It’s B’s birthday in a few days, and I’m trying to figure out what to get him. My current thought is either a GPS data logger or a GPS watch. He really enjoys hiking, and he enjoys checking out his hiking routes on Google Earth after he’s finished, so with a GPS logger, he’d be able to easily see where he went and how long it took and so on. It also might be useful for the trail running he does occasionally.

On the other hand, he takes a GPS with him when he hikes – one that’s at least 10 years old, is fairly big and clunky, and has very limited functionality. Basically, he will take a GPS reference periodically, mostly so that if he gets lost, the GPS reference might be helpful in finding his way back. I think he’d enjoy having a newer, very light device he could just look at for his position and easily take a reference point on.

I guess the third option would be a spiffy new lightweight GPS.

Any thoughts or recommendations? I found this data logger – it seems to be the best rated pure logger and comments indicate it should do what I think he’d want fairly easily.

The GPS watches I looked at seemed giant and clunky; I’m not sure he’d be happy with a giant watch.