Marrex MX-G20M MKII Geotagger GPS for Nikon D3200, D3300, D5200, D5300, D5500, D7200, D750, D810, D610, D600, D500, DF, D5, D4, D4S, P7800 & More (New Version)

This is a great little GPS unit. I have used GPS for years, but was having a lot of trouble with the cabling on my current one (Solmeta Pro). The Marrex, costing less than 1/2 as much as the Solmeta, seems well built and functions very well. Accuracy is excellent. Time to capture satellites is very good. I am very pleased with this unit for both my Nikon D800 and Nikon D7000.Update: The cable for the Nikon 10 pin camera (N1 cable) broke after about one week's use. I can no longer use it with my D800 camera. Attempts to find a replacement cable have been futile. I am unable to get any response from the manufacturer in China. The unit is useless with this camera without the proper cable and it appears that Customer Service is non-existent, even though they claim to be there to help.Update #2: I acquired another cable for this GPS, and all went well, for awhile! On a trip to Europe this month, the cable worked for about 10 days, then it stopped working. Moving it around would make the GPS show intermittently in the camera. Very unreliable cable, and the third I've had that has stopped working. The GPS unit itself works well, and is very accurate, but useless when there is no connection to the camera. I have tried to contact the company, BUT TO NO AVAIL. Customer service on the website is NON-EXISTENT. I am changing my review on this GPS solely due to poor quality cables and NO CUSTOMER SERVICE.

An update after several months of use: I am buying another of these units for my other cameras.It has performed extremely well over months, miles and shots. While I worry about water, it has been in light rain with no problems. Acquisition has consistently been fast. Heading is great to have. I usually charge it separately so it doesn't drain camera batteries. All GPS units suck your camera battery if you are powering them from the camera. Some have "auto-off", some have a switch. I like that if I have forgotten to charge it, it will power from the camera. Just remember to turn it off between shooting sessions and there are no problems. You can change whether it will charge from the camera or not from the menus. If you worry about battery drain - just set it to not use camera power. The firmware can be a bit confusing but really is not difficult to understand if you spend a little time with it. The Mini-USB plug is the weak point, but all of the 3rd party GPS units I have seen use the same setup, and at least the female connector on the unit is more solid than most. Only the Nikon GPS has a really secure connector, but that costs a fortune and if you lose the cord, just the cord costs more than this unit! I just wish this unit were a bit smaller.-----My original review:This is a first impressions review. I've used several GPS units on multiple cameras. Most of those have been similar to the Nikon GP-1/1a - small units that clip to the hot shoe or camera strap and power from the camera. I just received this unit and tried it out today.As a quick summary, this appears to be a very good unit that won't be a load on your camera batteries and has excellent acquisition times for GPS as well as being one of very few units to give heading data.This unit is bigger than the others, but still not bad on a hot shoe or a camera strap. It has its own rechargeable battery (normal USB charger, not included), so does not drain the camera's batteries. If the internal battery is dead, it says it will power from the camera. (I haven't tested this yet.)Included are both adapter cables needed for Nikon SLRs - the round 10-pin and the flat connector. There is also a strap to attach to the unit if desired, a camera strap clip if you want the unit to attach to your camera strap instead of the hot shoe, and a USB cable for charging. There is also a wired remote shutter release that uses a micro stereo plug on the unit. The output connector is mini USB. The connector seems solidly mounted in the unit. There is a decent rubber flap connector cover, although this will not provide any water resistance when the unit is in use with the cables attached.This unit has a small display and some optional settings about whether to take power from the camera and whether to send local time or UTC to the camera. The menu system is a bit obtuse, but not too bad. It doesn't make great use of the display, giving only one line of info at a time, despite having two rows of text. But the display is not really critical, since the purpose of this is to geotag your photos and you can see that info when viewing pics on the camera.It has a built-in compass unlike most other camera GPS units. If you mount this on the hot shoe, it will send the direction (in degrees magnetic) that you are shooting as well as altitude, latitude and longitude. This can be really nice for landscape shots where you want to be able to identify things later. If you mount it on the camera strap, you'll probably get random headings tagged to your photos. I did not see any way to turn off the heading feed.I was truly impressed by the acquisition time. I opened the unit in a basement and set it to charge. After it was charged, I took it and my camera outside. I turned on the GPS unit and grabbed my phone to use the stopwatch on the phone. Before I could bring up the stopwatch, the unit had a locked signal and good position. On successive power-ups it was always just a few seconds.My only concern now is the longevity of the mini-USB connector. This has been a weak spot in some of the other brand units I have used. I'll try to update this review with a comment after using this in the field for a while.This Marrex unit vs Nikon GP-1/1a: Marrex has *much* faster acquisition times, provides heading info, has its own battery and is bigger. The Nikon unit has a more solid cable connector that has stood up to a lot of abuse from me. The power drain on the Nikon unit from the camera isn't really enough to be problematic for me. The Nikon unit provides less functionality, is far more expensive, has difficulties in poor reception areas but mechanically has been fantastic.This Marrex unit vs Opteka: The Opteka is roughly the same size as the GP-1 and powers from the camera, through an on-unit on/off switch. The Marrex has much better acquisition time and provides heading data. The Opteka is quite a bit less expensive, but mine did not survive my use in the field.This Marrex unit vs nGPS: This is another unit about the size of the Nikon GP-1 that powers itself from the camera through an on-unit on/off switch. The nGPS unit has slower but acceptable acquisition times. The Marrex is bigger, seems to be more rugged and provides more functionality with heading info with very fast acquisition speed.

I bought this device ahead of a five-week trip to Europe for use on my D7100. Had it for 90 days before the trip and used that time to get familiar with it. Worked fine through the first day of the trip. Turned it on the second day and it would never connect to satellites- and hasn't since. So, it worked through the return window and slightly beyond.FOLLOW UP: Movo Photo (seller) contacted me directly and offered to have me ship the defective device to them and they would replace it. Sounded like a respectable solution to me so I complied. However, the device they shipped me was a lesser model than the one I purchased, and which they now have back. I have contacted them on multiple occasions over the last month and have received no response from them.And the worst part? The lesser model (without the LCD display) they sent me is not a functional unit either. The cable between the device and the camera, itself, has a problem. With the cable plugged into the camera, all rear-camera functions go dead. No camera buttons are functional. Unplug the cable from the camera, and all is fine. The problem exists whether the GPS unit is connected or not.

Not having luck with the Nikon GP-1A on my D810, I though I'd give this a try. I can say that so far it's working great. Easy to set up and program and it locks onto a signal in less than a minute. I especially like the included remote trigger that plugs into the unit itself. A feature lacking on the GP-1A. Not much else to say, it does it's job by providing accurate GPS,time and date metadata. It does have it's own rechargeable battery and I haven't seen any increased drain on my camera battery when using this unit. At about 1/4 the price of the GP-1A it's a real no brainer, plus you get a remote trigger to boot.