Garmin vista vs Magellan platimum or color

[+Shadow's]

I am looking at these three but would like some thoughts from anyone on pro's and cons.

Thanks,

Rick

[+Maxine&Me]

I was going to order the Vista today. I chose the Garmin for no particular reason other than I have a Garmin 12XL and have been pleased with it. I am wanting the mapping features of the Vista.

 

I am curious to follow this thread to see if I might change my mind.

[+briansnat]

I have the Vista. I like its compact size and the fact that I can just toss it in my pocket and take it pretty much anywhere. The Magellain is MUCH larger. Some have an issue with the eTrex's patch antenna, but I find it works fine. I just spent a few hours routing a new hiking trail in dense forest, under rainy skies and never lost a lock.

 

The cheif advantage of the Magellan is the expandable memory. I wish the Vista had that feature although the 24K has been fine for all my uses. If I traveled a lot though, I'd probably find myself wishing the memory was expandable.

 

Both are excellent units. If ease of use and compact size is important to you, go with the Vista. If you travel a lot and want scads of memory, go with the Magellan (remember though that their memory expansion cards aren't exactly pennies).

"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day" - Dave Barry

[+infosponge]

Generic (i.e. non-Magellan) memory cards are inexpensive and readily available.

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by BrianSnat:

If you travel a lot and want scads of memory, go with the Magellan (remember though that their memory expansion cards aren't exactly pennies).

---

 

http://www.tampabaygeocaching.com

[+Maxine&Me]

quote:

---

Originally posted by BrianSnat:

I have the Vista. I like its compact size and the fact that I can just toss it in my pocket and take it pretty much anywhere. The Magellain is MUCH larger. Some have an issue with the eTrex's patch antenna, but I find it works fine. I just spent a few hours routing a new hiking trail in dense forest, under rainy skies and never lost a lock.

 

_

---

 

How is the base map on the Vista, can it navigate you through neigborhoods and the like or would you need to add the Streets and Rec. I think it's called.

[+MacBWizard]

I also am a proud owner of the eTrex Vista. I have found that its antenna works fine in the forest and have found caches in all conditions with it. The basemap is not detailed enough to navigate neighborhoods, but since I own Mapsource Metroguide that isn't a problem. I almost never use the barometric altimeter, but the electronic compass comes in handy many times. I haven't had much trouble with the 24mb of memory. The 24mb was the reason I purchased it over the Legend which only has 8. I think you'd be happy with a Vista. The only other gps I've owned was a eTrex yellow, so I couldn't help with the Magellan units.

 

MacBWizard

[+Rubberhead]

The basemaps in the Garmin Legend and Vista are about as good as a state highway map (not counting the city blow-ups).

 

To navigate down to a neighborhood level, you will need to get R&R or Metroguide.

 

Ducks - Flying, great tasting, geocaches of meat

[Montana Latitude]

I think it depends on where you plan on using a GPS, Here, If I am in the deep canyons and trees the Platinum is the one I have to use the Vista wont pick up sats,,but if I go urban caching I like to use the el'Vista,,cause it's smaller and a lot eaiser to carry around and hide when I dont feal like answering alot of "what ya doing questions",, Both units are great,,is one better than the other? well both have their advantages in differant ways. So do like I did, GET BOTH.

[+Searching_ut]

quote:

---

Montana Latitude said:

 

If I am in the deep canyons and trees the Platinum is the one I have to use the Vista wont pick up sats,

---

 

The more I've played with my receivers, the more I find I do just the opposite. I take both my sportrak and my legend, but mostly use the Legend in the crud. My own experience is that the sportraks position errors in canyons are more of a problem than my Legends loss of signal. I so far have found two caches I probably wouldn't have found with just the sportrak because of errors even averaging didn't seem to resolve on that particular day. The caches were:

 

GCDB9A, and GC170E. Both were in mountainous areas, one in a steep canyon, the other on top of a peak.

 

Since you have both types of receiver, something you might find interesting is logging the trails you hike, then downloading and viewing the tracks. I personally initially found the results quite surprising.