Magellan SporTrak Color Water Resistant Hiking GPS

by Magellan

Product Details

Product Manual [6.09mb PDF]

• Item Weight: 6.1 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008DHSS
• Item model number: 980616-20
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description Magellan's SporTrak Color GPS gives you all the great advantages of GPS navigation in one rugged, compact, lightweight, and full-color device. The high-contrast, full-color 240 x 160-pixel display lets you easily see your location and route, helping you differentiate between roads, interstates, and other designated points of interest, all at a glance. The unit shows your position to within three meters, even in difficult environments such as cities or mountains.

Navigate with ease using the SporTrak Color's intuitive controls.

Built to be both intuitive and easy-to-use, the SporTrak Color lets you rest assured knowing that all its major functions are described in step-by-step instructions built right into the unit. Start navigating right away with its 10 MB built-in mapping database of North America, which includes highways, major roads, parks, waterways, airports, cities, and marine navigation aids such as buoys, beacons, lights, and other items. You can expand your mapping capabilities by uploading detailed maps from optional Magellan MapSend software (up to an additional 22 MB for North America).

Store up to 20 routes, 500 waypoints and 2,000 track-points to easily find your way back again. The Save Track-to-Route feature lets you convert complicated track files into easy-to-follow routes. Save hundreds of routes by transferring them to a PC using the optional MapSend software.

Nine customizable graphic navigation screens include a map, compass, and speedometer with text readouts of heading, bearing, speed, direction, and ETA, among others. Choose from 12 built-in coordinate systems and 76 datums, including Latitude/Longitude, Universal Transverse Mercator, and Military Grid Reference System.

Built with rubber-armored, impact-resistant plastic, the unit nevertheless weighs in at a mere 6.8 ounces, keeping it compact and light enough to slip into your pocket and accompany you wherever your road leads. Further, the water-resistant SporTrak Color is sealed to IEC-529 IPX7 specifications--and it even floats.

The SporTrak Color uses WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS) to provide the maximum GPS accuracy and reliability available. A built-in barometer helps you forecast the weather, while an innovative three-axis compass offers superior navigational accuracy no matter how you hold it.

Other features include the ability to show when the sun will rise and set and the phase of the moon for any date and location in the world. Want to know when the fish are likely to be biting in your corner of the world? The SporTrak Color tells you that, too. It can also monitor the GPS satellites in view and get information about their status.

If you speak English, French, German, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, or Dutch, you're in luck--so does the Magellan SporTrak Color. A pair of AA batteries powers the device for up to 14 hours of continuous use.

What's in the Box
GPS device, PC cable, user's manual (English and French), user's manual on CD-ROM (in nine languages), two AA batteries, and a wrist strap.

Product Description

Magellan SporTrak Color Water Resistant Hiking GPS

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

144 of 144 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Reception, sturdy, BUT so-so Interface and screen, September 24, 2003

By 

Levanto (SAN DIEGO, US, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Magellan SporTrak Color Water Resistant Hiking GPS (Electronics)

The Good:

As far as handheld GPS units I have used the Garmin GPSMAP 76, the eTrex Vista, eTrex Legend, and this Magellan unit. The first thing I noticed when I started the unit up in my house was that it was extremely good at finding satellites. None of the Garmin units could consistently get a fix inside the house, and when they could, they had to be next to a window. This unit can get a decent fix just about anywhere in the house and I am on the lower floor of a two-story duplex. This ability to get a signal is also true in a car and on the trail.

The feel of the unit is solid. It has a rubber rim, which feels good in the hand, and the smaller lighter form makes it a better fit in the hand than the GPSMAP 76. The buttons have nice backlighting and the placement at the bottom makes it easier to operate without obscuring the screen with your fingers.

The color screen makes topo maps and highway maps much easier to read than on the grayscale units. This is especially so with topo maps where water is blue, trails are black and topo lines are green as opposed to Garmin units where you have to put the cursor over some lines to check if they are topo lines or roads. The only downside to this is that the Magellan maps are not quite as good as the Garmin ones. Though they are decent.

The Bad:

First off, the unit has a Barometer, thermometer and compass like the 76S and the vista, but there is NO barometric altimeter, which adds to the GPS elevation accuracy. This came as a real surprise to me. I could not understand why that would be left out when it seemed like all it would take was software once the sensors were there. I talked to Magellan and they said there were no plans to update the software to include a barometric altimeter.

While the sportrak color has the best resolution of any of the Magellan handheld units, the screen is not nearly as sharp as the Garmin units. Colors are also a bit washed out even after adjusting the contrast. And the screen harder to read in daylight due to the background of the LCD simply being darker.

The interface is miles behind the Garmin units. It is hard to navigate through the menus. Thing are present under some screens but not others and there is little that is intuitive. I found I would figure out how to do something then could not repeat the process. Turning on and off the magnetic compass for instance takes digging into nested menus as opposed to the one button push it takes on the Garmin units. The vista comes with a little manual while the Sportrak comes with a large one. The reason is obvious.

One of my biggest bones to pick with the unit is the lack of field options. On garmin units you can display vertical speed, Stopped time/moving time, coordinates (Magellan only displays these on the coordinates screen), and many other nice fields. On the Magellan units the options are limited to the basics while Garmin offers fields I didn't know I wanted but I love.

Conclusions:

The strongest points for this unit are the color screen and its ability to acquire satellites. These points are sometimes overshadowed by the interface and the sharpness of the screen. Though, every time you are in a deep canyon or on a tree covered trail and all the other units are struggling you'll be happy. The alarms are something that no eTrex units have, while the smaller size is definitely something to think about when comparing it to a GPSMAP 76 or 76S.

I like the unit overall, but I wish the software would be updated to be more flexible and user friendly. You just can't have it all.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 1st Timer, June 25, 2004

By 

"evil_borg" (MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magellan SporTrak Color Water Resistant Hiking GPS (Electronics)

I purchased the Sportrak Color from Amazon for $229. My local retail stores listed it at $349-$499. The reviewer that stated that the this unit is hard to use and is non-intuitive gave me great pause before purchasing it. With such a great price vs. all other listings, I went for it anyway. I'm very pleased with the system. As a complete GPS novice and as a test of the systems ease of use, I did not read the instruction manual. I only turned to the page that identified the functionality of each button. Anyone who has ever used a computer or played a video game can operate this unit intuitively.

I also purchased the MapSend Direct route software. I uploaded most of Michigan on it and started browsing streets in my general area that would require several turns to reach. I put the cursor on a street and pushed the GOTO button. It instantly asked me if I would like to go there. Neat, huh? I used the unit in my vehicle, laying it down in the center console. It guided me to the street with audible prompts, visual direction arrows, and street names to turn at.

I don't claim to know anything about GPS, but I love it.

I intend to use it for street directions and fishing spots.

It has a compass, barometer, altimeter, Color disply, and is VERY easy to use.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, May 30, 2005

By 

Brian Engle - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Magellan SporTrak Color Water Resistant Hiking GPS (Electronics)

I have a Magellan Sportrak Pro and I like it a lot for its practical design and accuracy. Naturally I was keen to move up to the Sportrak Color and improve performance. Instead I have found the Sportrak Color has what appears to be a design flaw so serious the unit is almost unuseable.

The problem is that the screen is so dim it can't be seen in normal daylight. I'm used to my Sportrak Pro's screen and I've never had problems in any environment, day or night. This unit is very nice at night only, I mean ONLY. In the daylight, you can't see any detail on the screen at all - Period. The screen is so dark, you just can't make out any details.

I tried contacting Magellan and they were unresponisve, saying only that the contrast control would adjust brightness - It Doesn't - and nothing else.

It appears to me that Magellan did not do its homework on this one and I am disappointed, both with the unit and with Magellan's response, which is basically zero.

I am now back to looking at Garmin.