Being "in the business" I have a range of GPS receivers to choose from. In the past I've used on of the orginal Garmin single channel units, Eagle/Lowrance 12-channel units, Lowrance and Garmin mapping units, Magellan 310 and 315 as back up units, and I recently purchased a Garmin GPS 72. I tried a Garmin Geko 201 for a week, but found the screen so small as to be unusable, though the small overall size of the unit is what first drew me to it. I traded up (USD$20) to the GPS 72. (Both the Geko 201 and the GPS 72 are WAAS capable.)

What you want is dependant upon what you want to use it for. If you only ever want the GPS to provide a position input for your laptop then the Geko 201 (USD$119~$139) would be ideal. If you want to use it for other purposes, you may need to think about all the ways you might want to use it, and research the market.


As far as Mac compatibility, as long as the computer as a serial communications port, almost any GPS would be compatible. There is a standard (NMEA-0183 v2.xx) that determines how marine devices like GPS (and now other non-marine devices as well) talk to each other. You'd have to look hard to find a modern GPS that does not output NMEA-0183 data.