Magellan eXplorist 200 Water Resistant Hiking GPS by Magellan
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List Price: Category: GPS or Navigation System See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Magellan eXplorist 200 Water Resistant Hiking GPS
Digital camera Review: Not very satisfied
Summary: 1 Stars
Every time I power it on, it has to search for satelites and takes a lot of time to get its bearing. Not too amazed by this product.Digital camera Review: OK Product
Summary: 3 Stars
It's an OK product. It was quickly replaced by the 210, which offers USB connectivity.Digital camera Review: Perfect starter and then some
Summary: 5 Stars
The first thing that amazed me about this unit is it is so light weight, compact, and fits in the palm of your hand. I purchased a Magellan GPS unit back in 1997 and wanted to update and upgrade. GPS has come a long way since my first unit. This unit was easy to setup and navigate. The onscreen menu system is easy to understand, and the navigation buttons are easy enough to use with one hand. The screen was sharp and clear, and the backlight is more than enough for low light and dark areas. The built in maps of North America (while not side street detailed) are very detailed and accurate for major highways and throughways. It acquired a 4 or more satellite signal within about 1 minute after a cold boot up. It got signal inside my condo unit which is under another second story condo unit!! In the car it worked just as good laying on the seat next to me. I used the built in maps to navigate to another city perfectly. Overall I'm very pleased, recommend this unit, and I'm looking forward to using it for some Geocaching soon.Digital camera Review: Probably not worth your money.
Summary: 2 Stars
I already have a Magellan Sportrak and I'm perfectly happy with it. I just needed something with roadmaps. So when Magellan came out with the eXplorist 200, I said ok, and bought it. It got here today. I installed the batteries, turned it on and started driving. I was immediately dissapointed. The detail of the mapping of this unit is horrendous. It's as if they randomly picked streets they thought would be good to put in the device. It's almost funny how few streets this thing shows in my area. Now you're probably thinking I live in some backwoods place that this thing won't map. I live in Charleston, SC. One of the largest cities in SC. I'd say this thing shows less than .5% of the streets here. I bought a Garmin eMap well over 5 yrs ago that had a million times more detail than this thing. Save your money and get something with better mapping capability if that's what you're looking for.Digital camera 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!