Garmin has introduced the Garmin Dakota 10 and Dakota 20 handheld GPS units that are going to take up the place in the line as the smaller siblings to the Garmin Oregon. The smaller, touchscreen units still boast a well appointed feature list. While the unit is smaller that the eTrex, with the screen size stretching across almost the entire front of the unit, the screen is actually a bit larger than the Garmin eTrex series, coming in at 2.6" diagonally. The new operating system offers paperless geocaching, and comes pre-loaded with a world basemap, offering the easy ability to add Garmin City Navigator NT street maps, Blue Chart g2 marine charts, and TOPO U.S. 24K and 100K that will load into the 850 MB of onboard memory.

• Dakota 10 - Offers 850 MB of memory, world base map, touchscreen interface, 20 hour battery life on two "AA" batteries, and has the same spine format to accept all of the Oregon and Colorado mounts and accessories. It will connect to your PC or Mac via USB. List Price $299.


• Dakota 20 - Adds a 3-axis compass, barometric altimeter, a microSD card slot, and wireless connectivity to other Garmin handhelds like the Oregon, Colorado, and Foretrex units (Other Dakotas as well). List Price $349.

These should be available in July.

Full Press Release Below......

Garmin® announces Dakota™ touchscreen outdoor handhelds,
simple to use and simple to afford

OLATHE, Kan./June 26, 2009/Business Wire -- Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), the global leader in satellite navigation, today announced the Dakota 10 and Dakota 20 handheld GPS navigators, packing a high sensitivity GPS receiver, worldwide basemap and color touchscreen display into a compact, waterproof device with up to 20 hours of battery life.

"As families and friends explore the outdoors - from an exotic locale to the local park - Dakota helps keep their adventures affordable and enjoyable," said Dan Bartel, Garmin's vice president of worldwide sales. "While kids have fun with Dakota's small size and simple interface, parents can take comfort in never losing their way thanks to high-sensitivity GPS and extended battery life."

Lightweight, rugged and waterproof, Garmin's new Dakota devices quickly acquire and maintain satellite reception - even in heavy tree cover or deep canyons - thanks to a high-sensitivity GPS receiver with HotFixTM, which automatically calculates and stores critical satellite information and can use that information to quickly calculate a position. Everyone from geocachers and youth scouts to surveyors and hunters can take advantage of Dakota's 850 MB of internal memory, which can store up to 1,000 waypoints, 50 routes, 2,000 geocaches and an active tracklog of up to 10,000 points and 200 saved tracks.

Based on the innovative interface of Garmin's award-winning Oregon series, Dakota's glove-friendly, color 2.6-inch touchscreen display is easy to read and use in all conditions, responsive to the touch of your finger, yet resistant to the forces of nature. Weighing only 6.75 ounces, Dakota lasts up to 20 hours on two AA batteries and can connect to your PC or Mac via USB connection.

Dakota 20 adds even more features, including a 3-axis compass, barometric altimeter, a microSD card slot for increased mapping and memory storage, and wireless unit-to-unit connectivity for sharing your waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches wirelessly with compatible Dakota, Oregon, Colorado and Foretrex devices. Dakota 20's 3-axis, tilt-compensated electronic compass shows your heading even when you're standing still, without needing to hold it level.

It's fun and easy to get into paperless geocaching with Dakota. You can download up to 2,000 caches, with information such as location, terrain, difficulty, hints and description -- no more paper print outs and manually entered coordinates. Visit Garmin.com/geocache for more information.

Dakota comes preloaded with a worldwide basemap and is compatible with Garmin City Navigator NT for turn-by-turn directions on city streets, Blue Chart g2 for marine charting, and TOPO U.S. 24K and 100K map software for incredible terrain detail (each sold separately).

Dakota 10 and Dakota 20 are the latest breakthroughs from Garmin, which has spent 20 years using technology and innovation to enhance users' lives, making Garmin a household name in the automotive, aviation, marine, wireless, outdoor and fitness industries. For more about features, pricing and availability, as well as information about Garmin's other products and services, go to www.garmin.com, www.garmin.blogs.com and http://twitter.com/jakesjournal.

DeLorme announced their new PN-30 handheld today packing it with enough goodies and pricing it well at $299. The little green handheld comes with the ability to load it up with aerial photography, topographic maps, and NOAA nautical charts.   The included PN-Series Map DVDs will transfer maps to the PN-30 or an SD card, from either PCs or Macs. The up-to-date detail includes U.S. topography, U.S. and Canada streets, roads, and places of interest, and Mexico main roads. The other maps area available as downloads that cost extra.

The waterproof (IPX7) color handheld is also available in Realtree camo too. Expect it to hit the stores in July.

Full Press Release below.....

YARMOUTH, ME ― DeLorme, the innovation leader in mapping and GPS technology for outdoor adventures, today announced its upcoming release of the Earthmate PN-30 handheld GPS receiver. It offers top-end GPS capabilities, plus the PN-Series' exclusive aerial imagery display features, but it's also affordably priced and easy to use.

DeLorme PN-Series topographic map DVDS are included for effortless transfers to the device; users can load the maps they need and be ready to go within minutes of opening the package. In the field, users will discover lightning-quick satellite acquisition, thanks to the high-sensitivity 32-channel Cartesio chipset. Signal retention is ultra-reliable even in dense forests. A powerful dual-core processor renders map and imagery screen views with instantaneous speed. The PN-30 is waterproof and WAAS-enabled for superior accuracy, and has a bright-color TFT screen for readability in any light conditions. With all those features, the PN-30 carries a remarkably affordable $299.95 suggested retail price.

Detailed Maps, Aerial Imagery, NOAA Nautical Charts
The included PN-Series Map DVDs will transfer maps to the PN-30 or an SD card, from either PCs or Macs. The up-to-date detail includes U.S. topography, U.S. and Canada streets, roads, and places of interest, and Mexico main roads. Also included is a sample certificate for the online DeLorme Map Library, where users can go to download aerial imagery, USGS 1:24,000 topographic quads, and NOAA nautical charts. All Map Library downloads can be sent directly to, and displayed on the PN-30. For a low-cost $29.95 annual subscription, users can download and keep all the Map Library maps and imagery they want (PC and Mac accessible).

With all these map and imagery options, the PN-30 offers exceptional versatility for a wide range of activities, including hiking, mountain biking, fishing, boating, kayaking, geocaching, and more. No other handheld GPS provider can match DeLorme's map and supplemental data offerings.

Support for Navionics Charts
The PN-30 also displays Navionics HotMaps (lake) and Gold (marine) charts, which are sold separately by major boating and sporting goods suppliers. Widely recognized as the leader in charts by boaters and anglers, Navionics charts come on SD cards that are instantly recognized by the PN-30; no setup is required.

Unique Topo USA Mapping Software Included
For desktop mapping on the PC, the PN-30 comes with newly-released DeLorme Topo USA 8.0 DVD software. Users can scout their trips in advance, create road and trail routes automatically, print maps, geo-tag photos with their exact GPS location and much more.

Paperless Geocaching
The PN-30 and Topo USA provide a wide range of paperless geocaching capabilities. There is a virtually unlimited character count for cache descriptions, and the new Cache Register widget (available only online from DeLorme) enables fast and easy synchronization of Pocket Query search results from Geocaching.com.

Rock-Solid Reliability
The PN-30 has an impact-resistant and waterproof (IPX7) rubberized housing. PN-Series receivers have performed successfully in some of the world's most extreme conditions ─ most recently during this year's Victorinox North Pole 09 expedition, and famed climber Ed Viesturs' May ascent of Mt. Everest.