Hi all. I am looking for input, and I know that I will get the answer I need from you all here. Ok, now that the sucking up is done with, on to the question. I am looking for a good GPS unit. Must meet the following criteria.

Hand Held
Preferably water and dust proof
Not outragiously priced
Contains maps or can be uploaded with maps of middle east and asia

Thanks in advance

Hi iljeepguy,

For the maps, would ordinary "streetmaps" be fine or are you looking for Topographical (i.e. showing land relief) maps? Also, what sort of target price range are you looking at?

Cheers,
Stephen.

Garmin Legend fits all your criteria, i have one it works great! Waterproof i think or it floats at least. dustproof, and you can hold 8 megabites of maps on there. We have a program with THE US AND SOUTH AMERICA on our laptop and we download what we need from that or we can use both at the same time if you have a car/laptop charger.

All for about $200 <img src="images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

As far as I know, the Magellan series is your only option.

Garmins are nice for the areas that they cover, but they do not have ANY products, as far as I know, which have any Asia maps. So you would be stuck with the inadequate basemap for USA or Europe. You would get the country borders and maybe one or two major cities per country.

Magellan offers their WorldWide BaseMap product. It is likely to be a little sparse, but will certainly be better than nothing. You can expect many major roads, and probably many if not most cities and towns. It even has crude topo data.

http://www.magellangps.com/en/products/product.asp?PRODID=182

This product will work with the Meridian series, or the mapping Sportrak units. I would recommend the Meridian Gold.

If anyone has the answer it would be these guys...

http://gpsinformation.net/

By all means, check out www.gpsexplorer.com - some guys I know run the site (no I don't get any $$ for this) and they provide EXTENSIVE reviews of all the GPS units you could want.

Thanks for the input so far. Basically, the price range is around 200 or so, give or take. I also understand I will have to buy the world map software for which ever system for another 100 or thereabouts. According to http://gpsinformation.net the world map features are available to both Garmin and Magellan, but the Magellan seems more topo oriented, and the Garmin seems more "tourist" oriented with a few more features like major landmarks and such. Steering more toward the Magellan at this point. Further help still welcomed.