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I'm in the market for a GPS that gets good reception in the deep Oregon woods on approaches/descents. I'd like to have an altimeter and otherwise...cheaper the better.
Any ideas??? Suunto? Garmin? ???
I've read many complaints of bad reception in trees...
Thanks for advice!
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I know at least with Garmin there are two types of chips, high sensitivity and "normal" ones. High sensitivity ones have more computational power to process the signals, enough that they can pick up a signal inside a house and in a dense forest.

They are labeled with a lowercase h.

Dense forests make it difficult for all GPS units to get a fix because of the water content in the leaves. Even in a inch of water a GPS will not get a signal what-so-ever, it just doesn't work underwater.

I have a Garmin Legend and a Delorme PN-40. The Garmin is a lower end model (still $150 at Best Buy...no idea why it's so expencive) and it is terrible at keeping a fix in the trees. The Delorme is much better because it uses software to predict where the satellites will be to get and keep your position. I hardly ever loose a fix in the trees with the Delorme but it does happen in really, really dense forests. I'd say the GPS get more confused than lost.

After I returned my Garmin legend for that same reason, I discovered that they maintain their fix better if you put the unit outdoors for about 20 mins undisturbed while turned on (the Garmin, not you).
I found this on a Garmin user site (the official site didn't say anything about it).

Yeah, that's typical for all GPS units. When you turn your GPS on for the first time, after a long period of inactivity or when you're in a different part of the world you need to let it download all of the satellite almanacs. This takes about a half hour. After that your GPS should get a fix much quicker. But the Legend still looses it's fix when there's a leaf within a couple of miles Just kidding, the Legend is a nice little unit but it just doesn't have the memory like the DeLorme.

The newer Garmins with the 'h' in the model name have much better reception that the older non-'h' models.

I've had the Garmin 60csx for about 18 months now and I've never run into a situation where I can't get a signal, even in the deepest woods of Vancouver Island. It will struggle with accuracy in some locations but always gets a signal. This was one of the higher end Garmins at the time I bought it and it does have the more sensitive receiver. The other features I highly recommend are an electronic compass, waterproof, expandable memory and a nice clear large screen. I ahve no real complaints about this GPS other than the mapping cd's are ridiculously priced.