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| Magellan eXplorist 600 Handheld GPS | 
 enlarge | Brand: Magellan
Category: CE
List Price: $449.99
Buy Used: $229.99
You Save: $220.00 (49%)
Used (3) from $229.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 10759
Color: Black
Media: Electronics
Memorabilia: No
Tracks: 5
Native Resolution: 160x120
Display Size: 2.3
Includes MP3 Player: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 2.1 x 1.3 x 4.6
Array:
MPN: 980771-06
Model: 980771-06
UPC: 763357109412
EAN: 0763357109412
ASIN: B0007RPW2M
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 26-30 of 30 | | « PREV | | |
 Nice screen November 2, 2005
30 out of 38 found this review helpful
I have mostly bad things to say about this machine. I use it for running, trekking and bicycling.
1. On a rainy day reception is very poor. When putting the GPS inside a plastic cover on my bicycle handle bar, performance is awfal (on a sunny day performance is great)
2. When erasing an old track the machine has to pause for 15 sec or so before I get the menu screen. QUite annoying.
3. Don't even think about buying this GPS if you live in Singapore. No maps are available (but there are great user-produced maps for Garmin). This probably holds for the whole of Asia and South America.
4. Sometimes a few water drops find their way under the first glass screen. They don't seem to do any harm - but maybe that's just for now.
5. Support is pretty bad. For so many tech products the support is just awful. Just when you feel like recommending a product to somebody you need to talk to the support unit. They you get so frustrated. You think how naive and stupid you were when thinking about recommending the product.
What is good?
1. The screen is very bright and nice.
2. On a sunny day, the GPS gives very nice tracks (as long as they are not too long)
 $450 of junk September 6, 2005
After three months of using this unit my frustration has caused me to buy another unit. Very little about this unit is functional or intuative. Downloading maps from a computer has resulted in the unit permenantly freezing up. The temp gauge is totally inaccurate, the altitude is rarely correct and the unit takes up to 15 minutes to lock in on the satellites. I have kept the unit and will carry it with me in case I encounter a bear....in which case I will throw it at him, with little regret of lossing something valuable.
Seriously doubting my choice... July 20, 2005
67 out of 74 found this review helpful
I chose this product over the Garmin 60cs based on the SD card and rechargable battery... I am feeling very nervous about my choice...
First off...
One downside of the "pc style file system" is that it can get corrupted.. Mine did and a search on the Internet revealed that I was not the only one that it happened to.. There is no supported method for an end user to reload the basemap to the system if it gets corrupted. Contacting the technical support team (we will get more into that later) revealed that I would need to send the unit back to them to restore the map. This is crazy. I can't believe they are so paranoid that someone will buy an EU unit and load a NA basemap into it, that they are wiling to cause what I think is a great inconvience... This was after owning the unit for three days...
Also, my joystick did not work. It would not let me move the cursor in the up direction. The Customer Service (CS) rep said that it could just be that I was pushing the stick wrong... Bad design or bad quality control in my mind.
Then I get to road and topo maps.. I went to a large sporting goods store (between a Target and a Best Buy and just as big) and they sold Explorist GPS units and had a US road map and NA topo map for Magellan receivers.. Previously I had gone to the Magellan site and clicked on a link for mapsend compatiblity, and for the explorist, it said "Yes" for everything... The software to load maps is called the "Magellan Conversion Manager" This is also my first GPS unit.. keeping this all in mind I bought both maps... I get home and find out that they are NOT compatible with my unit... There is no way to make them work... They were magellan maps but for the older Meridain GPS unit... When I mentioned this to the CS rep, they said that their manager recommended to me that I either try and sell it on eBay or try to return it to the store... I can't think of any store that accepts returns on software... I don't buy or sell on ebay. I told them that I believe that they need to put somewhere on the compatibility chart a mention that the Explorist is not compatible with their older software.
So now I am waiting for them to return my gps unit... They let me upgrade the software I had purchased and I will end up paying the equivalent as list price for the topo and road maps... More than I would have paid if I had purhased the maps on Amazon...
I talked with some other GPS owners and they are reassuring me that it will all work out...
Also a note, I use a Mac as my primary machine. The device only has a USB interface, which is generally good, but don't expect to get NMEA data directly from the GPS unit to use software like macgpspro.... The garmin 60CS has both a serial and USB interface. And when using an SD card and the usb interface, you can only access either the SD card or the internal memory at any one time.. You need to switch which one the unit presents over USB to the host computer to change from one to another.
I would think carefully before buying this product... Go to a decent store and look at the available software and prices for Magellan versus Garmin... Look at third party software support for NMEA data... I find that Garmin has better support, at least where I have been looking...
If you like the SD card, this is a great device, but the 60cs can hold a goodly amount of map data in its internal memory.. and if you are going to be away from power for more than 17 hours or so, AA batteries are cheaper than proprietary rechargeable batteries.
 Great unit. July 18, 2005
10 out of 20 found this review helpful
I've had the eX600 for about 3 weeks and have found it to be an outstanding unit. Getting great satellite locks, no boomerang effect, very accurate. Display is excellent as is battery life. Screen navigation is intuitive. Don't refer to the weather feature too often so can't fully comment. Magnetic compass is well worth the additional investment.
Overall I've been very happy and have yet to find issues.
Don't buy for the "Bells and Whistles" No Tech Support! June 7, 2005
66 out of 73 found this review helpful
Hi. I just wanted to inform anyone who might be considering buying the new Explorist 600 by Magellan that the "bells and whistles" they advertise are useless.
1. The Thermometer. Upon starting the unit begins to climb beginning about 4 degrees off and rapidly climbing to about 15 degrees to high and stays there, apparently
Magellan put the temperature sensor right next to the backlight.....sigh.
2. The Barometer, The Barometer has a range or 16 - 31 inHg and in this small range it is consistently 4-8 inHg off. I have checked this against three reliable sources
And they are all in agreement with each other but not with the Explorist 600
The Barometer also reads (RISING, STEADY, FALLING,) and is all over the place, and usually wrong!
The amazing thing is when you get almost any kind of Barometer form other sources the first thing you do is calibrate it to your local pressure so you have a starting base point, but, the Explorist does not have a way to do this so I guess you are stuck with whatever base calibration Magellan uses in France...sigh
3. The Altimeter, seams to work if you calibrate it every 2-3 hours, but if you sit on a rock in the mountains for about 20 minutes you can gain or lose 10-20 feet
in altitude, but at least you can Re-calibrate it and move on.
These are all valid problems for a good tech support person but, upon contacting tech support via E-Mail four times and explaining in detail my problems some wonderful techie copied and pasted a page from the user manual that had nothing to do with my problem and mailed this to me..
Another E-Mail and I was told to turn my Magellan (on/off) for 24 hours to get a Barometer history started, I did this, it did not change one thing!!!
I e-mailed and explained this did not help.....
....after this they refuse to answer my requests for help so I called...
...I sat on HOLD for 48 minutes and listened to ENYA music and the always encouraging "Your call in important to us please stay on the line."
After finally giving up they offer a "Call Back" leave your number and we will call you back up to 6 times today....Well,...for two days I had someone sitting by the phone on the ready to answer and NO CALL BACK!!!!, so,, I E-Mailed tech support and asked them to- Call me back -and they now (not having any answers for me) refuse to answer my e-mails or call me back.
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