Magellan MAP 330 2.2-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

by Magellan

Product Details

Product Manual [7.54mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 1 x 2 x 6 inches ; 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000050IO6
• Batteries: 2 AA batteries required.
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #210,893 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Someday we'll all have a GPS built into our cars, but that will still be of no help when hiking, skiing, or on any sort of wilderness adventure. For all your road and off-road trips, you can rely on Magellan's GPS MAP 330 for navigation, mapping, and compass directions with a 12-parallel-channel receiver and quadrifilar antenna for fast satellite signal locking and accurate tracking.

The palm-size MAP 330 is designed for sturdiness and simplicity, containing an 8 MB base map with political/national boundaries, major roads and highways, national parks, airports, and waterways. An additional 8 MB of rewritable flash memory allows use of an optional CD-ROM for comprehensive street details. Using four onscreen and six hard-case buttons (plus cursor), we could easily plan and track our journeys. The map screen enabled us to find our place on the planet in the general vicinity of our city and state. The data screen displays heading, bearing, speed, and distance covered, while the position screen displays time, elevation, longitude, and latitudinal positions and the trip odometer.

For novices the setup may seem a bit complicated. We recommend that you initialize your unit, then settle in for armchair exploration of the user manual to familiarize yourself with the rather complex programming setup, which can be difficult to follow. For example, the backlight, which quickly drains batteries, will shut down automatically in four seconds when not in use, but you can also set the light level by pressing the light/on/off button. However, when we tried this method, the unit simply shut off each time.

Once you get the hang of the MAP 330, or if you are an experienced GPS user, you'll soon be itching to explore the world. --David Greenberger

Pros:

• Rugged GPS device for the outdoors
• Compact and very sturdy design slips in a pocket or backpack
• Lock-on tracking whether in a closed vehicle, in a boat, or on foot

Cons:

• Without the optional MapSend Street CD-ROM, you will not get the specific street information to guide you door to door
• Learning curve may be longer for the novice user to master the program sequences

Amazon.com Product Description

The Magellan MAP 330 is a 12-channel global positioning system receiver with a built-in 8 MB base map with worldwide political boundaries and U.S. cities, highways, major roads, national parks, airports, waterways, and railways. The 8 MB of rewritable flash memory allows you to use the optional MapSend Streets CD-ROM for comprehensive North American street detail and navigation information.

View your navigation information on any of the four graphic screens on the high-resolution grayscale display. Other GPS features include 500 waypoints, 20 reversible routes with 30 legs, calculator for determining the best fishing and hunting times, proximity alarms, and sun/moon calculator. The 1,200-point SmartTrack records your path, while BackTrack brings you home again. A quadrifilar antenna provides superior tracking.

The GPS 330 runs on two AA alkaline batteries for up to 10 hours. It comes with a PC cable, wrist strap, and quick-reference guide. It is covered by a one-year warranty.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Map330 with base maps and uploadable detailed street maps, December 2, 2000

By 

S. Matscherz (Allison Pk, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Magellan MAP 330 2.2-Inch Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)

The Map330 arrived on Nov 20th. It immediately locked on in after the power up in about 4 minutes with 6 satellites showing. I previously had a Garmin 45xl and a Garmin 12 with good success. This GPS takes those 1 step further with built in Base maps and the "free" cd offer with a mail in rebate for no extra cost. Unlike the current Garmin offers which cost an extra $100 for a map program. This is an excellent offer for the current price. The only cons that I have found with this unit is that the tracklogs will "connect" themselves to each other and that upon power up the first tracklog taken sometimes has a tendency to be far away from the actual location. This is due to a poor satellite geometry and is not a problem with the unit. These are minor shortcomings and the fact that I was able to load 1/2 of Pennsylvania with the 8 meg uploadable map storage is a nice bonus with this program. If you have any questions on this or any other GPS I highly recommend that you go to the newsgroup: sci.geo.satellite-nav . The people there are very helpful and can answer any questions you may have.. Happy GPS'ing !! l8tr... Steve m...

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Small Scale Mapping at a Blowout Price, December 1, 2000

By 

George (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Magellan MAP 330 2.2-Inch Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)

This is the first GPS that has user-accessed memory and a CD Rom with maps, under $300. At least during the initial offer, the CD Rom was free, so the price for 'everything' was $250 or so. Since you need the database (CD) and a cable, plus a memory module, the competing Garmin EMap is about $400.

Magellan likes the 'knob' antenna on their low cost units. It makes the unit a little clunky. The Emap is much more elegant to handle, but they are both small and light. The Magellan has a smaller screen. The Emap is better.

Magellan supplies a cheap GPS that isn't purposefully derated. Garmin does. Try to find your course on the Emap. It isn't there. The Emap is designed to work in an automobile, not on a boat or in an airplane. If you want that capability, they are trying to get you to buy something more expensive, or two units.

Overall, the Magellan 330 is a very capable and fully featured GPS. When you zoom in to street level, the maps can be confusing. Unfortunately, the streets lack context, and as you zoom out, detail disappears. On the other hand, if you know where you are going, the map is extremely handy, down to the most basic intersections.

Garmin makes nicer, more refined units. They also play games by leaving out features ANY GPS should have. The Magellan 330 is the most fully featured 'entry level' GPS that has ever been offered, and it is a clear winner in many ways.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars MapSend Streets of uncertain value, February 17, 2001

By 

G. Orwig - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Magellan MAP 330 2.2-Inch Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled with my Map 330. It is fast and accurate. The built-in base map has only "main" streets (like state highways) and landmarks in my area, but it is very accurate.

A suggested software upload quickly updated the Map 330 operating system, although for some reason it did not work from my laptop ... the laptop Com port settings were a problem with the older DOS-based loading process provided with the OS update. It worked fine from an older desktop.

I did notice that in certain light ... mainly north light or twilight, the display has what I describe as some "stress marks" in the glass at the top. Normally, you don't even see them. I called Magellan to ask about them, and they said they were aware of them, and they do not indicate any sort of a mount pressure point against the LCD screen ... they are "harmless." Hope they are right!

This little device does, indeed work great. However, there are some needless frustrations. When you turn the device on, you go through an advertising screen and a disclaimer screen. If you don't push "enter," the device shuts back off. Stupid. Clearly, some lawyers were involved in that nonsense!

You turn the backlight on by holding the on/off button down for a bit. If you don't do it just right, the Map 330 goes into shutdown mode and you have just a few seconds to fumble around (in the dark) to hit the proper button to cancel the shutdown. If you fail, you get to go through start-up again! Why not pick a less important button to trigger the backlight?

These are just little frustrations you quickly learn to deal with. However, I'm not so sure about the MapSend Streets CDROM Version 1.00b that allows you to upload detail maps for the areas you choose. It installed quickly on my laptop, and it when I select map areas to load into the Map 330, all goes well. But if it had not been free, I'd have sent it back by now!

My community is over 10 years old, but this software fails terribly. The streets look like they were drawn in by a 5 year old holding a not too sharp pencil. My street is named wrong, and the GPS shows me to be at least 500 yards from where my house should be. Walking a large area of the community creates a path that has no relationship to the streets on the map. If I put in my address, a point is selected about a mile away from my house.

However, "nonhuman" landmarks (streams, lakes, etc.) are named and placed very accurately.

The end result is that I don't trust the current version of MapSend Streets, and that is not good for a GPS map system! If it can't accurately show me where I am in places that I know, how can I trust it to show me where I am when I'm lost?

I also have Microsoft Streets & Trips on my laptop, so I hooked the Map 330 up to the laptop and turned everything on. Soon, I had a little symbol sitting on my laptop screen, exactly where my house is. The correct street address of the house was even displayed! It appears that the database for Microsoft Streets & Trips is much more accurate than MapSend Streets for my suburban area, anyway.

I guess I'll just have to drag my laptop along with the Map 330, since there is no way to load the Microsoft data into the Map 330! Hopefully MapSend Streets version 1.00b will be updated quickly!