Magellan Crossover or Nuvi 500

[+wxfamily]

Do they even make either one anymore?

 

Anyway, I looking at both for a good crossover. I do mainly park and grabs up to a half mile, but also need a good car navigator.

 

What are your suggestions?

 

Thanks

[+CondorTrax]

I have had the Nuvi 500 since January and am thoroughly pleased with it. I don't know much on the Magellan units but simply based on their lack of customer support I can not recommend their units.

[NordicMan]

Don't forget to look at the Lowrance XOG also!!

 

http://www.tigergps.com/lowrancexog.html

 

Way cheaper than a Nuvi 500 & (IMO) better than the Magellan Crossover

[+Redwoods Mtn Biker]

Nuvi 500.

[sanramonhunter]

The Magellan Crossover is a good car unit, but pretty poor for geocaching. It quits directing you to the cache anywhere from 100 to 40 feet from the cache. It will just state "arrived".

 

So I'd say the nuvi. I've heard good things about the Lowrance XOG also.

[+wxfamily]

So looking at the Lowrance, does it come with a compass and a program to add cache description? I don't see it anywhere. Also, what does having only 3 million POIs instead of 6 million mean? What is cut out?

 

Thanks

[NordicMan]

So looking at the Lowrance, does it come with a compass and a program to add cache description? I don't see it anywhere. Also, what does having only 3 million POIs instead of 6 million mean? What is cut out?

 

Thanks

 

The XOG doesn't have a magnetic compass, and all it has on-screen is an arrow in the bottom corner showing you the direction of your destination as well as the distance. You can add compass bearing if you like. But I have found this to be all the information I need, have found a dozen caches with it so far My girlfriend has a Vista HCx and when we cache together, both units show an equal accuracy.

 

Lowrance has a free program you can download from their website that will convert the Geocaching .GPX files into it's own .USR format, which you can then transfer to the memory card via the USB cable. The memory card can hold countless thousands of caches, but the unit itself can only handle 1000 max at any given time. That works out well, I have separate pocket queries for single caches, multi caches, & the rest, in separate files, and can load whichever one I want at any time.

 

The loaded caches themselves contain a lot of detail, the cache name, difficulty/terrain, type, and the hint. Also the XOG uses Geocaching specific icons.

 

For your other question, I'm not sure which POI's are "missing" lol. I live in Canada and for me the unit shows all the POI's in my town that I expect to see. I wondered the same thing too when I bought the unit.

[weazel561]

I've had my CrossoverGPS for a while now and love the Auto navigation side. In fact it beats my Dad's Nuvi in re-routing capability hands down (faster, more accurate). That being said in Outdoor mode, as sanramonhunter mentioned the unit stops helping you navigate to the waypoint too early, however the waypoint is still on screen and I've found the accuracy to be very good (within 5-7ft of caches regularly). The waypoints themselves are very simplistic (name, lat/lon, short one line description), which would probably cause me to go for the Nuvi 500 if I could do it all over again (and if it were available when I bought my Roadmate2100 and converted it to a CrossoverGPS). I think the geocaching features in the Nuvi make it the winner between the 500 and CrossoverGPS since Magellan will never upgrade their software to include geocaching features (read: terrible customer support).

[+gctidwells]

I've played with both. Get the Nuvi. It's cheaper, and easier to use for this game. Much more user friendly unit.

[+Carlos1787]

I use a Nuvi 205, GSAK and an Etrex H. less than $200 total. I use the nuvi for paperless features.. according to garmin you can only put in 500 waypoints, but I have over 3,500 loaded and it works just fine. The nuvi will get you close provided there are no trees. The E-trex gets me to GZ prety quick! I have very few DNF's because of GPS trouble.