Magellan Meridian Gold Water Resistant Hiking GPS

by Magellan

Product Details

Product Manual [6.90mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5 x 3 inches ; 8 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005OLY8
• Item model number: 980598-02
• Batteries: 2 AA batteries required.
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description With 16 MB of built-in map data and a Secure Digital Memory Card slot, the Magellan Meridian Gold Global Positioning System receiver gives you plenty of memory to store and access location information. This rugged handheld GPS unit coordinates data from up to 12 satellites to pinpoint your location anywhere on the globe. The Meridian Gold's 16 MB base map gives you detailed information on U.S. cities, interstates, and waterways. Slide in a data card to get even more detail, or use a memory card to store waypoints and routes.

Map screen View larger.

Speedometer screen View larger.

The Meridian Gold GPS is a simple, versatile GPS receiver. View larger.

The Meridian Gold has a variety of navigation screens that make it a breeze to use. The map screen will show you where you are, or, in the Cursor Mode, you can scroll through the map of your current area to see where you're headed. The compass screen makes it easy to quickly check your bearing, whether you're on foot or in your car. If you need coordinates, the Meridian delivers with easy-to-understand position screens that show all the relevant information for longitude and latitude. And with other handy displays like the road, data, speedometer, and satellite status screens, the Meridian Gold makes it easy to gather all the information you might need to get home, find your waypoint, or navigate across the country.

The Meridian Gold is PC-compatible and stores up to 500 waypoints and 20 reversible routes with up to 30 legs. It also comes with a quadrifilar helix antenna for optimal satellite signal reception and fast position fixes. WAAS and EGNOS capability adds to the versatility of this receiver, which can be operated in English, French, German, Dutch, Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, or Swedish.

With Meridian Gold's seven navigation screens and vertical-profile graphs that show elevations of the route traveled you be able to see your exact position. The oversized, backlit grayscale display allows you to easily see location information day or night, and it comes equipped with a backlit keypad for easy button navigation in any condition. Waterproof rubber armoring and an ergonomic, compact design add to the Meridian Gold's functionality.

The Meridian Gold is compatible with Magellan's MapSend software, including MapSend Streets Europe and the recently released MapSend Topo for the United States. Vehicle, bike, and swivel mounts are sold separately.

What's in the Box
Meridian Gold GPS receiver, PC cable, 2 AA batteries, wrist strap, user's manual, and CD-ROM (user's manual with 9 languages).

Product Description

GPS 315 12 Parallel channel, hand held receiver with wrist strap and user guide.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

181 of 196 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Magellan Meridian Gold - The Good, Bad & Ugly, February 25, 2003

By 

Joe Baughman (Jackson, WY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magellan Meridian Gold Water Resistant Hiking GPS (Electronics)

After much comparison of Magellan and Garmin GPS, I plunked my $$ down on Magellen.

Purchase decision - My impression from OTHER reviews and info for Magellan was great hardware, weak software but considering all pluses, minuses and price points and my usage: hiking, biking, back-country skiing, driving, boating, I chose a Magellan Meridian Gold, 32meg memory, and Mapsend Topo Sofware. Keep in mind there's a lot to choose from and yet none seemed PERFECT.

I've now had it for 2 weeks of vacation time biking, hiking, driving and land surveying in S. Utah. I monkeyed with this unit everyday, becoming completely familiar with it's usage.

The Good: Solid, durable hardware. The Gold has a great feel, is a good size and fits into any of my outdoor shirt pockets. It holds satellite signal extremely well in trees, 2nd story house, Utah canyons. Solid feeling buttons and rubber armoring are all great. Seems to do very well on batteries using roughly a pair or less a day. (I already have a charger and extra batteries from my digital camera and headlamps).

The Bad: Mapsend topo software at 1:100,000 is not really precise at closest level. However, the amount of built in software and downloaded maps are sufficient for my usage and I can imagine the memory and processor speed needed for 1:24,000 topos. Also on the positive side Mapsend and Magellan built-in software has a ton of info! It's great having altitude, moon/sun info, vertical trip projections, and much more.

The Ugly: Magellan's method of setting routes and backtracking is absolutely terrible for my usage. I am so annoyed with this, I would return it if I hadn't already used it 2 weeks. Here's the deal -

If you go out for the day and retrace your route exacty, or just set it for the car in general it works very well. But so does a few cents worth of flagging, popcorn, or the cheapest GPS available.

In reality, I usually go on a hike, bike, or ski in some type of semi circle and at some point want to return to my nearest backtrack point and THEN start backtracking. I want the unit to beep when I get near the next point and keep counting them down. In the canyonlands of Utah and backcountry skiing here in Jackson Hole, Wyoming this could really be useful.

However, this ONLY works easily if you exacty retrace your trail.

So... in everyday usage where you aren't going exactly back down your same trail (why have a GPS?) you have to build a route with the GPS and/or go through the user database and select the nearest backtrack points. And then if you don't keep manually going through the database and selecting the next point, it will just keep pointing back at the last one. This is ridiculously time consuming on a day hike and makes operating the GPS the whole excecise instead of enjoying the outdoors. THIS SEEMS LIKE IT COULD BE EASILY CHANGED BY MAGELLAN BY SOFWARE PROGRAMMING.

More ugly: Really ugly.

Okay, so you set waypoints along your way using the GPS. Great, it does this well with 2 clicks. But THEN what??? It's back to the problem above.

It takes SEVEN screen operations and even more arrowing buttons to get a single one of these into a route. This completely insenses me. I could walk around circles for a day and eventually catch up to my wife and find the car in the time it takes to make a route! WHY CAN'T MAGELLAN MAKE IT SO I SELECT ALL THE POINTS FOR A ROUTE AT ONCE!!!???? How about storing waypoints in separate databases to start with? Or using two buttons in a computer-like fashion to highlight and select?

THEN: after I've got a route made HOW ABOUT if the GPS allows me to select manual or automatic retracing???? In other words, I want to go on a trip and set waypoints along the way. (Remember this is easy) Then, no matter where I am when I want to return to camp, I dump all my waypoints into memory in a few clicks, point the way to the nearest, and as I approach each new one, (automatic mode) the GPS beeps and rolls over to the next (lower number) waypoint.

If Magellan would make route setting and retracing easy, this would be a real must-have piece of gear for all my trips. At present, it's an electronic toy to play with while walking on flat ground or while my wife is driving the car. To give it the benefit of the doubt is also perhaps a good last resort safety measure so that if I get really lost I know where the nearest town is.

The annoying part is it is so close to being great, but Magellan's software programmers apparently never leave the office!

One last word - I find the Gold a great decision over the Platinum for using less batteries, having less to break, not needing re-calibrated everytime you change the batteries (daily) and knowing I haven't paid even more for some hardware that is mostly a toy because of the software behind it. Plus, I wouldn't go somewhere I could really get lost without a basic topo map and compass!

Three Stars overall for amazing toy that gives you info from satellites in outer space!

49 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No comparison, January 26, 2002

By 

prv8eye (oceanside, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magellan Meridian Gold Water Resistant Hiking GPS (Electronics)

Since the Meridian is the ONLY hand held GPS receiver with expandable SD Card memory, how can any other unit compare?
It has superior reception and is also the only unit with rubber "armor" coating and a frame protecting the viewing screen.
The second day I owned my Meridian Gold I got out of my car, forgetting that the unit was on my lap. The Meridian hit the asphalt with a loud whack but never suffered a scratch.
The thing seems to lock on to sat signals like it's hungry.
The base map often shows roads and details I did not expect to see.
My only complaint is that, like the other GPS makers, Magellan charges way too much for their map software.
After spending hundreds of dollars for a GPS receiver, it is quite disconcerting to be charged and additional 50-100 dollars for the software.
Seems to me they would sell a lot more units if the software was more affordable or even if they charged a little more for the receiver and included one software CD.(worked for Nintendo<G>)

67 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great unit., January 23, 2002

By 

Mark Pulver "midiwall" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Magellan Meridian Gold Water Resistant Hiking GPS (Electronics)

I've been looking for a GPS unit for a while. Garmin and Magellan are obviously the two key players in the market, and honestly, at this level ($200+) issues like accuracy aren't the decision point.

I started seriously looking for a unit after going out Geocaching with a couple of buddies. In that single use, I started to realize what I really wanted in a GPS unit. The top of the list was comfort in your hand - to use any unit in the field you're holding it in your hand. The unit should be comfortable, and the buttons should be easy to get to.

One thing that immediately came to light was that most of the Garmin units are _not_ comfortable to hold, and those that are, really only "work" in your left hand. That didn't make much sense to me and basically eliminated all of the Garmin units.

Off to Magellan!

The most popular of the Magellan units is the Map 330, and it is a wonderful unit. But, the one thing that bothered me about it was the memory size. 8 meg is a lot, but I was worried that I may have to sacrifice coverage area for detail. That lead me to look for a 16meg unit, and when I found out that the Meridian Gold also had an MMC (SD/MMC) memory card slot in it for map downloads, that seemed simply perfect.

And it is. The unit is great - I have no qualms about recommending this box, or _any_ of the Magellan units. They're well built, easy to use, have clear displays and... fit in either hand. :)