Magellan eXplorist 200 Water Resistant Hiking GPS
by Magellan
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List Price: Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Magellan eXplorist 200 Water Resistant Hiking GPS
Customer Review: Mediocre Quality GPS
Summary: 1 Stars
Being an owner of both the Garmin eTrex, and the Magellan 200, I find that:
DOWNSIDE
1) The Magellan is slow to lock on and frequently cannot get 3D accuracy with even 4 satellites.
2) The carrying case *blows chunks*. A _cheap_ zipper bag that you have to take your belt off to wear it or remove it. Garmin's is form-fitting with a belt clip, clear viewing port, and velcro-- much better.
3) The Magellan has *no* interface for a PC, which even the most basic Garmin eTrex has, which is important because the PC interface is used for (cigarette power adapter, PC data uplink, and firmware ugprade to GPS downlink).
4) The battery compartment holdig-bolt requires numerous turns to to loosen, whereas the Garm etrex requires 1/2 turn.
5) No lanyard comes with the unit, although it has a molded place for one to be attached to. eTrex' come with lanyards.
6) Screen has a tendency to repaint, even if you're not moving
7) GUI interface is clumsy, and has a "cluttered" look to it.
8) the 'joystick' or jog-stick too easily depressed causing you to select something when you were only trying to scroll.
9) It has an option to erase the contents of the unit entirely. Why? there is NO WAY TO RELOAD IT.
10) This does not show you *where* the satellites are in relation to you, which the Garmin eTrex does.
UPSIDE:
1) Backlight is very nice
2) Screen is larger
3) Has a field in it to put identity info or "reward" message
PRICEWISE:
Pricewise, the basic eTrex costs $89, whereas this ran me $139. I don't care for the mapping function, it's annoying. I don't use it for road navigation. And I don't know how it would update the maps anyway, without a PC interface to upgrade it.
OVERALL:
Overall, not worth the money. It falls down in almost all the areas a serious, fast-paced user requires. I rate it about $60 too much in comparison to the Garmin.
As it is, I disliked the crummy carrying pouch so much, I found it will barely fit in the extra Garmin eTrex Holster I had. Garmin's are also smaller on the hip. I would not have bought this, but lost my Garmin.
I have to say I found the Garmin to be much more professional, functional, and useful, and will end up buying one again. this Magellan goes up on eBay, today.
Customer Review: Good for driving and backpacking.
Summary: 4 Stars
I love this little critter. I find the built in map for driving handles most major roads and all of the interstates. On my latest 14 hour trip to several relatives, I was on a marked road 98% of the time. Zooming out tells me when intersections will be coming and the GOTO ETA is pretty much right on (when will we be home, daddy? 1 hour 27 minutes plus or minus 5 minutes... Oh...) Thing is as bad as a cell phone for driving distraction.
Screen is very nice. Contrast is great. Looks good from full sun to dim light and the night light takes over from there. Words are very legible (it does take some skill to read Lake Mooselookmyguntic while driving tho)
Accuracy while hiking will get you within 30 feet regularly so works for trail finding and maps. The joystick does take some getting used to but works fine once you get the hang (push from the side not from the top). Lots of self help built in (reading material on my long walks out). Battery life is good and I use rechargeable double AAs NIMH and get a good 6-7 hours out of them. I carry a couple of extra with me. Swapping batteries is easy and can be done without tools but needs bare fingers to unscrew the D ring screw. Nothing is lost when swapping batteries. Takes about 1-2 minutes to sync up with the satellites when turned on. Picks up the satellites well in my pocket or nestled in the cars door handle. The night light feature is very nice and does not knock too much off of the battery. Lightweight, takes a drop onto concrete with just a nick here or there on the case. Buttons have a good feel and can be manipulated by feel while driving. Buttons need to be pushed with bare fingers or very thin gloves. One very neat feature is that the sun and moon are located on the compass when they are above the horizon. Donno how they do that. Compass works only when moving but it only takes a few steps to get it to work
For backpacking there is one major issue. The odometer does not track accurately in the woods. If the GPS loses track somewhere where the trees are thick, the odometer stops logging during that time. The funny thing is that the active track is spot on. Just use the active track to figure out how far you have walked. The breadcrumbs work great. I could care less about downloading content or maps or topo stuff. That is what printed maps are for and I would never trust an electronic device to get me out anyways.
Customer Review: excellent for entry level geocaching
Summary: 4 Stars
I've tried several GPS receivers, mostly loaned from friends, and settled for this one for various reasons. The main activity was going to be GEOCACHING with my children, and was planning to give it to them for use. I fully expect that the children will eventually break it, either from a fall, or whatever. I tried a friend's Garmin 60cs, which is a marvel of electronics and usability, but quite frankly, if my child was going to break it, its cost of over $400 would have given me a heart attack. I noticed that both Magellan and Garmin are pushing color displays, but at twice the price of the grayscale displays. That is really only needed for maps, to discriminate a state road from a local road. For geocaching, grayscale is good enough. From reading the previous reviews, one good comment made was on the fact that the 200 does not allow uploads or downloads (you'll need a 210 for that). But is it worth it $100 more ? the electronic compass can be replaced by a regular $10 compass, and the barometric altimeter is subject to atmospheric nuances that can make its reading inaccurate with a margin of error of 10 meters anyway. So I don't consider these two features a must-have. Also noted is that the color displays drain batteries much faster. Another reason for choosing this model. Also noted was that on long camping trips away from a rechargeable-from-car appliance, a model that uses disposable batteries is better than rechargeables. From reading the reports and reviews, I had some concerns on the time-to-first-signal (could be too long) and the accuracy of the position given, and loss of signal. It proved to be not a problem. As for the uploading of geocaching data, I am printing the pages describing the cache, printing a topo map, and then, entering them manually as I start a trip. Entered 20 coordinates in 30 minutes, and the joystick interface worked out great when picking the alphaletters to name the mark, better than with a Garmin. One beef I do however is that the names of the mark cannot be more than six chars long. The 210 allows up to 20. Life ain't perfect. To summarize, my biggest determinant on chossing this model was price, since I completely expect that the kids will break it. If it takes a year for that to happen, a hundred is a price I can live with for a year of activity. More than a hundred, I would get upset.
Customer Review: good for what it is
Summary: 5 Stars
I see a lot of reviews saying, "Good entry level GPS!" I do not agree with this statement at all. With a GPS you should always START with the best one you can afford that does what you need. That way you are not buying one to practice on just to realize you need another one. Then you are out of $100 for your "entry level" and $400 for the fancy pants Garmin. I own two GPS systems which are exactly what I need for the applications I use them for. If you need to do these things and nothing else. Buy this one and don't worry that you cannot monitor barometric pressure (I am a meteorologist and I don't need a barometer or a thermometer). Here is what this one will do wonderfully for you. If you are anywhere and you get lost. This one will easily get you to a city, lake, river, interstate, highway, or major road. My main reason for this is to save locations for future use such as: good fishing spots, tree stands for hunting, important businesses, etc. What makes this GPS so practical is it's simplicity. You cannot load a bunch of useless stuff on here that will just slow it down. Who really needs topo? What is great about hiking is NOT knowing what is over the next hill. Another great thing about this unit is it is light weight. I backpack with a lot of folks, some of which are scared of anything that weighs over half a pound. These same folks haul a huge, heavy GPS handheld in their backpack and never use it the whole trip! Another cool thing you can use this GPS for is bicycle and motorcycle application. It is easily mountable on a bike. The screen is large enough to be easily read on the go and the backlight works well at night. It won't hurt this thing if you crash either. It is built like a tank. If it starts to rain, you do not have to worry because it is almost totally waterproof. In everyday application, I keep this thing in my cargo pocket. If I find a neat store or a great view along a mountain road I can quickly save the spot, give it a name, and cool little icon from the list. For everyday use I would recommend this to anyone other than a civil engineer on a job site.Customer Review: Rotten instructions, product works fine.
Summary: 4 Stars
My mom gave me an eXplorist 200 GPS receiver for Christmas. I had a great deal of difficulty getting started with it because the instructions that came with it were so sketchy. Magellan's online instructions were of no help (their little program eventually told me, "Guess I haven't been able to help you; try customer service.") and their customer service wasn't of much use either.
The issue that I had was with the operation of the compass function - I was having great difficulty in getting the compass to point north, despite having re-calibrated the machine twice. Turns out that you only have to walk around a bit to get it to respond properly. Anyway, a moderately decent instruction manual would have explained this (and other things that I had to figure out by messing with the eXplorist 200), but the manual that comes with this GPS receiver is just completely inadequate. And customer service, while they try hard, are just completely useless.
Anyway, the machine works well. I went for a walk at lunch today and made a box by navigating with it, and got back to within mere feet of where I'd started. The altimeter is accurate and the rest of the readings appear to be as well. As others have mentioned, the road maps loaded into the machine are pretty sketchy (pretty much only major streets), but they're nice to have.
All things considered, I'm very glad to have this unit. I have to tell you, though, I was so frustrated by the inadequate instructions that I was ready to return it (in fact, I was walking on my way to return it when I finally figured out how to get the compass function to work). So, if you get the Magellan eXplorist 200 GPS receiver, plan to have a little patience with it. The function really is pretty self-evident, but you need to take it for a test run to figure it out, since it doesn't all come together immediately upon calibration. (All in all, this was a lot less frustrating than getting the XM radio turned on in my new car - but the instructions were a lot worse.)
Happy hiking!