Customer Reviews

Magellan 730387 12v Cigarette Lighter Adapter Cable for the eXplorist Series

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Looking at the photo of this item, I noticed the plug at the end of this car lighter charger is NOT the screw on contraption needed for my eXplorist 400, so I was hesitant to purchase it until I did further research and found out WHY the plug is different.

You still need the USB cable that came with the eXplorist and have to bring it in the car too!

The big AC plug detaches from the USB cable, and AHA! Now you have a jack that this car charger can plug into! Then you screw that cable onto your GPS unit as when you charge it via AC.

In other words... This charger does NOT plug into your GPS, it plugs into your GPS charger cable which attaches to your GPS.

But I don't want to take that cable in the car with me, because if it gets damaged or lost, then I can never charge the unit at all, not even at home with AC. So I was forced to find and purchase another USB cable assembly seperately, to keep in the car with this car lighter charger.

Magellan should have just put the screw on connector at the end of this car charger instead of the way they did it.

The car lighter charger has a nice coiled cord, but what good is it? You still have to have the long USB cable attached to it anyway!

But hopefully this will help everyone, that like me, was puzzled by the photo of the item and the connector that isn't going to fit anywhere in the eXplorist 400.

The cord works just fine, but by the time you get the USB cord and the 12v cord together, there is a lot of cord. It would make more sense to have a cigarette adapter that pluged into the back of the unit the same way the USB cord does, that way there isn't a bunch of cord attached to the unit.

MAgellan really needs to re-think the way they do the USB adapter and charger cords. As mentioned in previous reviews, you have to take the stupid USB cord with you in your car, if you want to use the car charger. So then you have the extra USB cord flopping around all over the place. I can live with the fact that the USB cord is an annoying screw-on thing (for water resistance blah blah), but why couldn't they make the car charger use the same adapter? Ok, because then you couldn't use both cables at the same time. But they should have the USB cable plug into the car charger cable, instead of vice versa, so that you can use the car charger without extra cabling all over the place.



Also, the cord's coil is quite stiff and tends to pull relatively hard on the GPS unit if your cigarette lighter doesn't happen to be within 18" of the GPS.



Other than that... It does indeed charge the battery just fine.

This was advertised on the web site and on an e-mail sent to me by Amazon, that this unit will work with the eXplorist 300. This eXplorist has has no ports for anything to plug into it. Because this was purchased from a authorized Amazon company, I could not return without a big hastle.
Sorry this is not for the product.

This says that it works on Magellan eXplorist series GPS units, but it does not work on the newer eXplorist 510, 610 or 710 units. These units require a mini USB charger cable.

Lighter adapter works as promised and has a power on light. Amazon had a good deal on them as well.

Great price but one thing everyone needs to understand is that this DOES NOT plug directly into the GPS unit. You still need the special screw in plug that came with the GPS. That plug goes directly into the GPS unit. The Charger then plugs into the adapter. The adapter also has the USB plug on the other end. So if you don't have the screw in adapter you will not be able to charge your unit.

The adapter works great. I can now use my G.P.S. on the boat with no wories of the battery going dead.