Blackberry Bold 9000 £500 (on contract £137)

The Bold is a great gadget that combines office/telephone functionality with a GPS receiver, but it isn’t compatible with any Ordnance Survey mapping software so doesn’t really cut it as a GPS receiver. There is a link-up with a partner website www.trimble-outdoors.com which for... Click here for full review and star rating

BEST BUDGET BUY

Garmin eTrex H £86

At £86 it would be wrong to expect too much from this unit, yet if all you need is something that will give you an accurate grid reference and perhaps point you to the co-ordinates of the nearest descent route when the weather turns bad, then it fits the bill perfectly. PC compatibility... Click here for full review and star rating

Garmin Oregon 300 £350

The Oregon is a sleek device with lovely clean lines due to the lack of buttons – it’s activated solely by touch-screen. The screen is a good size and it runs Ordnance Survey mapping by means of the new Garmin GB Discoverer mapping (£130 for a single national park at 1:25,000... Click here for full review and star rating

BEST IN TEST

Garmin Vista HCx £230

Although small and incredibly light, the Vista HCx is the best of the old school, hand-held units and with the exception of the rather basic mapping – the best you can achieve is the optional Garmin Topographic mapping – it is everything you could possibly want from a... Click here for full review and star rating

Magellan Triton 2000 £530

The top-end Magellan unit has a large, clear screen and works with touch-screen technology as well as with the normal menus and joystick. It’s quite a lump in the hand, though, and weighs quite a bit, and like its less-expensive stablemate, it suffers from complex PC compatibility that... Click here for full review and star rating

Magellan Triton 500 £270

A lovely robust, compact unit that has a small but very clear colour screen. The menus are easy enough to use, but are specific to the page you are viewing, so it’s not always obvious where to look for things, eg the Set-up menu is only accessible from the Map page, via the... Click here for full review and star rating

MWg Zinc II £200 (on contract Free)

This is a great gadget – a fully featured smart phone combined with a hand-held PC that runs Windows. This can then be set up with Memory-Map software, via its Digital Map Shop (a map download service), so that it also acts as a mapping GPS. In the field the mapping is... Click here for full review and star rating

BEST MULTI-FUNCTION DEVICE

Nokia N79 £275 (on contract £70)

The N79 is about the same size and weight as the average phone, yet with the addition of ViewRanger software (£25 for all UK national parks 1:50,000, £60 per park 1:25,000), it becomes a GPS receiver with full OS mapping. Routes can be copied to the phone from any... Click here for full review and star rating

BEST OS MAPPING DEVICE

Satmap Active 10 Plus £380

The Active 10 Plus is a beefed-up Active 10 and, with a new rechargeable battery conversion kit, it’s a real contender and definitely the best of the OS mapping- compatible devices (all national parks 1:50,000 scale at £50; or £80 per national park at 1:25,000; or... Click here for full review and star rating