What you actually need to start geocaching

A modern phone receives the same satellite constellations a handheld does and locates itself well enough for the great majority of caches. It also carries the listing, the description, the hint, the recent logs and the map, which is most of what actually finds a cache — and the recent logs in particular are worth more than accuracy, because "found it easily, look higher" is information no receiver has.

What a phone is bad at is being wet, being cold, and lasting all day with the screen on. Those are the problems worth solving first, and none of them costs much.

• A pen that works outdoors — The commonest reason a find cannot be logged. Log sheets are small, often damp, and the pen in a cache is frequently dead or missing. A pressurised or pencil alternative lives permanently in the bag.
• A power bank — Navigation with the screen on is the heaviest thing a phone does. A day of caching flattens most phones, and a flat phone in the field is also no map and no way to get home.
• Tweezers, and a small torch — A great many caches are nano containers with a rolled strip inside that cannot be extracted with fingers, or are inside something dark. These two make an otherwise impossible find routine.
• A dry bag or a case — Rain, brambles and hedges are the environment. A phone that cannot be taken out in weather is a phone that stops you caching in exactly the conditions when nobody else is about.
• Small swaps, if you are caching with children — Trading is the part children care about. The convention is to leave something of equal or greater value, and the practical version is a bag of small durable things that will not spoil in a damp box.

A handheld receiver is not a magic accuracy upgrade over a good phone in ordinary conditions. What it reliably adds is toughness, battery life measured in days rather than hours, a screen that works in bright sun and with wet fingers, and buttons that work with gloves on. It also fails independently of the phone you are navigating home with, which matters more the further out you go.

It helps most where phones struggle: under dense tree cover, in steep terrain, and in cold. It helps least in a town park, which is where most caching happens.

The honest sequence is to cache for a few months on a phone, notice which of those limits you are actually hitting, and buy against that. A great many people never hit any of them, and a great many others discover after fifty finds that what they want is not a receiver but better waterproofs.

• A membership — Not equipment, and it changes more than any purchase does: it unlocks a large proportion of listings and the offline and filtering features that make a day of caching planned rather than opportunistic.
• Containers and log sheets — The moment you start hiding rather than finding. Cheap, and worth buying properly — a container that leaks becomes somebody else’s maintenance problem and your reputation.
• Terrain equipment — Caches at the top of the terrain scale can need a boat, a rope or a serious walk. Each of those is a hobby with its own competence requirement, and none of them should be acquired because a cache is there.