Costco is currently selling the Magellan SportTrak Map Value Pak with MapSend Topos CD and a neoprene cover for $199.99 - $50 Costco mail-in rebate.

I bought one over this weekend. I've been playing with it the last couple of days. Overall, I am pretty happy with it. I took it on a mountain bike trail this morning, and it is just sweet. For the price, it is such a sweet deal.

Only gripe so far, it only has 6MB of uploadable memory (8MB total). I guess for the money, you cannot ask for more.

 

i got a SporTrak Map for my birthday, its my first GPS. i need to get some software for it so i can actually use it i guess.

 

That mapsend software is cool!
I bought that for my dad's Magellian Meridian Platinum and a 32 mb card.
Its cool because it has restruants, parks, etc.

 

I want to get one soon. Is this the best one to get in the under $200 range?

 

If you can get it from Costco, it's the best for the money. But then again, I have not used anything else. So, I don't really know for sure.

There are better, but they do go up in price...

 

IMHO, no. The Magellan is an okay unit, waterproof and it floats. What I don't like about it is the lack of information relative to highway exits, even with the Mapsend software. I owned one for a couple of days and then sold in on fleabay and got the Garmin GPS MAP76 which has much better detail then the Magellan. I use mine a lot on the water and the Garmin with the Roads & Rec software offers far more detail and navigational aids. Also, the Garmin lets you be more selective in what maps you load from the CD versus the sectional maps from Magellan. I also like the topo maps from Garmin better than Magellan, especially if you are going to be off-roading a lot. It's probably a matter of personal taste, and the Garmin is more money (especially with that deal from Costco on the Magellan!). There is also a Garmin e-map deluxe which includes the basemap and an 8MB data card for transfering maps and is priced on a par with the Magellan. It's less expensive but is not recommended for marine use since it is not waterproof (water resistant) and surely will not float.
The various discussion boards on GPS hardware seem to favor the Garmin units over the Magellan but at that price, you can't go wrong and you'll still have a functional GPS that will do most of what you need (oh, the Magellan also doesn't do peak speed readings which is important to me for racing purpsoes on the water).

 

well I have the alpine navigation already for highway use .. Iwas looking more for off roading purposes .. b/c once you go into a remote area or off road .. alpine doesn't show anything on the screen

 

Odd. The SportTrak does have a Max Speed and Avg Speed reading. Is that what you are looking for?

 

My Sportrak Pro from about a year ago did not have the max speed feature, they may have upgraded the firmware since then. Does it now show exit numbers and facilities at those exit numbers? If so, then Magellan has improved the product a lot in the last year. Again, for that price, it's hard to beat for the casual user although I still like the Garmin software much better and it's much easier to customize the maps you need.

 

anyone used MapSend Topo??

im not sure how to use the GPS software, how will adding MapSend Topo or Streets and Destinations change the normal day-to-day stuff?

 

It doesn't change it, just adds more detail maps so you can zoom in closer. The topo (at least on the Garmin) does an overlay of a topographical map on the basemap but doesn't wipe out the basemap. The loaded maps add more information on facilities (the Garmin actually gives you phone numbers) and some of them will get you down to address level. It is fully functional without them but they really increase the ability of the unit especially if you are going to be rock climbing (nice to know how big the rock is before you tackle it!). You can often find additional Mapsend CD's on fleabay for a lot less than the retail price. The topo CD is nice to have but you'll probably also want the Magellan Streets and Destinations (think that's the correct name, could be wrong).

 

I've got the Magellian Meridian Color. It's basically the same as the
Magellian Meridian Platinum only with a Color screen. The color screen
is cool but much harder to see in sunlight. At night or in the shade
the screen looks great (it is backlit) but for my purposes the B&W screen
would have worked out better since I use it for my boat and truck and
much of the time it is in bright sunlight and very hard to see. I'm going
to construct a shade to fit around the display which should help. The
B&W screen is much easier to see in bright sunlight. There are a few
advantages to color, like rivers are blue, major highways are red, minor
highways are yellow, streets are black but for the most part there is
really not a lot of advantage to color with perhaps the exception of
being able to easily see that a river (blue) is not a street (black).

The major advantage of the Meridian series over the sporttrack is the
SD card slot. Other than that they appear to be very close.

With my 64MB SD card I can fit the detailed maps of the South East
United States in memory at one time with POI. Without the SD card
you won't be able to hold a very large area's detailed map (Mapsend).
The base map that is always present is not that bad, it does show most
major roads for the entire US just not the street level details.

Must purchase items are the brackets for mounting on your car/boat/bike
with a 12V power coard adapter and a PC serial cable. The color version
really eats batteries if you have the backlight turned on unless you have
the external 12V power connected.

 

After a short period of use, I find that the Maps (topo and US Street), don't match the GPS coordinates too closely. Sometimes it is off by 50 ft. and sometimes, it looks like I'm offroading.

Is this a problem with the mapping software or a problem with the GPS?

Anyways, I find that the 6MB of uploadable memory only get me LA County in the device. Probably will keep an eye out for a PRO or Meridian with upgradable memory.

 

Is this magellan for driving directions map like a navigator or os this thing for the water for boats etc? Lets say I am out of town and looking for a restaurant or gas, will this unit find me the location of where to go? Sorry fellas was lost and if this is how it works I may ask my wife to get it for my b-day. Thanks in advance

 

No, it's a not a full navigation system. Magellan does sell a map software that will help with this a little, but not much.

The roadmate or others like it, is what you want, but it costs 700+