Awesome! Magellan Map 410 GPS is a winner
Written: Feb 27 '00 (Updated Jun 14 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great accuracy, many features, lots of fun
Cons: Expensive, drains batteries quickly
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| iowamommy's Full Review: Magellan Map 410 |
See update at the bottom talking about an experiment we did!
This is my husband’s favorite new toy! I bought this for Christmas and surprised him. I did a lot of researching before purchasing this. I was after a mid-priced model that included a moving map. The cheaper ones don’t. Some focus more on big-city driving with street maps and some are more for marine navigation. He would mainly be using it for long driving trips or for his fishing trips to Canada, not for big-city driving where he would need a detailed street map. I wanted a cross between an outdoors recreational one and one for driving, and this is it!
Features
This is a 12 parallel-channel receiver with a built-in worldwide background map and detailed map of the Americas that includes cities, lakes, rivers, railroads, coastlines, interstates, national and state highways.
There are nine different navigation screens that you can view:
--SATELLITE STATUS and general info on your receiver
--POSITION shows coordinates of your position and basic navigation information
--NAV 1 displays destination with four selectable navigation measurements and a graphical compass
--COMPASS provides pointer compass and a course deviation indicator
--NAV 2 displays four customizable information fields to help you see the screen when your receiver is mounted at a distance
--MAP shows your position against a map background and shows you as you move
--ROAD shows your position on the route
--SPEED shows the graphical speedometer, odometer and trip odometer
--TIME shows current time, estimated time en route, time of arrival and elapsed time
You can buy a CD-ROM that lets you download points of interest into your unit from your PC. If you were taking a trip to a specified area, you could set this up ahead of time and your unit would then have items for that specific area programmed into it. We haven’t taken a long trip with it yet so we haven’t purchased this.
There are lots of accessories available as add-ons such as cigarette lighter adapter cables, additional antennas, vehicle mounting brackets, Map-Send CD ROM and a how-to video. I would DEFINITELY get the adapter when used in a vehicle, because it drains batteries quickly.
Our experience
You can see yourself on the screen while driving. You show up as an arrow on the map. When you go around a curve or turn a corner, you see the arrow turning. What’s nice is that it shows highways coming up before you get there, and before road signs show you that they are coming up soon. You can zoom out to get the “big picture” of where you are, or zero in to see things more closely. The names of upcoming towns will be displayed. It shows a “track” of where you have driven.
The speedometer on this works very well. I will watch the GPS while he drives and tell him how fast he is going and he checks the vehicle’s speedometer, and it’s within a couple miles per hour of being dead on.
You can set “points” for reference. You can set your house as a point and then watch yourself navigate back to it on your way home. Any point along the way can be marked this way with a symbol. The receiver creates a name for your point. These are made up of numbers and letters, so they aren’t specific names that help you identify the point. If you want a more specific name, you then have to go in and edit the name later to make it what you want, which could be rather time consuming.
The backlit display is easy to see at night. There is an altimeter, thermometer, sun/moon rise and set times, and a best fishing time calculator.
This is small and lightweight, about the size of a remote control, but thicker. It is at least an inch thick. It has a rubber gripping surface on the sides that makes it easy to hang onto and feels very solid.
Drawbacks
It doesn’t work as well in some vehicles as others. Ours works wonderfully in our Windstar van and other vehicles, including a school bus. The one vehicle that it hasn’t worked so well in is a F-150 Ford pickup. Purchasing the vehicle mounting bracket and having it on the windshield has helped, but it hasn’t made it work as well as the other vehicles. Adding an antenna would probably help in that circumstance. It works perfectly when outside.
The battery life is not very long in this unit. If you plan to use it on a trip, you’ll want the cigarette lighter adapter.
Recommendation
I definitely recommend purchasing this. It has been a lot of fun and we use it a lot just because it’s quite amazing to see how it works. I could see it being very useful when you are going someplace new and trying to get home again. This is great if your husband won’t ask for directions!
Update as of 6/1/00: We still rate this just as great as we did before. The speedometer has shown amazing accuracy. It seems to be more accurate than the actual speedometer on our van!
6/9/00 Experiment:
I received an email message asking for more information on the accuracy of this unit, as when used in hunting and trying to find a deer stand that had been marked previously. The gentleman wondered about how many yards I would be able to come within trying to find it.
As I had never actually gotten this specific with it, we ran a little experiment. My husband said he would hide something (a small toy) outside on our farm and mark the spot, and it was up to me to find it, not even knowing the general direction to go. He hid the toy, marked the spot, handed me the GPS and left for work.
Now came the true test! I went outside and turned it on. I selected "go to" and saw the mark he saved as "toy" with a square icon to represent it. I used the sun/moon feature to line myself up with the sun in relation to this icon, so I knew the general way to go. I started walking that way, and turned on a different screen, the map screen. I was represented by an arrow, and I could see the square that stood for the toy. I was pointing too far west, so I corrected my steps to keep the arrow pointing to the box.
I had the alarm set to go off when I got within 100 feet of my target. That beeped so I knew I was on the right track. I just kept walking, adjusting my path when the arrow strayed, until the arrow looked like it was reaching the box. I stopped and looked around, and there was the toy in the grass about 10 feet in front of me!
I was actually shocked that it was this accurate. I mostly had used in in a vehicle before and was impressed, but had never put it to a test this way. I called my husband and told him he had quite an amazing toy!
Recommended:
Yes
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iowamommy
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Location: Iowa
Reviews written: 144
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Mother of four product testers!
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