Hi guys, just lost my bicep strap GPS unit that was old tech when I bought it. but Im in the market for a new unit and the qualities I need are Simple to use because I dont want to scroll thru menus in the surf without my glasses on.
And Accurate because Im testing products so I need to have accurate numbers to compare.
The ability to download onto a map would be good too.
Budget is $800.
Any suggestions please ?

How accurate is accurate????

the GW60 is very convenient, there's a thread about it on this forum.
It has "SDoP" output which gives an indication of accuracy for each point, typically 0.2kts.

So here's the 2s results from my GW60, you can see the +/- values are between 0.111kts and 0.232kts
It's also 5hz which gives good definition at short times.

It's somewhere between $360 and $300, I think Surf Sail Australia have them 20% off at the moment.



And here's the tracks from it loaded into GPSvisualizer.com colour coded by speed

I'd have to agree with Decrepit (though, disclaimer, I sell GW60s on my website so bound to be biased.) If battery life is a consideration for you, this is probably the only major weakness of the GW60. You can't run it for 12 hours straight without charging it.

Display-wise it is easy to use, once you've set it up the way you want it you press a button to go and press the same button to stop and that's all.

If you have a Mac, it's a bit more fiddly to set up to retrieve the data from, but still doable.

And, this wasn't mentioned above, it's a watch, so no aqua-pack.

Dylan is correct, but here is further explanation:

If you have a Mac it is just as easy to download the files once it is in the correct mode (USM), maybe easier, but you can't use the desktop utility for setting up the device or downloading files as it is Windows only. You must do the settings on the watch itself, which certainly could be described as 'more fiddly'.

Battery life in GPS use is around the 6hr mark, maximum, between charging.

The other limitation of using the GW60 with a Mac, is that you can't upload the new firmware and matching utility. If you can get a friend to do this on a PC, then downloading session files on the Mac using USM mode is easy. Setting up the watch on the watch is also easy once you have done it once or twice.

The other good thing is that with an $800 budget, you can easily afford to buy two of them. ;)

Select to expand quote

John340 said..
The other limitation of using the GW60 with a Mac, is that you can't upload the new firmware and matching utility. If you can get a friend to do this on a PC, then downloading session files on the Mac using USM mode is easy. Setting up the watch on the watch is also easy once you have done it once or twice.

I have a feeling that surffoils isn't in the GTC. Most of the advantages of the latest firmware, probably aren't that mush use to him. Although the time stuff may be