Magellan Explorist XL

Good

Great large bright screen
pretty easy to use
Discover Aus topo has almost every tiny weeny track in Australia with search capability. ( good on screen and PC). Love that.
No screwing around with maps like on exploreoz.

Bad
Doesn't recharge batteries when powered from 12v
The australian Distributor in WA doesn't give a S..t about problems.
Make dam sure you keep your original reciept or they won't even acknowledge that you own a GPS
Not much else

Ugly
No detail at all on 2.5km and 5km ranges making them useless. more detail on 10km so you have to jump from 1.25 to 10km ranges.

Would I buy one again? Yep, depending on how the Hema one pans out.

Thanks for you reply, I already have a Tom Tom one xl so was more after the offroad side of things which by the sounds of it would be a good starting point anyhow.
Thanks once again much appreciated.
Craig

Have one also

Plus;
Great detail of most tracks I have been on in NSW,SA and Vic.
Gives the name of the Track you are approaching BEFORE you get there...
Have to disagree about the WA mob, Next Destination. They've been very helpful to me.
Backlit so you can read the thing in the dark
Menus easy to navigate
Comes with software called Mapsend that you can dump all your waypoints onto/from.

Minus;
Loses track detail when you zoom out to get some perspective of where you are
Mounting stalk that the unit comes with bounces around like a diving board - think a ram mount on the dash would be better.
Savage on batteries away from the car

Thanks Micheal I think that i will be getting one as it sound like exactly what i am chasing.
Thanks for your feedback.
Craig

Having had a Garmin 276C for the last 2 weeks to work out for a mate it's made me realise how very slow the processor is in my XL.

From memory I think the unit was first produced some three years ago.

Apart from that and the fact a set of four AA batteries will only last two hours the XL is perfect for my needs especially the huge screen.

As boobook2 pointed out, Next Destinaion can be a real pain at times but, on the flip side, they can also be very helpful, just don't tell them you bought it from an eBay seller!

On a side note, I still can't understand why Magellan have stopped production of the XL or even replaced it with an updated version in their latest releases.


Would I buy one again - hypotheticaly if Megellan decided to produce another unit with a quicker processor (as you would expect) and a longer battery life (8 hours on the Garmin's rechargable) then yes I would.

I find the Garmin an excellent little unit but far too may buttons to push for so many functions that at a guess if I owned one I'd only use probaly 50% of them.

The ability to use Shonky maps would be nice also.

Richard

If you leave it in car it's ok! I bought a RAMS windscreen mount which is made for the xl and haven't had prob since not like the universal mount, the xl spent more time on floor than windscreen. I still gotta get the sd card upgaded to new maps then I hope track/roads have had course coorection done .Few times road and map don't match and you see a tree growing that in middle of old road that's 20m tall!

Thanks everyone for your feed back it has been great. I will be getting one of these forsure.
Cheers

while we are on tis topic what external aerial are people using for the explorist xl
i am looking to put my mount on centre console and will lose some signal strength?