psychedelicx

Sounds like you get what you pay for and in this case $300 is not much. Well since the high-end explorist unit just came out and i believe the GPSMap 60C/S came out what a year and a half ago, does anyone have an idea when the next round of units (similar to Explorist and GPSMap i.e. small, relatively inexpensive etc) will be out? Do they normally run on a one year or three year cycle?

Oh and slightly off topic, how is it that some of you have so many gps units! What do you do with 5 units ?!!

Well since this is my first unit, my expectations for quality may be way higher than is standard for all units. I remember reading in a previous post that a user had a mounting clip that was breaking off from a Garmin GPSMap unit as well. One of the review's I read also mentioned a user physically pulling out the usb port from his/her unit. So if anyone has had any experience with both units then i would appreciate it if I could get back some feedback as to the difference in the two units as far as construction goes. It may also be the case that the Explorist's units are just fine too in the long run, it's just that to get two units shipped to me with bad joystick's leads me to suspect that i may have more issues in the future. Either way at this point i am not tied to either unit, until i can find out more.

After reading some of the reviews here, i decided to take the plunge and get my first GPS receiver. It was between a Magellan Explorist 500 and the Garmin GPSMap 60c. The magellan won. While i was amazed at the size(tiny), reception(lock inside my apartment away from the windows!) and features(sd card expandability) i am a little hesitant about the quality of the product. The clickable joystick requires excessive force in the top direction and does not work in the top-right direction. I even ordered a replacement and this unit turned out to be even worse. Clearly Magellan has QC issues here. While i love all it's features, i am not about to spend $300 to get a cheap product and this is what it felt like. Since this is my first unit and have never come in contact with any other units, I would like to get your opinions on what you think of the Garmin GPSMap. I'm willing to look over Garmin's backassed policy not to include expandable memory(main reason i choose magellan) if the unit is solid(i.e. all buttons atleast work properly out of the box.) I'll be mainly using the unit for Geo-caching, hiking and in car for directions. Any information will be appreciated including those from explorist users.