Customer Reviews

Magellan Crossover 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

One the whole, I like my M. Crossover. Generally speaking, it does everything I need it for in regard to GPS. I do not use mine for the audio or visual playback and do not care about those functions. To date, I have done nothing with the computer software either and cannot vouch for that aspect.

The best features to me were in having a GPS unit that I could use to plot courses in the car and yet have a GPS that would work well for hiking. I have driven all over north Texas with the unit and had it mark my travels in both the road mode and outdoor (hiking/contour map) mode. I have not used it in the Marine mode. With just a few exceptions, it has had all the roads I have been on. The exceptions were a couple of very small roads in the middle of nowhere and roads in a brand new development. No surprise. Strangely, it had some dirt roads that I would not have expected. So that was really handy.

In the outdoor mode, I have plotted various key points and had it track my progress, both while driving and while hiking. It has done this all relatively well.

Before I go further, let me say that if I lost this unit, I would not hesitate in getting another. However, it is not a perfect unit and has some shortcomings that are a bit of a bother, but not fatal at all. It has been my experience that all GPS units seem to have various shortcomings, often varying depending on the type of intended use of the unit. I do think the Crossover, with its shortcomings, does enough of the cross over functions to cover my needs sufficiently well and I do not currently see any other units on the market that match it in such versatility.

I have run the unit on battery (most of the time) and while charging in the car. I have charged it with the 120v outlet charger as well. They promise 8 hours of run time and so far I have run as much as 6 on full screen brightness and not run out of power. The 8 hour estimate seems good.

On my recreational property, I have plotted the locations of the property corners, gates, and other specific locations. Subsequent return trips have the show very good match between my previous plots and locations, to just a few feet, well within the unit's specifications. It performs consistently well in this regard, as it should.

The shortcomings...
In the 150+ hours of use with probably 80 or 90 start-ups, I have had it fail to properly boot 4 times. This necessitated the use of the reset switch on the side and after resetting, the unit booted fine.

The green rubber ring around the unit is to help absorb shock if dropped and it probably does help to some extent (I have dropped it once). However, it is prone to slip off when carried in a pocket or pack during periods of lots of motion and the grippy aspect of the rubber can make it hard to extract the unit from a snug pocket if one wants the rubber ring remaining on the unit.

The on screen controls vary with the mode that it is in and as such, the features I like in one mode are not in the same place in the other mode and that can be a bit annoying if you go between modes on a regular basis. This is especially true of the brightness function that is onscreen on the map page in the outdoor mode but not in the car mode.

You can't plot points in the car mode, but if you are in the car mode, the map does not show the icons for gas/food etc. that it does in the outdoor mode. That seemed a bit counter-intuitive.

I have medium-sized guy fingers and sometimes find that I have not been able to precisely press an onscreen button properly. Maybe I need more practice or smaller fingers.

Even on the brightest setting and while out in the sunlight, it can be hard to see the image on the screen. As long as sun is not shining directly on the screen in the car, it does well enough.

As with all GPS units I have used or experienced in the past, letting the GPS decide your route from point A to B should not mean that the traveler should blindly accept the route as the best option, even with the various choices given (fastest, shortest, most use of freeways, etc.). It will get you from point A to B, but what it asserts is the best route may actually be much less than optimal.

I don't know of any other way to charge the unit other than with the accessories provided. You can't take the unit on a 2 day hike and use it all the time without running down the battery and you can't change out the battery. It would be nice if there was a separate battery pack that could be jacked in or a solar charger. Otherwise, the unit is somewhat limited to either sporadic use on multi-day hikes or day hiking because of the battery limitation.

Lastly, while it can track something like 14 satellites, it can lose track of them as well. While hiking in Big Bend with the mountains, signals came and went a lot. It was a bit annoying. No doubt this will happen with other units as well, but the access to 14 didn't seem to make it keep track any more often or continually than with other GPS units I have used.

As I noted above, I would buy this unit again if I had to replace the current unit. I harped on the shortcomings because if you have read Magellan's promo for the Crossover, then you know what it can do and it has been my experience that it pretty well does what is claimed. I only point out the shortcomings such that other potential buyers can make a better informed decision.

It has gotten me to where I wanted or needed to go. That said, however, I've had one main difficulty. It has locked up on me several times now. This has happened when I was programming the unit, and/or when I had just turned on the unit. It has not locked up on me during a trip. I turned the unit off and then back on, only for it to do it again and again. I discovered that you have to move the reset switch to off, and then back to on. That seems to do it. If you were actively tracking something (using the outdoor topo features) at the time that it locked up, you will lose your trip information (speed, length of trip, time of trip). Of course, having a brand new unit lock up is not acceptable. When it doesn't lock up, it gets me to my destination. If you drive off the course it tells you 'calculating route' almost immediately and tells you what to do next. POI's (points of interest): I don't know where they get the data for these, but some of it is really old. The first place I told it to find me was my local gas stations. The first one on the list is one that's been closed and long gone for a minimum of 10 years. A brewpub it took me to had changed owners and names over a year-and-a-half ago, although it got me to the address where it was!

This is my first GPS and it's 'fun'. And, it's very intuitive. I was able to figure out most everything without having to get to reading or checking out the manual. That's really good in my book, because I'm a 'manual reader'. The voice is female and pretty easy to hear (vehicle navigation only has the voice). It has a headphones jack which I connected to the 'aux in' of my audio system in the car, and so get the voice through the car speakers.

I still much prefer printed maps to a GPS. But, there's a lot to be said for a device that's your navigator, when you are driving somewhere alone. If it didn't have the locking up problem, I'd rate it 4 stars. And, if the POI's were more current (I don't know if they ever even upgrade/revise these), I'd rate it 5 stars.

I've had a magellan map 330 for forever, and I wanted a color screen, a gps that stayed on the road (not 100 feet or more off the road)and annouced directions. I've used the magellans in rental cars, and was happy with their capabilty. The crossver meets my expectations, and its great to have all the maps as part of the cost. I am planning to buy the enhanced topo maps, because I use the unit for hiking as well. About 8 hours of battery time. My only issue is why do I need a gps to play music or show pictures. Magellan stick to what you know.

I've only had mine for a month, but i've come across a few cons. Main trip so far was driving from SF to Yosemite and 4 days of backpacking around. Some of this may go away with experience, but lots of these i think are product flaws (hopefully a firmware upgrade will come along soon...):
- it has locked up many times (especially in topo mode when you turn "hold" on/off). Turning unit off and back on seems to fix, but takes a few minutes.
- PC tools are not very user-friendly, i was hoping for some nicer ways to import my waypoints for my backpacking trip, very tedious
- Lots of missing POIs. It didn't know about either of the places i wanted to stop for lunch on the drive out (del taco and in n' out, both major chains in CA). We found these the old-fashioned way :).
- as advertised, the pre-loaded topos are lacking. I was surprised that Polly Dome Lakes did not appear at all... these are on much less detailed maps... I'm looking fwd to the detailed topos being made available, but it seems i won't be able to use these and my custom POIs at the same time. Need to look into this...
- lots of little usability issues. Not as intuitive as i would hope. Hiking and driving apps are totally separate... Would be nice if you could switch back and forth more easily. For example, when driving dirt roads, sometimes i want the topo view.
- rubber case is flimsy and falls off easily
- sometimes screen becomes unresponsive for 10 seconds, then comes back to life (noticed when zooming around maps a lot)
- when driving, it has picked some pretty strange routes in my hometown. Great when you don't know where you are, but not finding any new shortcuts for me :)

All in all, not bad though. I'd be much happier if the locking issue would go away. This is my first gps and i kind of expect that my expecatations are a bit high. Any gps would probably have many of these short-comings. I can't wait until my iphone is talking to my gps over bluetooth and has wi-fi internet access to live POI data, yelp reviews, google maps/earth, etc. :). Give it a few years...

So far I've found this to be a nice unit. I don't know why the last reviewer said there are no maps, the built in street maps are very accurate even out here in the middle of nowhere where I live. The topo map is very detailed and includes roads that I would better describe as cow trails. Magellan will supposedly release more detailed topo's soon.

I am disappointed in the computer support. The only computer support is the POI generator and you can only generate POI's from Lat/Lon coordinates. This is very weak, I should be able to create POI's by typing in a name and an address. I should also be able to manage my address book and create trip plans on the computer and download them to the unit. Music and pictures? I have much better electronics to do that.

I have had the unit for about three days and have experienced one lockup that required me to power off and restart it. I have also encountered one software bug. DON'T zoom the topo map out as far as it will go. Apparently a programmer forgot to check an upper limit and the unit will lock up, restart and then will lock up and restart every time you try to view the topo map again. I have had little to no response from tech support yet on this issue, but was able to fix it myself by searching for a POI, selecting one and then viewing it on the map. This caused the map to rezoom back in to the minimum and it's been OK since.

Overall, I have found this unit to be well built and programmed. There are some improvements that can be made and I will be looking forward to firmware upgrades in the near future.

ALSO, the technical details on the Amazon page are in error. The unit DOES include both the AC and car adapter. So you DON'T need to purchase additional power adapters like I did.

This is a decent product for the money, but best be served with a separate in-vehicle and outdoor unit. It is the only one on the market that does both driving, Hiking/ Geocaching and Boating all in the same unit. It is also the only combo unit that is splash resistant. NOT WATER PROOF!!! IPX4 is splash resistant up to so many liters/ minute. Better than a unit that would zap out even if damp!!! Easy to read screens with multiple color options for maps. Very nice automatic night viewing option that changes the screen to a 'negative' light. Very clear voice turn-by-turn directions. Very fast rerouting when you go off course. Great functions for steering around traffic.
The unit does have some negatives. Fisrt, Magellan put this stupid sticker on the GPS screen to 'simulate' the screen while in the package. The sticker left the sticky residue all over the screen. Alcohol and a soft cloth took it off, but why do something like that Magellan? Also, the mapset is OLD. I could not find my work location via the search. The road is not on the map and the address is not in the database. Granted, my work developement is newer (2000). The map data NAVTEQ (mapset provider) has on their website HAS the road. Magellan does not have a map update from NAVTEQ on the support site. The POI's are also old. A lot of gas stations I pass are not on the map. Restaurant icons are in places there are no restaurants. I had one instance that the GPS was WAY off, which required a restart to get my 'vehicle icon' back on track. One thing Magellan doesn't tell you is that the installed Topo map only goes to 300 feet detail level and in order to get detailed Topo maps (with rivers and greater detail), you have to purchase separate software from Magellan. A bit misleading if you ask me.
Overall, I'm happy with the unit. Hopefully, Magellan gets on the ball with a mapset update. I already have an email into them.
UPDATE: This is an update to my original review. Unfortunately, it only gets worse. One update has come along from Magellan, and it did not fix the inaccuracy of this unit. It has sent me in circles, only to come back to a road I had already crossed, and then advised to turn. Side by side with a Garmin Nuvi 660, the Magellan took me onto side roads that the Garmin maintained highway travel- much better routing with the Garmin. Support from Magellan is rediculous. They still have no map updates available. NAVTEQ mapset IS updated on their site and they advise to contact the manufacturer for updates.
Another issue that has come about with the Magellan is its ability to maintain Satellite contact in the woods. I went for a hike and then reviewed my data only to find that coverage was spotty. Not what I had expected with a WAAS enabled receiver. This could be attributed to the farther north location that I used the unit, a symptom of lesser Satellite reception due to distance from the equator/ southern hemisphere.
I would recommend an in-vehicle unit and separate outdoors unit- both from Garmin- to anyone that is looking for a 'mixed use' unit.

Edit your post:
UPDATE: This is an update to my original review. Unfortunately, it only gets worse. One update has come along from Magellan, and it did not fix the inaccuracy of this unit. It has sent me in circles, only to come back to a road I had already crossed, and then advised to turn. Side by side with a Garmin Nuvi 660, the Magellan took me onto side roads that the Garmin maintained highway travel- much better routing with the Garmin. Support from Magellan is rediculous. They still have no map updates available. NAVTEQ mapset IS updated on their site and they advise to contact the manufacturer for updates.
Another issue that has come about with the Magellan is its ability to maintain Satellite contact in the woods. I went for a hike and then reviewed my data only to find that coverage was spotty. Not what I had expected with a WAAS enabled receiver. This could be attributed to the farther north location that I used the unit, a symptom of lesser Satellite reception due to distance from the equator/ southern hemisphere.
I would recommend an in-vehicle unit and separate outdoors unit- both from Garmin- to anyone that is looking for a 'mixed use' unit. Guidelines

I guess I had higher expectations for this product. I bought it to use for road travel as well as hiking an Geocaching.

For the on-road use there were several things that annoyed me. First, there was a delay at some times when pushing buttons. I did not now if I had pushed it or not. Also, to mute it you have to go into a sub-menu then hit a mute button, then save. Should be a single click.
One of the first times I used it by blindly following the directions, it had me take an exit only to immediately take a turn on to the entrance ramp to get back on the same road.
The voice feedback is good, but it reads out every letter when typing in a street name. If I am typing, I am obviously looking at the screen and I don't need it to repeat each letter back to me. Also, for several of the street names it was difficult to understand. I knew the street name but I could not recognize it from it's verbalization.
For hiking use, I could not figure out how to download the coordinate files (loc or gpx) into the system. Maybe there is a way, but after an hour I gave up. It should not be that hard for something advertised as a hiking system. Also, It was not clear to me when I bought it that it includes 90 m (contour lines) topo maps, but the 30 m map is extra. I'll stick with my $100 model for hiking.

For many people this product might be ok but I expected better usability. It almost seems like a knock-off of a well designed product (a lot of advertised features but hard to use), but if that's the case it should be half the price.

The pouch (extra accessory) is very nice and well made.

Ordered crossover in January and while entering waypoints it locked up. Sent back to the GPS store for an exchange. Just went on trip from Boise Id to Las Vegas and the new unit locked up and kept returning to the Blue Screen. Contacted Magellan and they said a software update would fix it. Downloaded update last night and it appears it fixed the problem. Will see. I was ready to try to exhange it for a different unit but Magellan said this would work-Hopefully we will see. The tech support guy I talked to was difficult to talk to. He sounded like he was revved up on Red Bull and took forever to get him on the line. Tech support sucks. To use the topo and marine functions you have to buy memory cards loaded with the program at $200 a pop. That really sucks to have to buy cards at that price. Half that I could swallow. Further use, more money spent on sd cards will tell if it performs as expected. So far skeptical.

One of the main reasons I bought the Magellan Crossover GPS was to take advantage of "SmartDetour to route you around slow freeway traffic" (copied and pasted directly from Product Description). This feature DOES NOT WORK as it ought.

Complaints:

#1) The answer is NO, SmartDetour does NOT receive traffic report data, contrary to popular urban myth (see Magellan TrafficKit for this functionality). The unit simply detects when you're traveling too slowly on freeway routes and then displays a detour option (SmartDetour) on the left edge of the touch-screen. Aside from the convenience of popping up the detour option on the screen, SmartDetour is EXACTLY the same feature as the detour feature of Magellan's cheaper models. This feature allows you to "route around slow freeway traffic" by electing to leave the freeway for a selected number of miles/kilometers, theoretically routing you around and beyond a given traffic jam by way of alternate routes then bringing you back onto the freeway.

#2) SmartDetour doesn't work efficiently, rerouting in inconvenient directions and often entailing a great deal of backtracking. I've found that manually rerouting using the "Least Use of Freeways" option is much more accurate and efficient for getting around traffic jams. My assessment of the SmartDetour option is that it's mostly useless for its intended purpose. There's nothing smart about it!

#3) Attempts to contact Magellan Customer Service on the SmartDetour issue have ceased. I've spent all the time I'm going to spend waiting for return correspondence from Magellan. It's almost as if Magellan is saying, "We don't care about you or your complaint, as long as we get your money for our products". If customer service is high-priority for you, don't opt for any Magellan GPS product!

#4) It sometimes takes too long - often several minutes - for the Magellan GPS Crossover unit to "get cranked up". More than once, I've needed GPS guidance in a hurry, powered the unit on, and have lost too much time waiting for instructions. I guess it takes a while to start triangulation sometimes. Meanwhile, I've just unknowingly missed my turn! Argh!! Some moments later, GyPSy utters aloud, "Calculating route..." Humph! Finally! Some seconds later, she smugly instructs "When possible, make a legal U-turn". Oh yeah, like it's my fault! Now you tell me! Of course I have to make a U-turn, Ms. GyPSy! I needed your guidance a mile back when I asked for it!

Rant's aside, the unit is quite handy and useful. It consistently keeps me on-track, even when I deliberately drive "off course" or when exploring unfamiliar territory. Day or night, even without looking at her, GyPSy keeps me from getting lost. Aside from the obvious G, P & S in her name, I call her (the voice guide) GyPSy because she's a lady of the streets - she knows them well - and she has a firm yet somehow earthy voice. The voice guide can optionally be muted through touch-screen selections.

I was expecting a bit more sophistication for the extra $160 I spent on the Magellan CrossoverGPS as a replacement for my broken Magellan RoadMate 2000 (see my review on that product). But the Crossover is still a good reliable product which I'd recommend for most common uses. And the price has already come down nearly $30!

By the by:

#1) The little tab loop for attaching a lanyard which is shown as being at the top right corner in many pictures of this product does not actually exist, at least not on all/most units of this model.

#2) The "Green" part of this product is just a removable soft rubber sleeve. The unit itself is black.

I received this product as a gift. It malfunctioned after a few days and magellan authorized a return repair stating it would be returned within "10 to 12 Days". In the meantime, they advertise a fishing marine map which can be downloaded. I purchased the chart for $99 but the download link was never provided. Many, many calls to technical support have provided no solution. They state that the download server is not functioning but refuse to stop selling the "downloads" to unsuspecting customers. In the meantime, after over a month, they "lost" my original Crossover GPS. They have said repeatedly that they would send me a new one "within 4 or 5 days", but never have, and will not provide any additional information. STAY AWAY FROM THIS CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION!!!