I honestly haven't gotten too much into the geocaching and I'm not fond of it. When we try to do "together things" like hiking or biking, stopping for geocaches just slows me down so much I get frustrated. I've not tried it just for fun myself -- so maybe that might make a difference. My husband only used his phone for the longest time (AT&T) and it was fine for the more urban geocaching (in fact, he found a cache right outside the surgical center where I had some hardware removed from my leg this morning!). Now that he does it more in the woods, he does have a different unit. If you're interested in the more rural type of geocaching -- you might look for "kids" versions of GPS units. We got my son one from the boyscout website that wasn't fancy but got the job done and was affordable (it was actually a cub scouts activity that got everyone interested in geocaching!)