( 28 reviews )
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Posted: Jul 16 2009
I am a big fan of navigation system for cars. I started using it a long time ago and had a lot of fun with it. However, I have never used any kind of handheld GPS systemj, and the Magellan Triton 500 is the first one. Since the Triton 500 is a cooler looking than the GPS I am using for my car, I was expecting some fancy features that I cannot find on the car GPS system. But my expectation was not right and I do not use it much these days. Here is why. I thought that the Triton 500 gives almost the same resolution of a map I have in an "under $100" car GPS. But, it only shows major highways and big roads, not the local roads. So this device is not designed for rural areas for sure. The map shown on the color LCD display is very coarse. You cannot expect any details on the map. And when I tested it while I driving on the highway, it showed that I was off from the highway by 10-20 feet which is not right. Well I was testing a hiking GPS on a highway, so it was kind of my fault. To use the Triton 500 right, you have to install TOPO maps, and it is not free. You have to buy it, and the included map is, as I said above, pretty much the simplest map you can think of. And you also need an SD card to store detailed maps. It runs on two AA batteries, however, it eats up the batteries pretty fast. I used Sanyo Eneloop rechargeable batteries (2000mAh) that I think are pretty strong, however, it only lasted for 3-4 hours of extensive usage. So if you hike more than half the day, you should be prepared with another pair of batteries. Other reviewers stated that alkaline batteries last longer. The built-in compass, barometer, and speedometer look pretty cool, and the compass can be operated by a built-in magnet. I like the brownish-orange color of this device, however, the material used for the case of the Triton 500 is quite disappointing. It feels like a cheap plastic for a sub $20 device. The touch of the buttons are not the best, too. Although I have not used the Triton 500 extensively, this handheld GPS does not catch much of my attention. If I was a frequent hiker/climber, I might like it. But for now, I can only give 3 stars.
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 16 2009
I read a lot of the negative reviews here, and frankly, didn't experience any of the problems noticed. I think this is important to note in the context of the amazon vine program, where I got this for free to review. Most of non-vine, negative reviews are 1+ years old. I'm guessing this company read all those complaints, fixed the issues, and hence gave the units out for free in order to generate positive reviews for what is now a much better product. I did have some issues setting this thing up at first. For some reason, 2 of my computers refused to read the CD necessary for installation, a third one did. I have no clue why. That created a bit of stress but I finally got everything going. I got a free map ($99 regular), and got the entire U.S. into this unit in about 10 hours of downloading. This obviously isn't that great, since with y Garmin, it is MUCH faster. However, the Garmin car GPS isn't as detailed. The unit itself is very easy to use and navigate through. The battery lasts long, and it definetely is a durable and rugged GPS system. I only have 2 real complaints: 1. I noticed that although this GPS tracks your location to within 5 feet in urban areas and 10 feet in backwood areas, it doesn't actually "follow". What I mean is: unlike my car's GPS that shows you where you are now in real-time, this thing for some reason will not shift the map with your location as you move along; you have to move the map towards yoru location in order to see where your symbol, and hence you, are located. This is quite inconvenient, especially for long distances. 2. There is quite an issue it seems still with connectivity. It's not a software issue, but many times I'll connect the GPS to the computer and it will swith to "connected" to "waiting for PC" every second, literally. I have to unsecure the connection (which takes a while with how it connects to the GPS), and resecure it; this is quite annoying. However, since I've got all the maps loaded that I'll ever really need, there's no longer a reasont to connect this unit to the computer, so I can basically avoid this problem altogether. Overall though, this is a nice unit to use in the "great outdoors", but I would not substitute my Garmin gps for regular "urban" navigation.
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( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 15 2009
I got a review unit of the Triton 500 to play with under the Amazon Vine program, and have been using it for the last three weeks, including a trip to Lake Tahoe over the 4th of July. I have to say this is the first Magellan GPS that I've used in some years, but I've owned a couple, starting with a NAV-1000, the first ever handheld GPS (which cost me $2000-$3000 at the time I believe). The Triton 500 is a relatively inexpensive "trail GPS" designed for outdoor use rather than for automotive trip routing etc. It contains a SIRFStarIII receiver as most current GPS models from most manufacturers do these days (since they all gave up on making their own) and it has comparable (which is to say excellent) performance in the basic GPS functions. I like the quality and construction of the Triton. The battery door screws securely to the unit and is made of the same plastic as the rest of the unit so I don't understand the complaints I saw about it. I dropped the GPS onto concrete from about three feet once, and it survived with just a small scratch to the plastic which I sanded flat. The current version comes with an offer of a free download of Topo USA map software. I installed a 2GB SD card and was able to put the entire Topo USA map set onto it. It's broken up into eight-ish regions and you manually select which one you want at any particular time. These are vector based maps with more detailed roads than the (rather simplistic) basemap and they include altitude data which is nice as you can use it to determine your true elevation more accurately than GPS usually provides. The Triton will also do something that (AFAIK) no Garmin unit will (and I've owned about a dozen of them) which is to also support downloadable *raster* maps. I have a very old copy of the Topo California set of scanned USGS Topo maps on CD-ROM. I was able to buy a $13 software update from National Geographic to get the newest software which lets you extract a region out of a map and download it to the Triton and then select it as the active map. If you like the USGS Topo maps this is pretty cool, since it puts an actual image of the map on the display. You can't just download a whole state this way (the scanned maps are just too large) but it's useful for planned offroad activities etc. You can have the vector Topo USA and some raster Topo sheet maps all on the GPS at the same time and switch between them as needed. I tested out the software under Windows Vista 64 and had no problems uploading and downloading maps, tracks, etc. Performance overall was very good. Battery life was reasonable, even having to turn the backlight on a lot (the transreflective display is not as visible in bright outdoor light as some of the Garmins). Overall I thought it was a perfectly acceptable GPS for someone who wants to use it for Geocaching or other outdoor activities like hiking. It's tiny speaker (beeps on key presses and various events) is barely audible in a quiet room and definitely difficult to hear outdoors. The digital compass and barometer seemed to work ok. As far as I can tell the barometer is not used in the GPS altitude computation (this is actually a feature in my opinion when compared to some Garmins that don't let you disable the barometric altitude compensation). Several of the various display screens are customizable with a pretty large set of data values that can be displayed. There's a neat track profile display that shows the elevation profile for a recorded track log which you can pan and zoom on so you can answer questions like what time did I reach that peak or that valley. So for someone looking for an outdoors, offroad type of handheld GPS, you ought to be quite happy with what the Magellan Triton 500 is capable of, and you should be able to have a lot of fun with it. G.
