What To Do ?

[mr magellan]

Ok have these 2 units in my sight gold ver map 60 i know more memory is allways better and the map 60 cannot add more memory just wonder if i would be better off with the gold no color can live with that but like the idea of having cards with different areas and at half the price of the map 60 what would you do ?

[+TrimblesTrek]

I'd take a breath now and then!

[+Hard Oiler]

And go for Gold

[Boromir]

I have the MeriGold and am happy with it. If money was no object I think I could see it replaced with a 60cs, but my super7 investments have not paid off yet. I think the MeriGold (especially the SE Canada package) is probably the best value for money GPSr available right now. I am not familiar with the 60, except for reading a bit, but here are the differences (as I recall, you should confirm this stuff):

 

- Price (as you said)

- I think the Garmin has Colour Screen and probably has a better resolution than the Magellan. The Garmin 76 series certainly have a much better resolution LCD than the Meridians, which means more info/detail can be on the screen at one time.

- MeriGold is available in a package with map software.

- Both have routable map software available. The software in the MeriGold SE package is not routable. I think both only have a handful of routable cities in Canada.

- Garmin will soon have topo map software available for Canada, Magellan has not announced such a product.

- Magellan uses standard memory cards (SD), the Garmin has internal memory (a decent amount) and I don't think it is expandable with the Garmin proprietary garmin cards.

- Garmin has the nifty geocaching functions, but I don't know much about them.

 

Up to you if the extra's are worth spending twice as much to you, for me they were not. For Geocaching you don't (imho) need the 60, but then you don't need the Gold either, I did my first few with an eTrex yellow with no problems.

[+Maddman]

I have the 60C and I love it. The auto routing is great! The maps are great and soon it will have topos. I think the Magellan is a great product for American users but Garmin has taken care of Canada beter than the competition.

 

Maddman

[jonavin]

I bought the Gold SE package several weeks ago. It's a pretty good unit. Being a GPS novice I really don't have anything to compare it to.

 

One thing to note is that the the Canadian maps are somewhat out of date when compared to the Garmin ones (City Select or MetroGuide v4). For example, in the GTA, the hwy 407 only goes as far east as Markham Rd, whereas on the Garmin maps show it going to Brock Road. In the Magellan map it might say "gas station" or "neighborhood mall", whereas the Garmin maps will actually show "Esso gas station" or "Petro Canada".

 

I hear the DirectRoute maps are better than the Streets & Destinations that comes with the Gold SE. But the other bad thing about the Magellan maps is that you can't preview them before buying it like you can on the Garmin mapviewer.

[fortrel]

I also got the Meridian Gold and I'm really pleased with it, alghouth I'm a bit disapointed by the fact that the maps are about 2 years old. Since I'm living in Quebec and most major cities merged last year and street names changed, I'd really appreciate a online map update or something like that. Does anyone know if such a thing exist?

 

Alex

[+Insp Gadget]

I bought a Meridian Gold about a year ago, and could not wait to get rid of it. I now have the 60C and someone will have to pry it from my cold dead fingers! I found the MG to be very user UN FRIENDLY, the screen is very poor (resolution wise) compared to the Garmin and it was not as accurare. I found the MG would be off by as much as a 100 meters when searching for a cache. I heard this called the Rebound Effect and it seems to only affect the Magellans.

 

Also, keep in mind that Garminf outsells Magellan by a VERY wide margin.

[fortrel]

Well, I wish I knew that before I bought my Meridian Gold.

 

I'll try to live with it as long as I can and if it really bugs me... well... I'll sell it and get a new one.

 

Alex

[+Renegade Knight]

One thing I'd like to see is a comparison of speed.

 

The 60 is much faster than my GPS V and speed alone is why I'd upgrade (but I'm not) The sport track Pro can be slow. The rubber band line screen can't use too much detail or it lags. My V doesn't have that issue so it seems faster than a ST pro but slower than a 60. Where does the meridian fit into this?

 

Speed by the way is why I keep WAAS off.

[Boromir]

I bought a Meridian Gold about a year ago, and could not wait to get rid of it. I now have the 60C and someone will have to pry it from my cold dead fingers! I found the MG to be very user UN FRIENDLY, the screen is very poor (resolution wise) compared to the Garmin and it was not as accurare. I found the MG would be off by as much as a 100 meters when searching for a cache. I heard this called the Rebound Effect and it seems to only affect the Magellans.

 

Also, keep in mind that Garminf outsells Magellan by a VERY wide margin.

I will agree that the 60c is generally nicer than the Meridian Gold, but coinsidering the price difference one would hope so. The 60C costs $530 CDN w/o maps (about $660 with routable maps), and the MeriGold is $360 CDN with non-routable maps. If you want the routable Canadian maps for the Magellan the difference will be smaller (and I hear Garmin's might be better), and if you want Canadian topo maps the Garmin is the only choice. The routing feature does nothing for me personally. If you live elsewhere the bundles/maps will be different.

 

As for accuracy, I took my MeriGold to a survey point and was accurate to within 2m of it. Also last time out I had 2 occasions where my MeriGold put me within 1-2 m of the cache. Of course both those are with WAAS. You do have to stop for a short time, or take a few steps backward, when you get close to the cache to get the MeriGold to settle down (it tries to anticipate your movement I think), but if you do that you will not have any accuracy problems from my experience.

 

That being said if I was buying now I would probably get the 60CS (or 76CS), and the topo maps. Of course my bank account would not forgive me for a few months. The only thing I really dislike about the Garmins is the memory is not expandable with standard memory cards like the Meridians.

 

As for the maps, when I bought the MeriGold the Magellan maps were better than the Garmin maps in my area. Of course with Garmin releasing new maps recently they now have the edge.

[fortrel]

Well, if the 60C is 660$ with the map, then I made the right decision because I could not have afforded the 60C anyway.

 

I only got a chance to go to one cache so far and I found the cache pretty easily (although it was an easy one...) It pointed within 5 meters of the cache. I'll have to do more caches to make my own idea of how good it is.

[+Insp Gadget]

I will agree that the 60c is generally nicer than the Meridian Gold, but coinsidering the price difference one would hope so. The 60C costs $530 CDN w/o maps (about $660 with routable maps), and the MeriGold is $360 CDN with non-routable maps. If you want the routable Canadian maps for the Magellan the difference will be smaller (and I hear Garmin's might be better), and if you want Canadian topo maps the Garmin is the only choice. The routing feature does nothing for me personally. If you live elsewhere the bundles/maps will be different.

 

As for accuracy, I took my MeriGold to a survey point and was accurate to within 2m of it. Also last time out I had 2 occasions where my MeriGold put me within 1-2 m of the cache. Of course both those are with WAAS. You do have to stop for a short time, or take a few steps backward, when you get close to the cache to get the MeriGold to settle down (it tries to anticipate your movement I think), but if you do that you will not have any accuracy problems from my experience.

 

That being said if I was buying now I would probably get the 60CS (or 76CS), and the topo maps. Of course my bank account would not forgive me for a few months. The only thing I really dislike about the Garmins is the memory is not expandable with standard memory cards like the Meridians.

 

As for the maps, when I bought the MeriGold the Magellan maps were better than the Garmin maps in my area. Of course with Garmin releasing new maps recently they now have the edge.

The big problem with the Magellan routable maps is that (from my understanding) they only provide routing in the major cities of Canada. Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are the only cities covered I believe. The Garmin will route you to any address in Canada, weather it's in Podunk, Sask or Halifax, NS. The routing is extremly handy, especially in a city your not familiar with. Now that I have played with it, I would never go back. Mind you, I find it actually makes Geocaching a bit TOO easy, but that's another topic.

 

As for the memory in the Garmin, it comes with 56mb of ram. With this amnount of memory, I can hold all the maps for NS, PEI, NB, PQ and Ontario. The beauty of the 60c is that it has a USB port making the transfer of maps extremly quick. I would guess to upload all those maps took about 3 minutes. So, if I have to go out of this huge area, which would be once in a blue moon, it's not a major thing to take 3 minutes to upload the maps for the area I will be in.

[jonavin]

I guess I should update to my post earlier. I actually returned the Megallan package and got me a 60C instead. I just couldn't live with the screen and auto-routing was a feature I wanted. My impression of the Magellan MapSend Canada maps aren't very good. The points of interest are pretty useless because it doesn't have specific name (like my samples in my previous post). By the time you add the cost of DirectRoute to it, it wasn't far from 60C prices. The thought of spending $200 and not knowing if the maps are any good wasn't very appealing.

 

I bought the 60C + the auto-kit and couldn't be happier. The best features are the screen, speed, and battery life. Auto-routing works great. It's also nice to preview the maps on Garmin's website before buying it.

[+Insp Gadget]

I guess I should update to my post earlier. I actually returned the Megallan package and got me a 60C instead. I just couldn't live with the screen and auto-routing was a feature I wanted. My impression of the Magellan MapSend Canada maps aren't very good. The points of interest are pretty useless because it doesn't have specific name (like my samples in my previous post). By the time you add the cost of DirectRoute to it, it wasn't far from 60C prices. The thought of spending $200 and not knowing if the maps are any good wasn't very appealing.

 

I bought the 60C + the auto-kit and couldn't be happier. The best features are the screen, speed, and battery life. Auto-routing works great. It's also nice to preview the maps on Garmin's website before buying it.

Even with the POI on the Magellan maps, it doesn't cover any of the smaller areas. Another drawback.

 

Now that you have tried both, is there ANY comparision??

[jonavin]

No, there's no comparison. I can't speak for people in the USA, but in Canada Garmin maps are way better.

[obe]

I agree magellan makes an excellant product, customer sevice is not to good, and their maps do not half the data that garmin has.I was very disappoined with the magellan maps when i went to the garmin sight and used their map viewer.