[h8tnlife]

I notice this threat is nearly 2 years old...any new developments in this area? In the market for something and was wondering which lead me to this thread.

[theksmith]

do you already have a smartphone? if so maybe try out one of the apps like Backcountry Navigator (if it's Android), or whatever is currently popular on iOS if it's an iPhone (Gaia or MotionX probably). see if they make sense to you and you like how the whole phone/tablet as a GPS thing works before you invest in a tablet. you might even be happy with just the phone and a good offline map/gps app.

that said, the Galaxy Tab 3 or 4, or that Dell Venue mentioned previously here are all decent tablets that can be found for $150 or less. on the Galaxy Tabs, do not get the "lite" versions, they lack real GPS. and on the Dell, there are a bunch of Venues and only some have real GPS chips so i'd only get an exact model that you know for sure someone else has tried successfully.

tab 4, $147 - http://amzn.to/1U9oz90
or refurb, $115: http://amzn.to/1U9ovpX

[h8tnlife]

Ive got a iphone. and ipad...downloaded the MotionX app.... The maps on there aren't the greatest as they don't show any trails. It doesn't really have a satellite view. Was using the terrain view but was wanting a satellite view. I cannot as of yet figure out how to load any of the google maps onto it yet. I did purchase some sort of add on which I thought would allow me to but its not making any sense to me yet.

[theksmith]

check out the Avenza app, most of the MVUM maps for the National Forests are available for free within the app: http://www.avenza.com/pdf-maps

there are other NF and recreation area maps in there as well which will be more like the traditional paper forest maps than the topos in Gaia or MotionX.

[Bradywgn71]

It's been 2 years since we got our Dell Venue 8 32G (Android). It has built in GPS and is a great little tablet for mapping. Available for $135 on Amazon now. http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Venue-32-...s=dell+venue+8

[rubicontrail.net]

HEMA now offers an app for North America: http://www.hemamaps.com/Home/~/link....8A73721E2&_z=z

Before they only were available in Australia.

[camprats]

Here are my thoughts on apps for off-road navigation. JeepTheUSA.com

[theksmith]

i can no longer recommend Backcountry Navigator for the Android platform. i would urge anyone still using it to try out the $10 app AlpineQuest instead.

Backcountry Navigator has always been a little buggy, but over time the interface has become more complicated and the inconsistent behaviors are still there. i recently tried to show dzJeepChic how to use it and found the app very frustrating.

i've been primarily using AlpineQuest for at least a couple years now. in contrast to BCN, its interface has been refined during that time and i feel it's much more intuitive for beginners. there are also plenty of advanced features if you dig a little deeper into the UI.

the only thing Backcountry Navigator has over AlpineQuest is the ability to use maps from the OpenAndroMaps project. those maps aren't the greatest topos but they have the advantage of being vector format and thus very small file sizes. if you need to use these maps, i'd still suggest another app, Locus, over BCN.

also, for our Premium Club members, note that i've just posted some updates to our pre-downloaded map collection. see the last post here: https://offroadpassport.com/forum/showthread.php?t=370