Does the basics well. Poor user interface and customer support.

This is my 5th GPS unit and was bought for general use (hiking, skiing, occasional driving and as a backup for gliding). My initial impressions are that it has a very sensitive receiver, the display is adequate but the user interface is poor. PC connectivity is very good.

It came with an offer of a detailed map of the US for $10. Unfortunately Magellan's website refused to accept the order. Customer support informed me that the offer had been terminated and the map would cost $150. I persisted and was then told my credit card was invalid (not true, I had successfully ordered a li-ion battery from them that day). After a total of nearly an hour on the phone I persuaded them to accept my order.

The unit is generally able to find a signal in less than a minute. This is very good, certainly better than my etrex. Occasionally it seems to go into search-the-sky mode after power-on and then takes 5-10 minutes. Turning it off and on usually solves the problem. Once it has a signal, it rarely loses it. Even indoors, it is able to (just) hold on to a signal.

The user interface is really slow. Zooming in and out takes an age. Pressing goto causes it to pause for several seconds sometimes. The worst problem is using track logs. Just selecting 'track log' causes it to display 'retrieving file' for nearly 5 minutes! Yet worse, if you want to save a track and then clear the active track, you need to wait both times. This is completely unacceptable IMO.

The whole interface is rather clunky. If you have an active goto and want to change it, it always asks you to clear the current one first. Pressing some of the keys if the backlight has timed out sometimes just turns the backlight back on. It also seems to miss some of the key presses altogether. Changing a goto took me a total of 5 presses of the button on one occasion.

The user interface isn't helped by the appalling keypad. This is one area where the etrex is far better. Unless you have very small fingers you will probably end up using your fingernails as I do. The joystick is the worst I have ever used. It's very stiff (especially in the up direction) and pressing enter usually moves the cursor. Entering labels is very painful. The rubber gave way on mine after only 4 days of use (so I guess it is no longer waterproof). Still waiting to hear from customer service after a week. Not that it will fix the other problems. If only Apple made GPS units...

The display is ok. Strangely you can't turn the back light off completely but on it's lowest setting, the battery seems to last a long time (at least 8 hours, not tried it for longer yet).

The PC connectivity is very good. All the track logs, waypoints etc. look like normal text files in a directory on windows so you can copy them without any special software. You can even edit the files on the explorist directly from a text editor in windows. Very nice! The mapsend and topo3d software seems generally good. I've not much to compare them with but they seemed to work ok and were reasonably easy to use. They won't convert to google earth format but you can use free software such as gps babel.

Having tried it in a number of situations, it worked very well except in the car. The map isn't really good enough for driving and the display is too small. The size is really a benefit for walking, skiing etc. I've taken it on a day's skiing a couple of times and it recorded the track flawlessly. The cold temperatures and occasional knock didn't seem to cause any problems.