Customer Reviews
Explorist 210: Perfect for Geocaching
I purchased this unit for Christmas after a lot of research. What the research seemed to tell me is that the Magellans perform better under tree cover than the other leading brand. That said, I can only speak from my experience with the 210 which has been awesome. I primarily use this for Geocaching, and after 60+ finds in a month's time I can honestly say it has never led me astray and I am still without any DNFs. I am always within 20 feet of the cache, and usually it is much closer. Of course cloud and tree cover can be a factor, but I am yet to see it significantly. The navigation screens are very helpful and customizable, and the controls are very intuitive! The USB connectivity is an added bonus for the price and is also a time saver and easy to use. I would suggest using rechargeable batteries as they seem to last longer. I have been able to perform 8+ hours of caching without the batteries going dead. In my experience you can't go wrong here.
Great Features for a Great Price!
This is my second Magellan product (previously bought a Blazer 12 in the late 90's- which I still have), and I must say that I'm still a satisfied customer.
The eXplorist 210 is just what I was looking for in a new GPS- 1) reasonable price 2) a U.S. basemap 3) capable of UPLOADING more detailed maps and individual coordinates 4) capable of DOWNLOADING tracklogs and coordinates.
The eXplorist 210 does everything I want, and at a great price (it's actually a much better unit than the 300!)
Good Value PC Compatible GPS, Scratchable Display Plastic
I have not had this device long, but we did spend a day geocaching with it. It performs very well.
I chose this model because I wanted a GPS unit that I could access with my PC through USB and this seems to work very well. Included is a small application that will convert .loc waypoint location files to the .gs files that this unit uses.
When I plug the USB cable into the unit and then into my USB hub and power up the GPS unit, it appears as drive H:/ and I can move/rename/copy/etc. the files in the GPS unit without having to use the GPS interface, which is a time saver.
It has a nice readable map that can be zoomed out to see the whole planet, or zoomed in to a 100ft scale. It recognizes primary roads and highways in my town and knows the name of the lake I live near. Apparently I can also purchase and download custom maps from mapsend, but I haven't tried that yet.
Without even reading the manual, just by fiddling with the gizmo, we were able to figure out how to find our geocache destinations, set a route, add waypoints, and choose custom icons for the waypoints from a selection of maybe 20 or 30.
I can't comment on battery life because I haven't worn out a set of batteries yet, but I think other people have commented on that.
This unit is accurate enough that it can tell when I *turn around in place and face a different direction* which is pretty amazing to me. I am very pleased with the performance.
I did take one star off because already the clear plastic over the display has gotten scratched. BE WARNED: the display is VERY EASY to scratch. I'm going to have to find a little leather case or cloth bag or something for it. As a comparison, I have carried my nokia cellphone around in my pocket with my car keys for about three years and there is no significant scratching on the display, but with this GPS unit, whatever plastic they chose, it got scratched up quite a bit with just a few hours in my pocket (with carkeys). I realize that wasn't too bright of me, but I know there are more durable plastics out there because of my experience with my nokia, so... just be careful! Now the screen looks like its got dust on it that can't be wiped off... :-(
Other than that, I am very pleased and feel that this unit is a good value.
