A Reliable Hiking Aid
Written: Apr 25 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Pro's
Excellent display and battery life, easy to program, and 128meg memory.
Cons: Con's
Slow start-up, confusing controls and documentation, no additional memory.
The Bottom Line: Highly Recommend
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| akousen21's Full Review: Magellan SporTrak Topo Handheld GPS Receiver |
This unit competes with a similar Garmin unit, but is far superior in ease of use and dependability. The SportTrak Topo was put to use in the Adirondak Mountains of New York. My son and I were on a 4 day hiking trip, involving many untrailed summits, where it is easy to get lost, climbing through thick underbrush, spruce forests, and blowdowns the size of city blocks.
The unit is easily attached to a computer PC to download maps of any detail. The process is fast and clear.
Performance of the unit was fantastic! The display could be switched to "cross-section" view to show your location in reference to everything surrounding you. The regular topo view identified brooks and streams down to almost infinite detail. It published accuracy is 3 meters, although we found in use, it is closer to 2 feet on the horizontal plane. Vertical accuracy is about the same. The unit was instrumental in helping us choose among several heard paths, where we could quickly identify the wrong way up or down. The display area can be programmed to your liking- from complex to spartan. We used it to show a cross section at the bottom of the screen, and the main screen displaying the topo map. We also had it show us, bearing, and common map features such as brooks, streams, summits, etc. The unit can be set up to display a combination of data by using the menu key.
We also used the unit in our car and on city streets; the built in maps showed us shopping centers, hotels, movies and restaurants.
I highly recommend this unit.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
akousen21
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Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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