Magellan CX0310SGXNA eXplorist 310 Waterproof Hiking GPS
Magellan CX0310SGXNA eXplorist 310 Waterproof Hiking GPS
- Rugged IPX-7 waterproof GPS receiver with 2.2-inch, sunlight-readable color screen and high-sensitivity SiRFstarIII GPS
- Easy operation with simple main menu, intuitive contextual menus, and vibrant graphics–ready to use right out of the box
- Includes a detailed road network, water features, urban and rural land use, and a realistic shaded relief background
- 18 hours of battery life and power-saving features let you go strong for an entire day without stopping to replace the batteries
- Paperless geocaching lets you download and view more than 20 unique characteristics of each cache, as well as view, search, and filter on the device
The explorist 310 GPS receiver provides essential outdoor navigation with a high-resolution color screen, waterproof design, paperless geocaching, and superior mapping, including preloaded World Edition and uploadable map capability. The eXplorist 310 GPS receiver provides essential outdoor navigation with a high-resolution color screen, waterproof design, paperless geocaching, and superior mapping, including preloaded World Edition and uploadable map capability. The Magellan eXplorist 310 GPS receiver comes packed with tons of helpful features and is ready to use right out of the box. A simple main menu, intuitive contextual menus, and vibrant graphics make this device easy to use. Start your journey with one click, and keep tabs
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crazyoaks "f golden"
April 12, 2012Great outdoor fun,
My family spends a tremendous amount of time outdoors, fishing, hiking, and working on our ranch. I am a distance walker. So I have been looking for a GPS that would help me keep up with miles walked and let me know where I am in the state park where I often walk. So when Amazon Vine offered to let me try out the Magellan eXplorist 310 I thought it might answer my needs.
The eXplorist 310 comes in a box with a Quick Start Guide, and a USB cord for the computer. There is a full manual online. The on/off button is on the top right side and must be held down for 2 seconds. To find this out, you either read the full manual or learn by trial & error. It certainly doesn’t tell you in the Quick Start Guide how to turn it on. In fact the Quick Start Guide doesn’t tell you much that is helpful.
Once you have it on press the menu key and you will see the different screens that come up. I suggest going to tools first to look at settings. You can put in ownership information and I would also suggest that you go to Brightness & Volume and change the backlight timer to longer than the 15 seconds that it is set with originally to keep the screen from turning off every fifteen seconds.
I found my home on the map, saved it, and then looked at points of interest. It found all the cities, bodies of water, public airstrips, and parks and public country clubs in a twenty-five mile radius. Since I live in a sparely populated area and my address is not on mapquest I was surprised by this.
The dashboard tells me how far I have traveled, how long I have been traveling, my average speed, if I stop how long I stopped. I love this because people will often stop me to talk and I could never figure it into my walking time, but now I can. The unit fits nicely in my hand and will fit into a pocket or clip on a belt while walking. It is easy to read, zoom in or out, go back, or use the toggle switches. We used it recently to map roads and trails on a piece of property that was heavily wooded.
I am not a geocache person, but I know that there is one hidden in the small rural cemetery near my parents. It is interesting to see the people who drive way out of the way to hunt for it. This unit has information that one could use to find and track geocaches, if that is something that interests you.
This is not a GPS that I would use to travel in the car but for the outdoors it has been lots of fun. This is not something that I have ever used before and it took me one set of batteries to learn how, but it is simple and easy to use. I am looking forward to discovering more about it as I use it
more. Be aware that the Magellan software does not support Apple computers so anything you do with the GPS on the computer must be done on a PC.
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|memoiai
April 12, 2012Huge improvement over older series!,
The Magellan eXplorist 310 is a HUGE improvement over my older Magellan Triton 500 GPS.
This unit comes with:
-The unit
-USB cable
-2 AA batteries (and a $2 coupon for batteries)
-A 30-day Groundspeak Premium Membership (see geocaching dot com slash membership for more info on what that is)
-Quickstart guide (full PDF manual is online)
Connectivity/set-up:
First of all, set-up is much faster than the Triton 500 and there are no connectivity issues whatsoever. Reconnecting to the computer, once again, there don’t seem to be any glitches like the Triton had.
Interface:
The user interface is VASTLY superior to the older model, not only in its bright display but also “Ipod”-like menu that is easy to understand, access, and explore.
Build/feel:
The unit weighs much less than the Triton, even with the batteries. But to be honest, the casing on the eXplorist is something I’d be worried about dropping and cracking, unlike the Triton (even though it’s claimed to be rugged, the thin plastic just doesn’t seem right on the eXplorist to be called rugged). I didn’t feel like dropping them both for this review to write about what happens.
The GPS:
I went to my local state park to give this a try. I noticed immediately that unlike the auto-tracking issues I had with the Triton (where you manually had to scroll the map to make sure you were on the screen as you walked), the eXplorist did this automatically; I’m glad they fixed/updated that issue, I’m not sure why it ever was one to begin with.
The map itself was very accurate with its reflection of major natural landmarks and distances. I noticed that distances (the longer the more pronounced the difference) were more accurately tracked by the eXplorist than the Triton.
There are several navigation lines present:
-Active: your current route that you have taken
-Origin line: the original origin to destination line
-Multi-leg route line: self-explanatory
-Destination line: to guide you to your destination if not on the origin line.
Several dashboard screens are available:
Compass, road, strip compass, satellite status screen, altimeter screen, and your typical GPS data screen with elapsed time, speed, distance, and so on.
I won’t go into any more detail because you can find all of this in the manual. But the variety and customization of this unit is what I’m trying to emphasize; it’s really great in terms of suiting your GPS to your current location and needs!
Overall:
Due to the ease of use of this unit, customization, accuracy, and attractiveness, I give this an overall 5; if I ever drop this and it doesn’t survive, I’ll definitely update here.
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|T. KLEMP
April 12, 2012Big improvement over the Triton series, very nice GPS for geocaching,
I bought the Magellan Explorist 310 almost exclusively for geocaching.
For the past two years, I’ve been using the Magellan Triton 400 for the same purpose. That GPS unit was good in its day, but I wanted something more responsive with more features. After playing around with my new Explorist 310, I’d like to share my initial feelings, as well as some helpful hints for getting the most out of the GPS with the least amount of headaches.
As far as the quality of the GPS, I’d rate it as excellent. When I put in a couple of Rayovac alkaline batteries (the unit ships with two Energizer lithiums and a coupon for $2 off your next purchase of these batteries, I’ll save those for another day) and pressed the power button for a couple seconds, the GPS powered right up, almost no wait time. It fits in the hand almost perfectly, and the buttons are easy to press. I initially had a bit of trouble with the toggle button, but figured out that if I wanted to spell out anything I needed to hold the unit in both hands, problem solved.
The battery compartment gave me a bit of trouble at first. It is a big improvement over the Triton series, it takes only a half turn to unlock the back of the GPS to replace the batteries. I struggled getting the battery cover back on again. Eventually I figured that out. Make sure that you connect the cover from the bottom first with a slight upward motion, then lower the top half of the cover and turn the screw the half turn needed to seal the battery compartment back up. Once you do it a few times there’s nothing to it.
Next step for me was to load some geocaches onto the GPS. I went for it and created three 1000 cache pocket queries on Geocaching.com. After they were created, I saved them onto my computer. Then I connected the Explorist 310 to my computer using the included cable, and copied the files from my computer onto the GPS. When I looked for them, they didn’t show up. I realized my mistake almost immediately – the files were still in a .ZIP format. I expanded them, then copied the .GPX files into the “Geocaches” folder on the Explorist, and the .WPTS.GPX files into the “Waypoints” folder. After that, everything showed up where I expected it to. Even with 3000 geocaches and the related waypoints, the unit booted up in no time!
Now I want to share the hints that should help you get the most out of this GPS (for geocaching anyway) right out of the box:
1. Go to Tools | Settings | Power, and set your battery type. Honestly don’t know what this does, but I’ve had my GPS on for 5 hours tonight and almost no reduction in battery power. It must do something! Battery life is so much better than my Triton, for this reason alone I’m glad I bought the GPS.
2. Go to Tools | Settings | Brightness & Volume, and set up these settings to your preferences. I set the Backlight Timer to 5 minutes (and you can keep it on longer), keeps me from pushing buttons just so I can see the screen after a few minutes
3. Go to Tools | Settings | Night Mode, and change the setting to “Off”. The factory setting will change the screen to night mode as soon as the sun sets, it’s really annoying. Maybe it’s preferable for some people, but definitely not for me.
The next two are the most important for geocachers, without changing these settings you will hate this GPS:
4. Go to Map, select it, then hit the Menu button. Scroll down and select “Map Options”. Find the “Auto Zoom” option, and turn it OFF! If you don’t, the screen will always zoom out to the point between your location and your destination, very annoying and makes it almost impossible to actually get to a cache.
5. Go to Map, select it, then hit the Menu button. Scroll down to “Geocaches” and change the setting to “Not Found & Not Attempted”. I initially changed this to “Not Found”, thinking this would show me the caches I didn’t find yet. I found out the hard way that that setting will only show caches that you looked for but couldn’t find.
That’s all I have for now. Like I said, so far I really like the unit. My only comparison is the Triton 400, but there are some HUGE improvements over that unit. Deleting the existing set of geocaches is almost instant, vs. 3+ minutes on the Triton. I can actually save my finds on the unit, on the Triton there was no option for this. I can see the last 5 comments from Geocaching.com, so I don’t waste my time looking for muggled caches. I will post an update if I find any more significant pros/cons to this unit, or any more helpful hints.
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