I often get asked this question. Certainly, I’m not an expert, but I do have opinions. For starters, I’m most familiar with Garmin GPSrs, so that’s all I’ll talk about here. There are also units from Magellan and Delorme.
The basic Garmin handheld is the eTrex series. They have Venture, Legend, and Vista models with increasing features. If you’re considering these, you’ll want one that ends with a “HC” suffix, which means that’s it has a high-sensitivity GPS receiver and a colour screen. The Venture HC is about $130 and the Vista HCx is about $225. You can load caches on to any of these.
The next step up is the GPSMap 60 CSx, which has been a very popular geocaching GPSr, but is starting to show its age. It runs about $340.
The next step up after that are units that can do “paperless” caching — which means that logs, descriptions, and hints are all contained in the GPS. Very handy. There are two units I’d recommend: the Oregon 300 or the Dakota 20. They’re similar units, but the Dakota is smaller. They run $375/$360. Of course there are more expensive versions of both.
One of the problems with Garmin GPS units is that the base map that they come with is quite poor. There are some free maps you can use that aren’t too bad, or you can buy a Garmin map add-on for ~$100.
The newer phones also have reasonable GPS capabilities too (iPhone, Droid, etc) but I don’t know too much about them.
There’s also a VERY basic “GeomateJr” GPS that I haven’t seen or used reviewed here, but it gets positive reviews. It’s a very simple GPS that comes pre-loaded with caches and is only meant for geocaching (and is targeted at kids).
