Meridian Gold vs. SporTrak Pro basemap?

[Cache Monkeys]

Hello,

 

What is the difference between the Meridian Gold basemap (16Mb) and the SporTrak Pro (8Mb)basemap? Is there a noticeable difference in map detail? If so, what is the difference?

 

Thanks very much for any help or opinions.

[+phantom4099]

I don't own the sportrack pro (but I did own the map330- which also has a 8mb basemap). The road/city/parks/airports/ and most hydrology will be the same. The extra 7-8mb in the gold contains more detailed shoreline detail (in the parts I checked the coast line (ocean) detail for the gold is as detailed as mapsend detail for the land shape).

 

I ma not sure about this next part (correct me if I am wrong), but the sportrak basemap also contains 1mb of marine POI's

 

Wyatt W.

 

The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.

[Cache Monkeys]

Thanks very much, Wyatt! (You know more than the tech support person I spoke with at Thales... and SD isn't even anywhere near a shoreline!)

 

The Meridian site does say that the SporTrak has "Marine nav aids." I wonder if these are also included in the Magellan Gold basemap (with it's extra 7-8 Mb of shoreline detail)?

 

Wyatt, do you have any opinion on which unit you'd buy (Gold or SporTrak) if you were NOT planning on expanding the basemap or purchasing other mapping software? Looks like other than the basemap, they're pretty similar.

 

Thanks!

[+phantom4099]

Well I have the platinum, but I bought it because of the expandable memory, and I would buy it again because of the extra things it adds (savable waypoints/routes/tracks).

 

The standard meridian gold/platinum basemap does not have the marine POI's, but the marine basemap does (same basemap as the gold but with the POI's). You can get Magellan to do the basemap switch, or some places list how to do it illegally (but I don’t know where you can get the basemaps anymore, it seems Magellan made the sites that had the basemap delete them).

 

I thought the pro might have the marine POI's since it is 9mb basemap (it seems the meridian marine basemap is also 1mb bigger than the standard gold basemap).

 

The sportrak marine basemap is probably similar to the meridian marine basemap (with the extra shoreline detail). It’s also possible to load a meridian/gold/marine basemap into a sportrak. But you either gain or lose detailed memory (e.g. load the 2mb basemap from the plain meridian and get 30mb of memory for detailed maps, load the gold/marine basemap lose 6-8mb of room for detailed maps).

 

Wyatt W.

 

The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.

[Xking]

I am new to GPS units, and I thought that is question may be appropriate here.

I am looking at the Meridian vs the Meridian Platinium, the basic meridian just has a 2MB basemap and the Platinium has a 16MB basemap. My question is for either one I would be purchasing a 64MB memory chip and Mapsend software, so would the basemap that the Platinium has contain things that are not a part of the Mapsend software?

[Cache Monkeys]

Hi Xking,

 

I had the same question when I was trying to decide which version of the Meridian to buy. I ended up buying the Meridian GPS insead of the Gold or Platinum. The 2 Mb basemap is very small and contains only major highways. However, once you add Mapsend (Streets and Destinations), you'll get an incredible level of detail -- all roads, parks, many restaurants, airports, etc. (I haven't seen the Platinum basemap, but my guess is that this is much more detail that you'd get on the Platinum basemap.)

 

Cost-wise, it just made more sense to buy the base-level Meridian and then add the software and memory chip, since that will take the place of any basemap anyway.

 

The Platinum does have other features -- active compass and barometer, I think -- but if your main consideration is map detail, go with the base-level Meridian and add the software. (For geocaching, I've never missed the barometer or active compass.)

 

Good luck and welcome to geocaching.

[Xking]

Thanks for the info, I was planning on buying the extra memory and software for either one of them. I was just hoping that by just buying the standard I was not going to be missing out on a lot of map detail.

 

For what I am going to use the unit for, I really did not think that an altimeter and compass was worth the extra $100.

 

I have seen a lot of good reviews for the meridian, and then some that were not so good. I think that there are bad reviews for everything though.

[+phantom4099]

One thing you will lose with the 2mb basemap is the names of towns. You will not be able to search for towns that are not in the database even if you have detailed maps installed for that area. The basemap is also diplayed above certain zoom levels (above 1.6 miles with settings on high).

 

Another thing to think about is wheather you want to use more advanced software in the future. It seems the meridian green/sporttrak map can not use the new mapsend direct route (supports auto routing on the unit), or marine charts (not so sure about this software).

 

I also heard reports that the green/yellow is being discontinued (I don't personally know if that is true).

 

Wyatt W.

Me fail spelling-english.

 

The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.

[+GOT GPS?]

I would like to see Detailed Base Map regions, where you can pick an area to upload to the full extent of the Built-in Memory, without worrying about Basemap size versus memory for loaded maps.

 

Take the MeriGreen's BaseMap, and combine Detailed map data for your region, then upload that as the BaseMap for your unit, would be nice if this was possible.

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To update the basemap in my GPS units, would require me to send them into Garmin, if that was even possible.

 

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