Rand McNally Launches New Handheld GPS for Outdoorsy Travelers

If hiking, biking, geocaching, and other outdoor activities are the core focus of your trips, then you ill love the new Foris GPS handheld device unveiled by Rand McNally, a company founded in 1856 that specializing in maps, navigation, road travel and trip planing. This new gadget unveiled at the Outdoor Retailer show is designed for outdoor fun, the Foris™ 850 being equipped with extensive high-quality street and trail maps, a bike mount and an intuitive and user friendly interface.

“We have aggregated and created the best outdoor content, and engineered the device with features needed for a variety of outdoor activities,” said Dave Muscatel, CEO of Rand McNally. “We are very excited to be working with Falk Outdoor, which is one of the leading players in outdoor navigation in Europe, to develop a product for the U.S. market. Leveraging their hardware and our content, we’ve been able to create a leading-edge handheld at a price typically reserved for more entry-level devices.”

The Foris™ 850 comes with over 5 million miles of US roadways and trails, being ready to use once delivered, unlike other such GPS devices that require additional purchases of downloadable content. It also stands out as it integrates routing and turn-by-turn voice guidance on trails as well as roads. Users can also create navigable routes from “breadcrumb” trails via the TrackNav feature. With the Loop Me! features, users can also create looped trails by selecting a starting and ending point, the trail created taking on the account their preferred time or distance for the activity and adding a hilly or flat route. All those acquiring the device also gain access to Trailhead, a web portal for storing, viewing or downloading their hikes and rides.

The new Foris™  was developed by Rand McNally together with Falk Outdoor Navigation, a business unit of United Navigation Limited. The suggested retail price for the gadget is of $399 (plus applicable taxes). A first in a future line of handheld products, Foris™ 850 will be available for shipment to stores in spring 2012.