I love my eXplorist 400

[StrikesFolks]

I've had my 400 with Direct Route for about a year now, done some caches, and use it a lot for turn-by-turn driving. It always gets me where I want to go, but there are a few things that just drive me crazy!

• That damned alarm warning me there's a turn coming up. When I'm about .5 K away it starts beeping. It will not stop on it's own. Then when it's almost time to turn, a second faster paced beeping starts. Nothing is more irritating than sitting in the turn lane about to turn, and this damned alarm franticly warning me.
  
• Whats the deal with the proximity setting. I set it to 30M (Metres) the lowest it can go without disabling it. Do why does it go off when I'm 500 Metres away.
  
• To make matters worse, every time I use autoroute I have to specifically set it back to 30 Meters from the default of 75 Metres. Whenever I have to re-route, guess what? It's back to 75 fricken Meters again. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.
  
• And what's the deal with ETA. I always thought ETA would be for Estimated Time of Arrival. Oh no, in Magellan speak ETA means Estimated Time of Next Turn. Exactly how valuable is knowing that my next turn will be at 4:07.
  
• And get this when you are within 5 minutes from either the next turn or final destination, it switches from hours:minutes to seconds display. You are 237 seconds away. Who the hell thinks in seconds. WTF why not switch to minutes:seconds.
  
• Oh and I am so sick of pressing that damned goto goto combination to reroute. Why in heavens name can't it just rerun the autoroute routine when you are a certain distance off-route. The thing has an alarm that you can set under those circumstances, why not re-route?! Oh, they love there alarms at Magellan.
  

Has any one at Magellan actually ever used their explorist to do turn-by-turn navigation?

 

Yup, I really do love my magellan. But, I am oh so tired of trying to press goto goto, while dividing 247 seconds by 60, with that alarm going off in my head.

Edited June 5, 2007 by StrikesFolks

[+biosearch]

Never used my Explorist, 210 or 400, for turn by turn directions, but now that I've read your account of what it is like, I'm going to have to give it a try. I love a challenge and driving myself crazy...

[+hukilaulau]

I've had my 400 with Direct Route for about a year now, done some caches, and use it a lot for turn-by-turn driving. It always gets me where I want to go, but there are a few things that just drive me crazy!

• That damned alarm warning me there's a turn coming up. When I'm about .5 K away it starts beeping. It will not stop on it's own. Then when it's almost time to turn, a second faster paced beeping starts. Nothing is more irritating than sitting in the turn lane about to turn, and this damned alarm franticly warning me.
  
• Whats the deal with the proximity setting. I set it to 30M (Metres) the lowest it can go without disabling it. Do why does it go off when I'm 500 Metres away.
  
• To make matters worse, every time I use autoroute I have to specifically set it back to 30 Meters from the default of 75 Metres. Whenever I have to re-route, guess what? It's back to 75 fricken Meters again. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.
  
• And what's the deal with ETA. I always thought ETA would be for Estimated Time of Arrival. Oh no, in Magellan speak ETA means Estimated Time of Next Turn. Exactly how valuable is knowing that my next turn will be at 4:07.
  
• And get this when you are within 5 minutes from either the next turn or final destination, it switches from hours:minutes to seconds display. You are 237 seconds away. Who the hell thinks in seconds. WTF why not switch to minutes:seconds.
  
• Oh and I am so sick of pressing that damned goto goto combination to reroute. Why in heavens name can't it just rerun the autoroute routine when you are a certain distance off-route. The thing has an alarm that you can set under those circumstances, why not re-route?! Oh, they love there alarms at Magellan.
  

Has any one at Magellan actually ever used their explorist to do turn-by-turn navigation?

 

Yup, I really do love my magellan. But, I am oh so tired of trying to press goto goto, while dividing 247 seconds by 60, with that alarm going off in my head.

I've used a 500 with directroute for about a year now. I like the whole package. As for your specific points:

You can turn the alarms and beepers off. menu-->preferences-->alarms and beepers.

The reroute thing never bothered me. Sometimes I like to see where the way I'm going differs from directroute and then where they converge again. Tapping a key twice sure beats the way I used to struggle to get back on course once I'd missed a turn!

I never thought the ETA thing was useful anyway. Maybe when I was driving through Kansas, but not from eastern long island to NYC!

[+embra]

The annoyances you describe date back to DirectRoute implementation on the Meridians and SporTracks. Imagine my joy when I saw the same set of buddies had migrated to the Explorist.

 

I like many things about the Explorist, too. But this sense that Magellan conveys of the firmware being "finished" when we see so many small things that could make it better...well, it annoys me.

[+Jhwk]

another option, if you like the beeping occasioanlly. When you are routing, hit goto, then scroll up once. That will take you to the bottom of the menu and highlight the beeper off mode. Push the click-stick and you are doen - for that route at least.

[+JimyLee]

I've been using my 500 for street routing for a couple years now. I experience all the stuff you mentioned, but it just never bothered me all that much. The beeping when it needs to tell you NOT to turn (like at a freeway intersection) gets a little old, but in the greater scheme of life, it just doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

 

My only real gripe with this and similar models is the distance to next turn, which is measured in line of site, NOT pavement distance. On a mountain highway (like my commute home) the distance can read as little as 7 miles, when I really have 15-20 to go. But heck, as long as I get there in one piece, I guess I should be happy.