Magellan eXplorist 500 Water Resistant Hiking GPS
by Magellan
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Category: GPS or Navigation System
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Digital product summary information
Manufacturer: MagellanBrand: Magellan
Edition: Electronics
Model: explorist 500
Publisher: Magellan
Studio: Magellan
Music Label: Magellan
Product features:
- Waterproof, handheld GPS with USB data port and 16 MB of built-in memory
- Includes 8 MB of North American maps with roads, parks, waterways, and more
- Unlimited Secure Digital (SD) card expansion for adding maps via CD-ROM or Web
- 16-color, high-contrast, backlit LCD display; rechargeable lithium ion battery pack
- Measures 2.2 by 4.7 by 1.3 inches (W x H x D); 1-year warranty
- Bracketron UFM-300-BX Nav-Pack Weighted GPS Dash Mount/Carrying Case
- NAVGEAR Universal Dash Mount
- GGI International LCD Screen Care Kit, with Overlays, Care System Microfiber Cloth / Wipes
- Bracketron UCH-100-BL Universal Cup-iT Mount with Grip-iT for GPS
- SanDisk 2 GB SDSDX3-2048-901 Extreme III SD Memory Card (Retail Package)
Digital camera reviews of Magellan eXplorist 500 Water Resistant Hiking GPS
Digital camera Review: A quality gps unit
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought the Explorist 500 a week and a half ago and it seems to be working almost perfectly. I say almost because when I mark a POI with the cursor the altitude gets set to the current altitude rather than the altitude on the topo map. Other than that I have no issues with it and am quite impressed by its accuracy. In the last month I've purchased a Garmin Legend, a Lowrance iFinder Pro and an Explorist 500. I returned both the Legend and the iFinder Pro because I was not satified by their spotty accuracy and difficulty in getting WAAS locks. I wasn't happy with not being able to return to within 30 feet of the rosebush in my front yard with either the Legend or the iFinder Pro and having them point in the wrong direction half of the time. In my mind, all the features in the world don't make up for lack of accuracy in a GPS.
In contrast, the Explorist is very accurate ( I can often return to a marked POI a day later and have the reading be only 3 or 4 feet off instead of 20 to 40 feet with the Legend or the iFinder Pro). The directional arrow on the Legend and iFinder Pro would start randomly wandering when I got within 20 feet of a waypoint (or POI in Magellan-speak), not so with the Explorist until you are within a few feet.
Furthermore, instead of occasionally showing me that I'm driving a half of a mile off the highway (and from where I was when driving the other direction on the same highway) like the Legend or iFinder Pro, the Explorist is dead on or nearly so. Instead of my tracks having occasional large random jags in them while hiking under tree cover like the Legend or iFinder Pro, the Explorist shows me not only where I've actually been, but is accurate enough to tell me which side of a street I'm walking on (when using the Topo USA 3D map).
The iFinder Pro got a WAAS lock twice for about one minute during an entire week of use and often both the Legend and the iFinder Pro could not get reported accuracy better than 80 or 100 feet when walking whereas the explorist is usually between 10 and 30 feet and has a WAAS lock most of the time when I'm out of doors (I'm in Utah so the WAAS satellites aren't always visible).
When driving the Explorist usually reports 30 to 70 feet accuracy, the Legend was a bit worse but occasionally lost signal altogether and the iFinder Pro usually reported between 80 to 800 feet. I know, I know the reported accuracy doesn't mean a whole lot, but losing a signal is bad, and reporting 800 foot accuracy doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
I haven't had any of the reported problems with maps or POI files becoming unusable or locking up the gps unit. I do have two large (about 240 megabyte each) topo maps loaded on a 1gb SD card. However, since I've only had the unit a week and a half I might be changing my tune on that any day now.
Battery life seems so, so -- not as good as the Legend and nowhere near as good as the iFinder Pro, but passable. With the other two I could use two 2500 mah AA-batteries whereas I'm stuck with the 1300 mah li-ion battery in the Explorist. Extra batteries for the other two are cheap, but will cost me about $20 for a 1100 mah cell phone battery that reportedly works decently for the Explorist.
Featurewise the Legend was hands down the best, with an extremely usable interface and tons of features and options on the screens, the iFinder Pro was not as good but still very good. I would say the Explorist is just passable with just what you need, but no more. However, one nifty feature that it has that the other two don't is the ability to show an altitude plot of a track or route.
Searching for POI's on the Explorist is a real pain unless I'm just totally missing something. How am I supposed to know if something I'm looking for on the topo map is an "area" or a "locale"? Its just plain weird that I can't search for a place name without knowing what random category Magellan has put it in. The iFinder Pro was clunky but I was able to figure out how to use it in about 3 tries. The Legend search just worked the first time I tried it.
Returning on a track took about 4 hikes to figure out on the iFinder Pro, talk about a weird interface. Every time you backtrack it makes a route (but doesn't tell you about that) reverses it and puts you on it. The upshot is that eventually you have dozens of routes in your route file, some of them having the same name. Finally the iFinder Pro doesn't store altitude data in its track files. Both the Legend and Explorist are much much better at backtracking a track. The Legend is more flexible in that it asks whether you want the whole track or some portion of it (like since you've turned it on the last time, or the last day's worth of track). I think the Explorist is more straightforward to use when backtracking, but this takes several more key presses to accomplish than with the Legend. However, as noted above, my tracks are much much more accurate with the Explorist that either of the other two. When I rehike a trail, my tracks are either on top of each other or nearly so with the Explorist, whereas they wandered quite a bit with the iFinder Pro and Legend.
All three screens are very good in their own ways: the Legend has really great resolution, the iFinder Pro is very big and the Explorist is color, and easier to read in the daylight. I would pick the Explorist first, then the iFinder Pro with the Legend last since the text, while clear, is just too small to read when you are hiking or driving. The color screen of the Explorist makes all the difference when all you can spare is a quick glance at the screen.
The iFinder Pro is really too big to be considered "pocketable" and isn't set up to be used with one hand. Both the Legend and the Explorist are pocket sized and are easy to use with one hand. The Legend might be a bit hard for a lefty to use one-handed, the Explorist is pretty symmetric.
Both the Explorist and iFinder Pro have a SD slot. Both are a pain to get to. The only way to access the iFinder Pro SD card with a computer is to take it out. The Explorist has a USB interface that plugs in to a computer and allows you to see both the internal and SD memory as external flash drives (but not simultaneously). The Legend has only a clunky serial interface, bleah.
The file system on the Explorist is very flexible allowing one to be able to categorize maps, tracks , POIs etc. Furthermore, unlike the iFinder Pro, one can choose which POIs are shown. With the iFinder Pro after you pull in a file of waypoints from the SD card I see no way to "unload them".
I was able to use both the Explorist software with my Mac. In fact, I can run the Mapsend Topo USA 3D using Virutal PC with no problems (except I don't get the 3D view on the Mac since VPC doesn't support Direct3D). I can create maps, send them to the Explorist, transfer POI's, routes and tracks with ease using my Mac. However I've heard the NMEA works on the Mac with the Legend and the iFinder Pro, but I haven't had any luck with the Explorist. On the other hand, I could just buy a $60 dedicated gps reciever for my laptop so I'm not too concerned about that.
I didn't try the addon maps of either the Legend or iFinder Pro, but I will say that the Mapsend Topo USA 3D map I bought for the Explorist is fantastic. It's accurate and has every place that I can think of listed on the map. Summer chlldrens camps, ravines, springs, trail heads (though not marked as such) are all there as are flats, ponds and just about any describable physical land feature or named place is on there, exactly where it is supposed to be. Topo lines are plentiful and accurate. Roads and addresses seem to all be there and are accurate. However things like restaurants are hilariously out of date. Some of the info is at least five years old. It only has about 2/3 of the gas stations. Cloverleafs, over/underpasses and other complicated intersections are reproduced in exquisite detail on the map. Believe you me, there are some doozies in Salt Lake (where they used the "plan it while you build it" scheme to finish the freeway before the 2002 Winter Olympics) and the ones I tried were all exact -- my position was shown accurately on the cloverleaf while moving. New subdivisions with roads but no houses seem to be reproduced faithfully also. Its funny that some parts of this map are so much more up-to-date than others. There is a routable street map available for the Explorist, but not for the Legend or the iFinder.
My family took the Explorist geocaching and it worked very well -- we found the first 3 we looked for. It's dedicated geocaching features are nice but leave lots of room for improvement. No editing geocaches, no descriptions, hints limited to 50 characters, no place for cache size are a few of its shortcomings.
Here are some features/fixes that would improve the Explorist:
0) Fix the altitude bug with cursor marked POI's.
1) The ability to turn the backlight completely off (it doesn't need to be on when I'm not looking at it). Heck I would mind even turning the screen itself off just so long as the unit keeps recording my track data.
2) Make the search feature more intuitive and get rid of all of the stupid categories on the topo map ( how often will I be looking for an "arroyo" for goodness sake?)
3) One more user screen with user selectable fields.
4) Make it possible to measure the distance between two points neither of which are the current position.
5) Change the interface so that hitting "mark" twice marks a POI (waypoint). Right now its mark, enter, enter.
6) Show the upcoming part of a route or track on the compass screen.
7) Be able to turn portions of a track in to a route instead of the entire track.
8) Be able to edit the color/pattern of a route or a track.
9) Improve the geocaching features. Allow geocache editing. Include the full description field (...)
Summary of Magellan eXplorist 500 Water Resistant Hiking GPS
Navigate in color! The 16-color display of the Magellan eXplorist 500 enables you to see where you are in vivid color. With a high-speed USB data port and unlimited data storage capacity via secure digital (SD) card expandability, you can easily add detailed street maps, topo or lake maps from optional Magellan MapSend software. eXplorist 500 is lightweight and pocket-sized so you can take it with you everywhere. The Magellan Geocache Manager enables you to download caches directly to your eXplorist 500 and the PC-style file system helps you to easily manage all of your data. 8 MB of built-in maps and an intuitive interface make it easy to start navigating right out of the box. Save 5 track log files, 20 routes and 500 points of interest to the 8 MB of additional internal memory, but store as many as you want on optional SD cards. You get all this and more, plus color!Outfitted with a 16-color display, a high-speed USB data port, 8 MB of built-in maps, and an additional 8 MB of usable memory, the Magellan eXplorist 500 North America includes all the tools you need to navigate throughout the U.S. and Canada whether in the car or on foot. The device is rugged and lightweight, with a waterproof, impact-resistant plastic housing that stands up to almost every adventure, including whitewater rafting and hiking. At the same time, its pocket-sized chassis, which measures a mere 2.2 by 4.7 by 1.3 inches (W x H x D), is loaded with convenient features, such as detailed, built-in maps of North American roads, parks, waterways, and airports; the ability to save five track log files, 20 routes, and 500 points of interest; and an area calculator that determines the distance between saved points of interest--an ideal function when mapping out hiking trails. Other cool and convenient add-ons include a fish/hunt function that mentions the best fishing and hunting times for a specific coordinate and a similar tool that displays the rising and setting times for the sun and moon.
Should the built-in maps and extra memory prove insufficient, users can load additional map data onto Secure Digital (SD) memory cards using Magellan's MapSend software (sold separately), which is available via CD-ROM and, in some cases, online (your computer connects to the GPS through its USB port). There's no limit to the number of cards you can use, giving users access to everything from detailed street maps to topographical layouts to lake charts showing bottom features and boat ramps. Fun seekers will also delight in the Geocache Manager, which invites individuals and families to download geocache coordinates from specific Internet sites and use them on such adventures as treasure hunts and coordinated community projects. The manager employs a PC-style file system to keep geocache navigation easy.
Adding to the simplicity are the intuitive keypad and joystick controls, along with the one-button access for particularly important features. Unlike with many GPS systems, it doesn't take an expert to start navigating right away. The full-color display also helps first-time users, as it's easier to differentiate between different map features and data.
Additional features include multilingual communication (choose from English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Portuguese, Dutch, or Norwegian); four navigation screens for viewing speed, direction, distance to destination, and more; and a rechargeable lithium ion battery pack that keeps the eXplorist 500 working for up to 17 hours. Conveniently, users needn't remove the battery to charge it; simply plug the charger directly into the receiver and it renews itself.
What's in the Box
eXplorist 500 GPS, rechargeable lithium ion battery pack, warranty card, user's manual.
GPS & Navigation
Cameras and Photo
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