Magellan 330M 2.2 x 1.33-Inch Water Resistant Marine GPS

by Magellan

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 2.2 x 1.4 inches ; 8 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000059ZZF
• Item model number: MAP330M
• Batteries: 2 AA batteries required.
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #214,798 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Magellan's Map 330M GPS receiver provides a fix on your position whether you're on land or at sea. The marine version of Magellan's powerful Map 330 unit offers preloaded locations of waterways, lakes, and water obstructions in addition to all the maps and tools of the Map 330. The Map 330M ships with the MapSend Streets CD-ROM, letting you bolster the skeletal highways and city information by uploading detailed maps from your PC.

Even though it uses a serial port connection, we were able to upload a 200 KB map of the greater Las Vegas area to the Map 330M in about 10 seconds. Once the detailed map was uploaded, the Map 330M automatically took advantage of the sharper image, adding streets and roads to the display for local navigation.

Around San Francisco Bay, the Map 330M displayed marine details as well, including local marinas, floating buoys, and boating areas. To really put the Map 330M to the test, we took it on a weeklong road trip to see how well it worked as a map replacement. A major advantage of having a GPS receiver out on the road is knowing exactly where you are on the highway--no more wondering if you've missed an exit or waiting for a sign to tell you how far it is to the next town.

Although sparse when zoomed in to a view of 250 or 100 feet, the already loaded maps on the Map 330M contained all the highways and roads we took, as well as stopping points of note--monuments, state and national parks, and even the big ol' meteor crater out in the middle of Arizona. After uploading more detailed maps (the device stores 8 MB), we were better suited for in-town driving.

The Map 330M also holds waypoints, letting you select a city and then keeping you posted on how far away it is (as the crow flies or as the car drives if you enter the legs) and roughly how long it will take to get there at your current speed (after customizing this setting). In addition to speed, the Map 330M provides your altitude, heading, bearing (on a waypoint if set), and a directional display.

If you'll be using the Map 330M for extended periods of time--especially if you've got the bright, but draining, backlight turned on--you might consider picking up the adapter that lets you plug it into your car or boat's cigarette lighter. Using two AAs, the batteries ran out after a full day's drive. The Map 330M won't allow you to toss out your paper maps, but when it's used to complement them, you'll be assured of never having to stop and ask directions again. --J. Curtis

Pros:

• Sharp map screen
• Compact, easy-to-use
• Bright backlight

Cons:

• Batteries drain quickly
• Can take up to a minute for a cold fix

Amazon.com Product Description

The Magellan 330M Marine GPS is a great navigation tool for travel on water or land. Its built-in 9 MB map database contains waterways, inland lakes, marinas, lighthouses, and obstructions such as buoys, channel markers, wrecks, and rocks. It also provides maps of worldwide political boundaries, major U.S. city streets, highways, railways, and inland points of interest, such as national parks and airports. An advanced search function quickly locates database content.

The Magellan 330M also ships with a free MapSend Streets CD-ROM, which provides for increased street-map detail and route management capabilities.

The 330M stores 500 waypoints and 20 routes with 30 legs which are all fully editable. It also can provide sunrise/sunset calculations, waypoint messaging, and fish and game time calculations.

You can connect the Magellan 330M to your PC with the included PC cable to take advantage of the additional 7 MB of memory reserved for downloadable data. It can be used continuously for up to 10 hours on two AA alkaline batteries. It comes with a limited one-year warranty.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great GPS, June 15, 2001

By 

BoatingDave "boatingdave" (Wynnewood, PA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Magellan 330M 2.2 x 1.33-Inch Water Resistant Marine GPS (Electronics)

I'll start with the caveat that this is my first hand-held GPS receiver. However, I can't imagine a better tool for the $$. I used the handy "quick start" card right out of the box and within 30 secs the Map 330M located where I was. Very user friendly. I primarily use this for boating, and have created routes to go back to the spots I want.

Easily downloaded and installed upgraded firmware from the magellan website to make the unit WAAS compatable (accuracy now down to about 3 meters!) You can set up whether you are using this on land or water and the map will show you more street names (on land) and more buoys, lighthouses, etc (on sea). Tou can also set up how detailed (or sparse) you want your map to be.

Will track you in either miles, nautical miles or kilometers. It can give you distance to a waypoint, your speed, what compass course to travel to get to a waypoint, arrival alarms, plus much more.

You can easily connect the GPS to a laptop and with the free included map software upload more detailed street information in up to 4 regions (7 or 8 MB of memory). (I got most of eastern PA, southern NJ, and Delaware into mine). Even without the uploaded street data major roads and byways are easily found. You can download created routhes/waypoints from the GPS to the computer to save them and see them on a bigger computer screen, or create the routes on the computer and upload to the hand-held.

Another nice feature is sunset/moonrise info.

Downside is battery life. They say 10 hours with backlight off, but I get 1/2 that with my rechargable alkaline batteries.

Overall 5 Stars!

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beats the eTrex by a mile!, July 2, 2001

By 

TP (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Magellan 330M 2.2 x 1.33-Inch Water Resistant Marine GPS (Electronics)

I tried both the Garmin eTrex and the Map 330M. The Magellan has it hands down. First, the unit comes with the CD-ROM map software and a PC cable. Second, it is incredibly accurate and even pulled in sattelite signals from inside my house. Third, it links with the sattelites in seconds. Fourth, the display is great. Fifth, and most importantly for me, it has easy to use buttons on the front panel rather than obscure buttons on the side. The button configuration is important because when you are navigating in the car or boat you can one-finger the display to change screens, zoom in or out on the map and move the cursor around on the nav screen. I found that my hand covered the screen on the Etrex which rendered hitting the buttons a pain and I felt it would only be possible to use the Etrex by taking it off its bracket and holding it in the palm of my hand (great for hiking, lousy for cars and boating).

Everything is nicely laid out, the menus are easy to understand and the entire unit is very intuitive. There is a lot of information already loaded on the Map 330 and even more detail is available from the CD-ROM.

I think everyone is a little too impressed with the Garmin product line (I have an older unit). After only a few days I am convinced that this is the best unit for land AND sea.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolute Must for Boating and Land, July 5, 2001

By 

"alanfink" (Carrollton, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magellan 330M 2.2 x 1.33-Inch Water Resistant Marine GPS (Electronics)

The 330M is an absolute piece of work. Durable, floatable and easy to use make this little GPS a must for outdoor or travel activity. Accuracy is excellent. I have been able to lock down by coordinates, measure speed, distance between way points, and track my course with 98-99% accuracy. The interface software and cable between the PC and the GPS is fun and easy as well. Storing information, uploading or downloading is very easy. The software is stable on Win 98 and Win 2000. The GPS is small but a very powerful tool and I would recommend this to anyone.