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74 of 76 people found the following review helpful.
Magellan ExploristGC
By Fritz
A decent GPS for geocaching. It comes with street maps for the entire United States and Canada and base maps (major highways) for the rest of the world. In the US and Canada you may navigate (it does NOT auto-navigate) yourself to a geocache by watching the mapping screen and choosing a route.
Included is a 30 day premium membership to Geocaching.com. In order to to the full or entire extent implement the features of this unit you MUST be a premium member. Paperless caching, pocket queries and bookmarks, uploading field notes all require sustaining a premium membership ($30 per year).
I have been geocaching more than 7 years and have experience with Magellan, Garmin and DeLorme GPS units. I attended a C.I.T.O. event in San Francisco earlier this year and won an ExploristGC in a drawing at that event. My thanks to Magellan.
The unit comes with an (abbreviated) User Handbook packaged in the box. For the finish User Handbook you will need to access MagellanGPS.com and either read it online or download the Adobe acrobat file to your computer. It is one of the better user handbooks that I have seen for GPS units. Learning to use the unit (for me) was comparatively easy and quick.
Cons:
Small text. Hard to read while bouncing in a car.
Transflective screen. Hard to see even in bright sunlight. I necessitated to use the backlight most of the time.
Battery life. About 10 hours for rechargeables (because I necessitated to use the backlight most of the time.)
Position Update. Most of the time beauteous good. Occasionally VERY slow (up to 2 minutes).
Switching amidst screens. The Map screen and the Dashboard screen are employed extensive for geocaching. It is not possible to quickly switch amidst these two screens.
Awards. The unit is preprogrammed to "award" you for 10 miles traveled, your 1st, 10th, etc. cache found. No way to turn this off.
Pros: (with Geocaching premium membership)
Making field notes and uploading those notes to Geocaching.com
Paperless caching (including watching any photographs and graphics from the cache pages.)
Memory capacity. The unit will hold the info for thousands of caches.
I would give the ExploristGC another star if the position update was quicker and more reliable. It is VERY irritating to be 10 or 15 feet away from a cache and not recognise which way to go. On a good deal of occasions I have walked past a cache by 30 to 40 feet before the unit updates my distance from the cache and the arrow swings on the compass to point toward the cache. (I see this problem listed on galore other reviews but not all, so this problem could be fixed to a lot of but not all units.)
88 of 94 persons found the following review helpful.
A well-priced, well-made geocaching device for neophytes and those on a budget
By Hugo D. Hackenbush
What is Geocaching? It's an outdoor action akin to treasure hunting, in which players use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anyplace in the world.
Sound interesting? Then you might want to give the Magellan eXplorist GC Handheld Geocaching GPS Navigator a whirl. It's an entry-level GPS geocaching device that is utterly suitable for neophytes, yet has sufficient capablenesses to suit the basic needs of geocaching veterans.
The good:
- No-frills geocaching device is perfective for newbies as it covers all the fundamental principle expected from a geocaching device;
- The eXplorist has a nice, colorful screen;
- The eXplorist's interface is intuitive and easy to use, with an effective button layout;
- The eXplorist has very good GPS tracking capabilities, on par with more costly geocaching devices, while likewise including a utile compass feature;
-The eXplorist is little (but not too much so), ruggedly-built, waterproof and feels very comfortable in the hands;
- Battery life is stated by Magellan to be a very good 15 hours, but my experience with the eXplorist GC using usual Duracell batteries has averaged battery life at around 17-18 hours;
- The eXplorist has a "suspend mode" that preserves battery life;
- The eXplorist comes preloaded with 1,000 of the most general global geocache locations; it includes a highly elaborate international basemap;
- The eXplorist may accommodate up to 500 waypoints and 5,000 point tracklogs; USB interface is non-proprietary;
- Various plug-ins and firmware updates (as well as the device's user manual) is (or will be) available through Magellan's website, promising increased device functionality and software improvements;
- Optional 30-day trial for premium geocaching membership services, which concede for outstanding features such as paperless caching, pocket queries and bookmarks (after the 30 day trial, there is a $30 annual fee or a $10 three-month fee for the optional membership service);
- The price is right for a GPS geocaching device of this caliber.
The bad:
- No other GPS capablenesses besides geocaching included in package;
- No option to add external memory;
- The screen is somewhat dimly lit and the text is somewhat small, potentially making reading a chore for those with strained eyesight;
- Software response is somewhat sluggish;
- Very basic features means this is a no-frills geocaching device which, while perfective for newbies, may not be adequate for the purpose for more experienced (or wealthier) geocachers who are looking for more "bells and whistles" in their geocaching device;
- As brought up earlier, after the 30-day trial expires, in order to get the greatest or most complete or best possible gain of this device, you will have to fork over either a $30 annual fee or a $10 three-month fee for Magellan's premium geocaching membership services (IMO, altogether worth the extra cost for the premium features).
For those who have had issues with the eXplorist's lack of "pinpoint" accuracy, please keep in mind that this is an issue with most, if not all, of GPS geocaching devices, no matter of make or cost, due to respective types of cover and terrain, which will interfere with GPS tracking. In all, giving careful consideration to it is terrific price point and what you get right out of the box, the Magellan eXplorist GC Handheld is strongly commended for newbies or those on a tight budget.
24 of 25 humans found the following review helpful.
Upgraded to the Magellan eXplorist GC
By Erin Palmer
I upgraded from a very basic GPS to the eXplorist GC because I only use my GPS for geocaching. After looking at the reviews of other productions I chose this one because it held billing itself as the GPS solely for geocaching and it was paperless. I genuinely take pleasure in the whole paperless feature. I have found a dozen or so caches in dissimilar terrain. Here is what I've noticed so far.
PRO:
I love the fact the hints, descriptions, and a couple logs are all in the unit. (I guess that would be unfeigned with any paperless geocaching unit.
I love that I didn't have to pay for a unit that provides the sunrise/sunset times, tides, or elaborated topographical information.
I love having the roads and rivers/lakes show up on the display.
I like the USB connection.
CON:
The unit takes a bit to get a signal.
It doesn't come with a real manual. You have to go online to get the PDF file.
There is a little bit of a learning curve, peculiarly when it doing multi-caches and puzzles.
I haven't been competent to upload my field notes.
All that being said I am glad I purchased this unit. I'm still getting applied to the unit, but I love the paperless aspect. I'm competent to find a great deal of support online, so the lack of an actual manual hasn't actually been a problem.
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