The Apisphere Geomate Jr. is an extremely easy to use GPS whose purpose is to bring the geocaching experience to everyone.  When the device arrived at our house, my daughter and I were up and running within 5-minutes, and digging through the nearest geocache within 20 minute.   The device consists of a small LCD screen with directional arrow, and a display indicating the distance to the geocache  you are searching for.  The device is preloaded with 250,000 geocaches, and will pull up the nearest 20 caches when it registers its position after being turned on.  You can cycle through this list of caches using the one large button, and the screen will provide an arrow pointing you towards the area along with the distance.  The device also has indicators displaying the relative size of the cache, as well as the difficulty of the terrain around it.

The Geomate Jr. has really shown myself and my family the fun that can be had geocaching.  The device has traveled with us just about everywhere for the last couple of months, and gets pulled out every time we have a few minutes to see if there are any treasures to find in the area.  While I have been familiar with geocaching, and have tried it on several occasions, it has been a fleeting pastime, as I never spent the time to load caches into my (admittedly) outdated  and hard to use GPS unit.  The Geomate Jr. has solved that problem, and allowed myself and my family to just go caching.

When testing the Geomate Jr., the folk at Apisphere (the makers of the Geomate Jr.) and I thought that the best reviewer of the unit would be the person who would use it most; my daughter.  What follows is her review as transcribed by me.  I have made every effort to keep it accurate to her point of view, only correcting for spelling and punctuation.

“The Geomate Jr. is exactly like a GPS but for children.  Always remember to bring a trinket that you do not need anymore so when you find it [a geocache] you can put it in when you find it.  It’s really easy to do so you can trust pretty young kids to use it, but when you are a beginner you should let your parents [help you] use it until you know what to do.  Geomate Jr. is really fun but I have to warn you, some places are not allowed to geocache”

-by Eleanor

When the device arrived, we turned it on, and let it connect with the satellites.  We were so excited about trying the unit that Eleanor was still in soccer cleats, and I was hunting through rocks and bushes in a pair of flip flops.  Eleanor has been enamored with the small items that are often left in the caches, and loves to trade little trinkets with ones that she has collected herself.

We were recently in a California State Park, and fired up the Geomate Jr. only to find out that there were no geocaches within miles of our campsite.  As it turns out, the state parks in California do not allow the placement on geocaches within the park boundaries, so there are no official caches.  The list of caches in the Geomate Jr. are static.  Until recently there has been no way to update them. This has now changed with the release of an update kit which allows the user to connect the Geomate Jr. to your computer, and sync with an updated list of caches.  The update kit also allows one to download caches for different parts of the world.

I do not believe I would have ever discovered how fun geocaching is without experiencing the sport with the Geomate Jr.  I know my 8 year daughter would not have taken to it like she has without an easy to use device that allows her to track down caches on her own, with only a minimal amount of help from adults.  While the Geomate Jr. is a simplistic device with a limited GPS capability, the concept is one that will work for newbies and veterans alike.  The ability to pull out the device and locate the nearest caches in any given area frees up time that would otherwise be spent planning and downloading information to a more traditional GPS.  Both my daughter and I are very impressed with the Geomate Jr.,  and are looking forward to spending much more time in pursuit of those elusive geocaches wherever we may be.