Summary: I bought one of these (the 'Europe' version) about 6 months ago as my first GPS. I spent some time looking before purchase and wanted a fairly cheap GPS with good accuracy mostly for mountain biking. My first impressions are pretty positive.
The construction is rugged, with a rubber 'armour' band and waterproof body. There's a hole for a lanyard but none supplied (a bit mean, I thought). Buttons are rubber. They have a fairly positive 'click' and I can work them with gloves on. There are icons actually on the bit you press and surprise surprise these are starting to wear off, (but the good news is that the icon is also on the body). Using the unit and working out the way to access features is pretty simple, particularly if you actually read the manual ;?) Power switch is a push-button on the side of the unit. I find this occasionally gets banged when biking, resulting in unit powering down - I'd prefer a slider switch rather than a push switch.
The screen is easy to read and there is a backlight (two settings or off) with a nice orange/pink glow to it. The display is b/w - no big deal for me, but some people expect colour. The options for information display (map, compass, speed and altitude, distance covered etc) are extensive and many screens are personisable. The system comes with a pre-loaded world-wide base map, which features towns, rivers and major features only. Actually loading new maps is very limited - only Magellan's own 'mapsend' software to my knowledge, which is expensive.
Reception is on the good side of average. The unit has 12 sat channels + two for WAAS (aka ground based stations) and I get plenty of lock on without too much delay in open countryside. In these situations accuracy is good - usually down to about 5 metres In forest its less assured, with signal strength dropping pretty quickly. This isn't too much of a problem if you are moving fast (on a bike for example) or on a path as the unit goes by dead-reckoning and then picks up again, but for slow walking, the error might increase.
Magellan claim 12 hours or so on 2 AA alkalines, which is probably about right, but assumes the backlight is off, and isn't class-leading by any imagination. Running on rechargeable NimH I only get 8 hours or so (because of the lower voltage of the batteries). However, memory is not volatile, so just take a spare set of batteries with you and you should be able to pick up where you left off.
Importing and exporting waypoints, tracks and routes would seem to be easy - but my personal experience has been poor. This is primarily to do with the map software I'm running on the PC, rather than any shortfall in the unit, but check this carefully because I was told the maps (Fugawi UK digital) would be compatible but they aren't in any real sense of the word.
Overall - a great wee unit to supplement some basic skill with map and compass, good value and best suited to days (rather than weeks) out.
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2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
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