Magellan eXplorist 500 Water Resistant Hiking GPS by Magellan
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Digital camera reviews of Magellan eXplorist 500 Water Resistant Hiking GPS
Digital camera Review: Unreliable; customer "service" a joke
Summary: 1 Stars
Unreliable pile of 'you-know-what'. Worked fine for about 2 months then refused to power up. Fresh batteries, no go. Called customer "service". Outsourced call center to India; rep followed generic script telling me to: 1) use lithium-ion batteries, and 2) press "power + NAV" simultaneously. As suspected, bogus advice. Fresh batteries metered out to 1.62 volts each / 4.84 volts total. Yes, I tried lithium-ion batteries anyway. Still no-go. Am still waiting for Magellan/Thales to respond. Am still owner of unreliable GPS. Still have about $400 invested in unit plus software and maps. Still kicking myself for buying a Magellan product. Don't do it. Really -- don't do it.Digital camera Review: Value, at a Price
Summary: 4 Stars
This GPS does a nice job, but getting to the point where it does that can be trying. It's a 4+, because I sense there's a little more Magellan can do in terms of ergonomics.
I guess the first thing I noticed was the screw-on USB and power adapter could go two ways, up or down. I had to look through the manual to find how to attach it, and even then what I was looking at did not turn out to be right. Oh, well. There's a sheet of paper that shows how to attach it. I guess I was not alone in this. Some say a screw-on USB is dumb or non-standard, but consider the water proof rating and a normal USB port.
Next, I have a large collection of waypoints. Since this is a new model, it didn't appear in any waypoint manager software. Eventually I could convert my old Mapsend waypoints with gpsbabel, a free program. This took time. The color really shows the waypoints.
I decided I like this GPS a lot when I got the Directroute. That's the new Mapsend, and it will route. Alas, to use DR, you have to have one of the CD's in the computer. Again, though, this is mitigated because you can upload almost 'everything' to a 256MB SD card. So, basically, I assume I don't need the CD's very often. To upload the maps is complicated. You can't just cut them and then move the files. You have to 'convert' them, a second time, and then they are easily moved to the card. I have an SD card slot in my Dell. It is very easy. But, if you didn't know to convert, it will slow you down.
On balance, the DirectRoute software is an improvement over the old Mapsend Streets. The maps are 'filtered'. I travel on a lot of backroads. While the DR shows fewer roads, it seems to be very good at showing the ones that matter. Plus, they are labeled better. The main advantage of the DR is routing, but everyone should be buying it with this in mind. I haven't done any tough routing, so check other reviews.
I think the color screen is nice. The problem with a mapping GPS is scale. If you are on a tiny road, the road shows up when the scale is very small, say .2 mile. At .2, you can't see the surrounding area, so you can't tell where you are. The color screen is better, and the scrolling is pretty smooth. A zoom out is quite quick. You can find a road with this unit, scroll up it like you are driving, and figure out where it goes. You can't ever see a minor road at a wide scale, so you end up doing this. You can place waypoints while driving up the road, but this unit routes.
The physical size small, but thick. It holds a bunch of territory with one cheap card. All of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado fit in about 70 megs. It shows a lot of roads, though it might not be up to date. Some commands are not obvious. To change the waypoint file you have to go to Preferences --> Active Setup. This did not seem obvious to me. The manual has a lot of info, but it's not easy to find a specific answer to a question. You can download it at the Magelllan site, and get a headstart.
Magellan uses a very complex file system. Some may not like it. Still, you have the internal GPS memory plus cards, and the file system makes it easy to find something. If I upload a route where the roads don't really show on the detail maps, I can put a lot of them in one file, say 200. Now I just find the waypoint file and tell the GPS to make that the active POI (it calls waypoints 'points of interest'). I really like this, because there is no limit to how many waypoints could be on a card, each neatly filed away. If I don't want waypoints cluttering the screen, I get rid of any active file of POI's.
So, Magellan did a lot with this unit, and I give them credit for it. The micro joystick is a little hard to get used to, but it really speeds entering text. It scrolls pretty well on the diagonal.
The unit is small, and pleasant to hold, at least for me. The buttons are limited in number, but getting to all the commands is easy enough.
The GPS has a learning curve, but it seems like something will be useful for a long time. Plus, with all the maps on a card, you have what you need without needing a PC. The lock is pretty good, even in the house. Magellan uses the Esc button to change pages.
Quirky, but this unit works for me.
Digital camera Review: Worst Customer Support on the Planet
Summary: 1 Stars
My GPS is an eXplorist XL. I assume the guts are the same, so here goes. I cannot begin to express how disappointed I am with this Magellan GPS. I have been an exclusive Magellan user since 1999, but am now officially fed up.
Customer Support: Lack of. Magellan simply has the worst possible record responding to requests for support. When you call, after being on hold for hours, the person on the phone is clue free. The Web site is inpentrable. When you can't get on the site for any reason. Or when you can't download something, there is no clue as to why. By trial and error I have discoverd you have to turn off ANY firewall, and set your Explorer preferences to accept all cookies.
New firmware upload. It corrected nothing I cared about, and completely messed up the Geocaching Manager capability. When I upload Geocaches the machine arbitrarily drops several ... but you have no idea beforehand which are dropped.
Paperless system: With the memory card (I have 1GB, you should be able to store thousands of Geocaches and ALL the associated text. Nope. You get the name and a few items off the Geocache page. Clues over a few words are truncated.
The "beeper" is misleading. It beeps whether you have done what you wanted or not. Example: I want to edit some coordinates on a marked fix. I use the joy stick to move from number to number. The GPS beeps whether the move was made or not. The beep is independent of the desired result. When you push the joystick you get a beep whether or not an edit was made. A ver annoying feature.
When you do a Go To on a Point of Interest, you cannot see the icon on the compass page. It is too small. It needs to be White and larger. Now it looks too much like the Sun icon.
On a Go To the "compass needle" need to point to the destinaiton instead of North. This option needs to at least be selectable.
You need to be able to put yourself at the bottom of the screen so you can see more of what's coming up. I don't care much about what's behind me...this needs to be a selectable option.
Reliability: A friend teaches GPS at the College level. After 6 years with Magellan he recently moved to Garmin due to poor reliabiliity of the receivers. His experience in large classes was a return rate nearing 40%
Good things. The XL is very rugged. I have dropped it on rocks from "too high" and it has survived well. The color screen is large and easy to read.
Verdict: Get something else.
Digital camera Review: eXplorist 500
Summary: 5 Stars
The 500 is my first GPS. I found it very easy to set up and use. The color display is top notch and the buttons and menus are straight forward to use. Needed very little manual time to start setting POI's, down loading maps and setting up routes. The kids (age 8 and 10) love using it to find things I "hide" around the neighborhood. The accuracy is really the claimed 3 meters and very repeatable. No complaints, it does the basic GPS stuff really well and that's what I was looking for.Digital camera Review: easy to use and fun, but...
Summary: 4 Stars
I own Explorist 500 and Meridian Gold so will review by comparison.
When you "upgrade" from Meridian the first thing you notice is how amazingly small the E500 is. It is about the size of Nokia 3220 cell phone series but thicker. The screen is tiny compared to Meridian making it impossible to use it in the car, not to mention how dangerous it would be. The fact magellan sells car mounts for the E500 should be a criminal offense.
The color screen does however offer advantages over the Meridian Gold: it is easier to see things, such as POIs, rivers, etc. On B/W screen rivers and roads are barely distinguishable, if at all.
The backlight canot be turned off. It comes in 3 strengths: Hi, Med and Low. To conserve power you can set the unit to go to Low, or you can do it manually, but there is no way to turn it off completely.
The proprietary rechargeable battery means another power adapter to carry around. Consider this carefully before you buy this unit: another power adapter on top of your digital camera, MP3 player, laptop etc. The rechargeable battery means you cannot take the E500 on a week-long canoe trip around the Algonquin Park, unless you only plan to check your position once a day, meaninng you cannot use tracking because you will run out of battery.
The Meridian uses 2 AA batteries.
The E500 fits nicely in your hand, although it is a shame that Magellan did not include a wrist strap (they did with Meridian). First thing you have to do is go to your local dollar store and pick one up.
E500 isn't directly supported through MapSend Topo maps (Meridian can be accessed directly from MapSend) and requires additional software (provided) to upload / download tracks, waypoints etc.
Geocache utility downloads only the coordinates, and nothing else, so you still have to write down tips and other messages that come with geocache .loc files.
Antenna seems less powerful on E500. Meridian is able to pick up signal in my bedroom with blinds pulled down, whereas E500 does not. Both units show different readings in the woods making the E500 less accurate and frustrating when searching for geocaches in the woods (off by about 35-50 meters).
There is no SD memory card included with E500 (Meridian came with 32MB SD card).
Navigational buttons on the E500 are tiny and close together making it difficult to press the right one. Even though my fingers are slim, I often end up pressing the wrong one - one handed operation if out of the question.
Battery runs about 6 hours with backlight turned down to Low, and using detailed topo map (which draws more power than using only the loughable basemap).
Extremely poor manual (as was the case with the Meridian).
Frustrating installation: Windows is having problems recognizing the driver.
In conclusion, the E500 is cooler but useless on longer trips where access to power source is nil. Accuracy due to poor antenna is questionable. Good for a dog walk or biking around the neighborhood, but needs a backup unit or several additional 50$ batteries for longer trips.