A good entry level GPS

I had the opportunity to use the Garmin Rino 110 GPS receiver that a friend had purchased for a hunting trip. I was able to use the unit for a number of months this summer and have found the unit to be great for hiking and other “non-demanding” applications. My tests for the unit included Geocaching and hiking.

While hiking and geocaching in relatively open areas, the rino 110 had no problem giving me a good fix on satellites and in very open areas, I had no problem getting 5-8 satellites with WAAS enabled. (WAAS is an option in the GPS signal to increase the accuracy of your positon). However, when I went off the trail and into tree cover, signal quality degraded markedly, and position accuracy decreased dramatically. I never actually lost satellite signal except when in the thick tree cover, but it was spotty enough to lose it for about 30 seconds here and there, and it was enough to be annoying while on the geocache hunt.

Overall, the unit is pretty lightweight, and is designed to be ergonomically grasped. The “click stick” can be a bit touchy to learn right off the bat, but after a few moments use, it is easy to discern the pressure needed to click a selection or move between menu items.

The power button is located on top of the unit very well protected between the GPS and Walkie-Talkie antennas. It has a unique feature that If you press it quickly once while the unit is on, it will turn the backlight on.

The GPS unit does not come with a data cable in the base package, forcing you to enter GPS coordinates by hand. This can quickly lead to a sore thumb if entering a number of coordinates. You can also use up to 8 characters to give each coordinate a unique name. There must be about 50 different icons too for different features, such as hospital, geocache, parking area, restroom, and airport to name a few.

This unit also includes sun/moon times, fishing and hunting times, and some GPS games. These all add value and let you do more with your unit than just find where you are.

I did not have the opportunity to use the Radio on this unit, so I cannot comment on that feature.

Overall, a good GPS for entry level users and for groups such as hunters.