Calling Magellan Meridian Users please.

Hounddog · Post by **Hounddog** » 23 February 05 10:51 am

What's the best Meridian

I am looking at buying a new Magellan GPS soon.

Currently looking at the Meridian range (of course)

It's out of the Platinum or the Colour.

I have been told that the colour is not great because of readout and battery use issues.

Can anyone who has or currently uses either of these units give me their thoughts.

TIA

Hounddog.

tolmh · Post by **tolmh** » 23 February 05 11:58 am

Unless you really need to use an SD card, why not save some money with a SporTrak Pro? It's got more than enough memory for all the maps you'll ever need, will support routing when it's out in Australia, and is smaller and sexier than the Meridians (which look like the bottom of somebody's boot). Only US$227.95 (about AUS$288) at offroute.com, versus US$269.95 (about AUS$340) for a Platinum.

Biggles @ Work · Post by **Biggles @ Work** » 23 February 05 12:49 pm

If your worried about battery usage, go for the gold (no electronic compass) and save a few dollars at the same time

Aushiker · Post by **Aushiker** » 23 February 05 1:02 pm

tolmh wrote:Unless you really need to use an SD card, why not save some money with a SporTrak Pro?

Have a read of the test reports on the 2003 SporTraks at http://www.backpackgeartest.org/reviews ... 0Gear/GPS/. They may be useful.

I know one of those units has now died completely and has been returned to Magellan.

Andrew

maccamob · Post by **maccamob** » 23 February 05 1:33 pm

We've been using a Platinum since Day 1 and are still very happy with it. The initial reason for buying it was to get the compass feature. We'd tried an earlier model Magellan and didn't like having to be moving to get a bearing to the cache. The Platinum's compass allows you to stand still and turn on the spot till you are pointing the right way. Much easier!<p>

There are several advantages to having the SD card, and they all boil down to unlimited storage - for maps, waypoints, tracks etc. SD cards are getting cheaper every day, and you can fit maps for all Aus on one 256Mb card.<p>

With the latest firmware, the Platinum (and Gold, Colour etc) also supports Direct Route. We tried out DR Europe last year and it's great. Roll on the Aussie version.<p>

Haven't tried the Colour so can't comment on any comparisons there.

Lt. Sniper · Post by **Lt. Sniper** » 23 February 05 4:32 pm

I have also owned a Meridian Platinum from day one and donÃ‚â€™t know what I would do without it.

DAST maps take up a 256meg SD card to cover the whole of Australia and then you have street maps of everything. The maps are a lot better then GarminÃ‚â€™s being further out of the city as well.

I will say that it is a bit bigger then a Garmin etrex series GPS but the quad helix antenna is well worth the space it takes up.

If you have any specific questions then ask away on here or PM me

PS. I donÃ‚â€™t mind Garmin either, there new 60C(s) GPS's are quite good.

leek · Post by **leek** » 23 February 05 6:11 pm

If you're particularly keen on the Meridian, then I would probably recommend the Gold on the basis of value for money... I have the yellow which has served me well, but it has a very limited base map which hurts when you zoom out too far... For detailed maps from DAST it has the same abilities as the Gold etc...

As you say I believe that the Color is difficult to read in sunlight and eats batteries for brekky... The Platinum is nice, but is a lot more expensive for the added compass, thermometer & barometer...

Have you looked at the new Explorist range? They look like C*&P, but they are a LOT cheaper than the Meridians... I haven't looked at them in detail, but I believe that they have similar mapping etc. to the Meridians...

Papa Bear_Left · Post by **Papa Bear_Left** » 23 February 05 7:20 pm

Ditto to Leek on the pain of a small basemap (I have a MeriGreen); enough internal memory is useful.

I love the SD card option, for two main reasons. One is the effectively unlimited storage (I have all the Oz and NZ maps on it, as well as all the caches and such, with room to spare on a 128MB card)

The other is the speed of transfer. I pop the card out and use a USB card reader (or the Palm acting as one) to copy the latest cache waypoints from GSAK into it in a manner of seconds. Then I spend several minutes doing the same thing with the serial port of the eTrex. I know which procedure _I_ prefer!

A USB-connected GPSr would equate with the second advantage, but not the first.

Compared to the yellow eTrex, the Meridian is slower to centre out at GZ (I often overshoot by 10-15m and watch Mama Bear stop right at GZ!) but much more accurate eventually. The auto-averaging is great, and it holds a signal much better in forested conditions.

Luckily, I have yet to appreciate the fact that it floats!

EcoTeam · Post by **EcoTeam** » 23 February 05 8:37 pm

Oh come on, someones gotta say it!
Gimmie a G
Gimmie an A
Gimmie an R
etc

EcoDave (Ex-Thales(Magellan) employee)

swampgecko · Post by **swampgecko** » 23 February 05 8:38 pm

EcoTeam wrote:Oh come on, someones gotta say it!
Gimmie a G
Gimmie an A
Gimmie an R
etc

EcoDave (Ex-Thales(Magellan) employee)

Watta ya mean EX? Did they have a problem with you promoting the opposition?

Bronze · Post by **Bronze** » 23 February 05 8:55 pm

G
A
R
M
I
N

Yayyyyyyyy

The Bronze.
"I feel like I diagonally parked in a parallel universe."

tolmh · Post by **tolmh** » 23 February 05 9:26 pm

I still don't get the big deal about SD cards. Why would you want the whole of Australia at street level with you anyway? Do you regularly finish a cache in Dubbo then fly to Darwin? Might be nice for the novelty factor of being able to zoom in on Kalgoorlie when you're in Kiandra, but it's not particularly helpful for everyday caching or any other kind of navigation for that matter.

A SporTrak Pro has 23mb memory free with a basemap loaded. The ACT and surrounding districts is about 1.5mb with Mapsend. The greater Sydney area (west to Lithgow, north to Newcastle, south to Woollongong) is about 5mb. Ditto for SE QLD (Brisbane, north to Maroochydore, south to Coolangatta, west to Mt Nebo). Melbourne out to Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong and the Murrindindi is only 10mb. I'd guess that those four regions cover the vast majority of the caches in Australia, and I've still got 1.5mb to spare if I want to drop in the whole of Perth (900kb), Adelaide north to Gawler, south to Victor Harbour and east to Charlston (1.4mb) or Darwin (less than 100kb).

EcoTeam · Post by **EcoTeam** » 23 February 05 11:47 pm

swampgecko wrote:
EcoTeam wrote:Oh come on, someones gotta say it!
Gimmie a G
Gimmie an A
Gimmie an R
etc

EcoDave (Ex-Thales(Magellan) employee)
Watta ya mean EX? Did they have a problem with you promoting the opposition?

Well, our division was sold off to another company, so bye bye Thales.
But we just moved from one French owner to another

I told the CEO I was promoting the opposition, as there was no incentive (i.e. staff discount) to promote our own units. At which point they agreed to give employees the supposed "wholesale" price on Magellan receivers. I could still get them much cheaper on eBay

Thales Navigation (who design and manufacture the Magellan receivers) are a military structured company, and it shows in their products. i.e. big, expensive, and designed by commitee. Granted, I haven't checked out the latest units on offer though, they may have improved.

EcoDave

EcoTeam · Post by **EcoTeam** » 23 February 05 11:54 pm

BTW, to add to the discussion. I've played with the Meridian Platinum I think it was, and I did a comparison aginst the eTrex in a thread about a year ago I think.
From memory the things I didn't like were:
1) It displayed a "user agreement" every time you switched on, if you didn't accept it it turned off! That just plain SUCKS. Not sure if this is on other models or not.
2) It was BIG, too big to operate easily with one hand, kind of had to shuffle it around in your hand to reach all the buttons.
3) No lanyard attachment.
4) It only gives 1m resolution compared to the Garmins 10cm. Forget absolute accuracy, the Garmins just KNOW where the cache is - it's 30cm that way!

EcoDave

Papa Bear_Left · Post by **Papa Bear_Left** » 24 February 05 11:52 am

EcoDave wrote:From memory the things I didn't like were:
1) It displayed a "user agreement" every time you switched on, if you didn't accept it it turned off! That just plain SUCKS. Not sure if this is on other models or not.

I agree it's a pain, but mine's now been modified to have my name and email address and a plea to return it if found!

EcoDave wrote:2) It was BIG, too big to operate easily with one hand, kind of had to shuffle it around in your hand to reach all the buttons.

<Arnievoice>What are you, some sort of girlygirl?</Arnievoice> I find it fine to use, and a heck of a lot quicker than a yellow eTrex (which is, admittedly, much more basic than the other models)

EcoDave wrote:4) It only gives 1m resolution compared to the Garmins 10cm. Forget absolute accuracy, the Garmins just KNOW where the cache is - it's 30cm that way!

So _that_ explains why Mama Bear finds more caches than I do; she's using the Garmin!

When I was in the US, on top of a hill in Arizona with horizon-to-horizon satellites, two of them WAAS, I switched to feet rather than metres, just to see how low the EPE really was! (4 feet, BTW)