind a hedge, or swinging from a shop sign.
• It is extremely sensitive. The Garmin 350 will retain its satellite lock and continue showing you the way even if you go under trees, even if you have to stow it in your bag.
• It is small - fits nicely in the hand. It is lightweight. So it's very comfortable to carry with you as you zero in on your geocache.
• The screen is a good size, the display is very clear. It is very easy to read.
• The Garmin 350 displays easy-to-understand information with detailed 2D and 3D maps and up to 500 way points.
• If you already have one, there's no learning curve - you already know how to use it. If you don't have one, the learning curve is extremely shallow. This GPS is very easy to figure out.
• The Garmin 350 is primarily designed as a driving gps - to help you drive to where you're going. And it is stellar at doing that. So, if you need to drive for part of your route, the Garmin 350 has that covered. Once on foot, you switch to 'Pedestrian' mode and again, this 350 GPS does a fabulous job.

So for geocaching, the Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS is very capable. It does the finding very well indeed. However, 3 things make it less than ideal for geocaching:

1. It's not waterproof. You're very likely to get wet while out on your hunts. Unless of course you live and hunt in the dessert. Plastic bags and boxes can give some protection, but really you want the gps to be waterproof to be sure you don't kill it.
2. Battery life. While driving with Garmin 350, there is no power problem because you plug it into the car lighter and use car juice. When you stop, however, you then have about 5 hours or so before you need to recharge. And of course you don't want your gps dying on you. This wouldn't be a problem - maybe just a minor inconvenience - if you could simply take some spare batteries with you. But you can't. Not with the 350.As you can see, this severely limits how far you can go from the car. The battery life could also take away some of the most attractive things about geocaching - such as being able to explore new places further. Such as, having discovered somewhere amazing, being able to decide right there on the spot to stop and enjoy it. With the 350 you're on the clock.
3. Robustness. I don't know how robust the Garmin350 is. The thing is, the more geocaching you do, the more the GPS will get knocked about. I don't know how it will fare. I just don't get the impression it will do well.

Conclusion

Of course you can!