Magellan Handhelds W/ Sirfstariii

[+n8qxb]

Does anyone know if and when Magellan is going to release GPS handheld models with the SirFstarIII chipset?

[Dr_Dajom]

Short answer: No freakin' way!

 

Long answer: Since Magellan is owned by Thales (65 000 employees) and Thales makes chips waaaaaaay better than SIRFs I doubt it.

[+DD214]

I wish Magellan would have put one of those sweet Thales chips in my Explorist 500 so that it would perform as well as my 60Cx! I feel cheated.

[vagabond]

I wish Magellan would have put one of those sweet Thales chips in my Explorist 500 so that it would perform as well as my 60Cx! I feel cheated.

you might try reading this

[+DD214]

I wish Magellan would have put one of those sweet Thales chips in my Explorist 500 so that it would perform as well as my 60Cx!  I feel cheated. 

you might try reading this

I did. Using scientific methods, they may perform equally, or the Magellan may even edge out the X series Garmins, but my experience over the past week has been simply observed performance, and my new 60Cx has served me better. That may not be true for everyone who compares these units.

 

I'm not a rabid fan of either brand, so I am not particularly biased either way. In fact I would go so far as to say that I don't have any brand loyalty whatsoever. If Magellan releases a GPSr that outperforms my Garmin, the Garmin will go bye-bye. My first GPSr was a Meridian Gold and it served my well for a long time. My next purchase was an Explorist 500, followed shortly by a 60C and now a 60Cx. For the past few months I have used the 60C for road travel since the auto-routing is definitely superior to the Explorist, but I used the Explorist for field use out of the car since it had superior reception.

 

A few days ago I took both units to an area that had caused me problems in the past. It is a fairly deep ravine that is full of very large oak and pine trees, so much so that in the summer when the leaves are full you can't see the sky visually. From past experience in this area, my 60C would not keep a strong enough lock to be useful, or would lose lock entirely, and my Explorist would keep lock on a few birds, but it would clearly struggle trying to keep an accurate position. Anyway, when I tested them a few days ago, I created a waypoint approximately 1 mile ahead where a creek intersects the trail, and then attempted to navigate to that position while keeping a watchful eye on each unit. My Explorist did a little better than the last time I was there since there aren't many leaves right now, but it still struggled. The arrow would swing from the left to right in about a 180 degree arc. Once I was within about 80 feet of the waypoint, the needle began swinging 360 degrees, so that was the best it could do. The Garmin 60Cx kept a good lock on a couple more birds, and the needle stayed within about a 90 degree arc of the correct heading, keeping the correct heading most of the time. It led me to within about 25 feet of the waypoint before the needle started swinging wildly. Neither unit was able to keep a lock on a WAAS bird in this location.

 

From my experience so far, the 60Cx will serve me much better than my Explorist. The upside to this is that now I won't have to keep up with 2 units, only the Garmin. Others may observe exactly the opposite, so who knows. For me it all comes down to real world performance, not charts and graphs, and in this instance Garmin has a clear winner. Hopefully the competition will rise to the occasion and come out with a kick a** unit that will leave the Garmin X series in the dust. If they do I will buy it in a heartbeat.