Magellan eXplorist 710 Waterproof Hiking GPS
05. May, 2011 
3 Comments
- Rugged, waterproof outdoor GPS with three-inch touchscreen and button controls
- 3.2 megapixel camera, microphone, and speaker to record geo-referenced images and voice notes
- World Edition preloaded map, Summit series USA topographic mapping, and City Series USA for city streets
- Barometric altimeter and three-axis electronic compass for accurate altitude, weather, and directional info; has 500MB space on the internal memory for user storage
- Powered by two AA batteries for up to 16 hours of use; The memory on the device is solid state flash memory; have microSD card slots
MAGELLAN EXPLORIST 710 UNITED STATES
Rugged and waterproof (IPX-7), the eXplorist 710 combines high sensitivity GPS reception with easy to read mapping and accurate navigation. Find your way using more than 30 navigational data fields. Create waypoints, record tracks, and route from point to point. The integrated 3.2 mega-pixel camera, microphone, and speaker enable outdoor enthusiasts to record geo-referenced images and voice notes. Relive your outdoor adventures on the device, on your computer, or share with others on various online communities like geocaching.com.
The eXplorist 710 combines high sensitivity GPS reception with easy to read mapping and accurate navigation. Click to enlarge. |
The eXplorist 710 packs the most accurate maps into the palm of your hand. The World Edition map allows for 2D or 3D viewing angles. It includes a complete road network in United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Australia and major roads throughout the rest of the world and provides cartographic orientation in almost any location. This unique, preloaded map also includes water features, urban and rural land use, and a realistic shaded relief background. The eXplorist 710 also includes City Series and Summit Series USA maps, Summit Series USA is a highly detailed topographic map based on 1:24,000 scale source maps. The maps includes contour lines, land use areas, trails, waterway7s and points of interest. Locate the nearest trailhead. Search for the nearest bike shops, fuel stations, or potable water source. Navigate safely in 3D perspective view while knowing the boundaries between private and public lands. City Series USA allows your eXplorist device to navigate through the city streets with turn-by-turn directions on your way to escaping to your favorite open spaces. Enter a variety of destinations, including address book entries, waypoints, geocaches, or previous destinations.
Enjoy paperless geocaching with the eXplorist 710. Download and view more than 20 unique characteristics of each cache and view, search, filter on the device. Details include name, location, description, hider, size, difficulty, terrain, hint, and recent logs created by other geocachers.
The best of both worlds, the eXplorist 710 combines the user friendliness of a touch screen with the reliability of two customizable hard buttons. Program the hard buttons to your two favorite or most used functions. Powered by two AA batteries, the eXplorist 710 will last up to 15 hours under normal conditions. To help conserve power, use the suspend mode to turn off the device but maintain GPS tracking. You can also adjust power management settings to your preference.
Magellan’s award winning OneTouch favorites menu is now on our handheld devices. It provides instant access to bookmarks of favorite places. Set your home, base camp, and car. Easily re-assign a new location for each new adventure. 12 customizable icons to create personalized searches, save unique locations, or assign quick access to your favorite screens.
eXplorist 710 Features
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3.2 Mega-Pixel Camera with Auto Focus Take photographs along your journey and reference the location where each photograph was taken afterward. Use the Integrated Microphone and Speaker to Record voice memos and playback in the field! All multimedia content can be geo-tagged with coordinates or attached to waypoints. |
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World Edition Pre-loaded Map The World Edition includes a detailed road network, water features, urban and rural land use, and a realistic shaded relief background. |
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Summit Series USA Pre-loaded Map |
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Three-Inch Touch Screen An intuitive touch screen user interface and sunlight readable screen makes the eXplorist easy-to-use in almost any environment. |
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Online Experience Sharing The eXplorist GPS receiver supports GPX file format and connects seamlessly to a PC as an external drive. Simply save files to and from the device and share with your favorite online communities. |
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3-axis Electronic Compass & Barometric Altimeter |
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Paperless Geocaching Download and view more than 20 unique characteristics of each cache and view, search, filter on the device. Details include name, location, description, hider, size, difficulty, terrain, hint, and recent logs created by other geocachers. |
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OneTouch Menu Magellan’s OneTouch favorites menu provides instant access to bookmarks of favorite places, personalized searches, and quick access to your favorite screens. |
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16 Hours of Battery Life Powered by two AA batteries, the eXplorist GPS receiver will last up to 16 hours under normal conditions. To help conserve power, use the suspend mode to turn off the device but maintain GPS tracking. |
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Rugged and Waterproof The eXplorist GPS Receiver is submersible and tested to IPX-7 standards, which means it can withstand depths up to 1-meter for a total of 30 minutes. |
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High Sensitivity GPS The integrated SiRFStarIII GPS chipset provides up to 3 meters accuracy with the assistance of WAAS, EGNOS, and MSAS to provide the most accurate location information worldwide. |
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City Series |
Which eXplorist Is Right for You?
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eXplorist 510 |
eXplorist 610 |
eXplorist 710 |
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3.0 “ Color Touch Screen |
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Camera, Microphone, Speakers |
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Online Experience Sharing |
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World Edition Preloaded Map |
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Paperless Geocaching |
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Expandable Memory |
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Summit Series Preloaded Map |
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3-Axis Electronic Compass |
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Barometric Altimeter |
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Detailed Topo Maps |
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City Series Preloaded Map |
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What’s in the Box
Magellan eXplorist 710 GPS Receiver, Standard Mini USB Cable, Quick Start Guide, 2 AA Batteries, Geocaching.com 30 Day Free Trial Flyer, Energizer Battery Coupon
Rating: 
(out of reviews)
Price: $ 496.99
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Best GPS I’ve used (or seen!),
This GPS does so many things its difficult to know where to start. So, I’ll start with the negatives…First, the unit comes with Energizer Lithium Ion batteries; unfortunately, the ones I received were dead from the get-go. (Unit wouldn’t turn on. Tried some rechargeable batteries, and everything lit up wonderfully.) And on that note, the unit can even optimize itself for alkaline, lithium, or rechargeable batteries, so you’re well covered there!
Other slight negatives: it takes several seconds for this to “boot up.” It’s not horrible, but it’s not ideal, either. Also, when the screen gets wet, it’s a little difficult to “scroll” through menus (it’s touch-screen.) Again, it’s not bad enough to worry about – and given touch-screen technology today, it probably cannot be bettered by any competitor.
Now, the actual device: I’ve never owned a Magellan, always going with Garmin for both handheld/hiking GPS’s and car navigation as well. This Magellan is great; the screen is bright and crisp, the menus (for the most part) are simple to navigate and understand without having to go through any manuals. Not just a hiking GPS, it can also give you street directions while driving (though it doesn’t have the text-to-speech stuff so it says to “turn right” and not “turn right on Main Street.”) The amount of POIs (points of interests) is somewhat staggering: not only main attractions and stores and such that most car navigation GPS’s can do, but also water and various “outdoor” attractions. It is seemingly built for handle both hiking and metro areas equally well.
The 3MP camera is nice to have; it produces images clear that look good on-screen, but you won’t be printing any glossy landscape scenes with it. (The camera has digital zoom but no flash.) A great add-on to the GPS that isn’t obtrusive in any way, so if you want to use your digital SLR instead, you don’t even notice the one attached here.
The signal remained very strong on a path about 8 feet wide with tall trees all around; while I haven’t tried it in a urban city area (tall buildings, where car GPS’s often fail), for outdoor areas, I feel it did quite well. There is somewhat of a heft to the device; you’re not going to strap this onto a ball-cap like you can with some of the smaller hand-held GPS’s (Geko’s, for instance.) But, put into a pocket (mine kept signal inside a jacket pocket) or clamped to a backpack or belt, and you’ll appreciate the quality and heft and not really think much about how heavy it really is. (Only a pound or so, but it feels quite solid to just hold it in your hand.)
As far as batter life: I have some 4-year-old rechargeable batteries that I’ve been using (they’re on their way out…don’t hold a full charge anymore), and I’ve got about 4-5 hours of battery life (so far, they’re not entirely dead yet.) You can configure the screen to dim itself quickly or wait in bright mode if battery life is paramount and you don’t have others (or go into “sleep” mode, where the screen goes off completely, but the unit continues to track your movement.) I’ve actually made the screen stay bright for some time while I show it off and played with all its features, and, given the batteries I’ve been using, it’s performed quite well.
While I haven’t dunked it in water (and don’t plan to, on purpose at least), it’s held up to quite a bit of rain on a couple mild-to-moderate hikes and hasn’t been bothered at all. I wish I could speak more to its many geo-caching features, but I personally don’t do that; if you do, I have no doubt that this eXplorist would do the job, and do it well.
Would definitely recommend, perhaps for both a hiking and car navigation GPS, though for car navigation, some kind of dash-holder would be nice so the passenger doesn’t have to hold it. A great GPS unit that doesn’t seem to have much in the way of competition at all: for consumers, this looks like the best-of-the-best.
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|A Happy eXplorist 710 user and Geocacher!,
I bought my first GPSr about 7 years ago when I started ATVing out the distant areas of the Mojave Desert, however, neither GPS technology nor electronic measurement equipment was foreign to me. I had spent more than 20 years in the Precision Measurement field calibrating, repairing, aligning and purchasing FFA approved test equipment, which I believe has given me a pretty good eye for both quality and junk equipment! Over these past seven years I¡¦ve owned a number of GPSrs as well as having the opportunity to use many, many others of different brands and types. This has helped me to build MY wish list for what I would like to see in a hand help GPSr and after using the eX710 for some time now I believe I¡¦ve found the unit that gets the closest. This unit is fast and accurate; the screen resolution and the ability to be seen in the bright desert sun is great; the user interface is easily understood and everything is within a couple of clicks, not hidden within menu and menu; it is a quality unit, being rugged and water proof and the reloaded maps are superior to most, if not all, of the preloaded maps I¡¦ve seen on other units. As a Jeeper, ATVer and dirt biker this unit has held up to every test I¡¦ve been able to throw at it. As a Geocacher I find this GPSr to be a truly paperless caching unit, not only downloading the descriptions and hints, but also the description pictures from the HTML on the website, as well as having the capability to log my finds, maintenance need and other items on the unit ¡V being able to sync the logs to Geocaching.com on my PC afterwards.
To be honest ¡V there is only one negative that I have with the unit – it is boring! º You see, several of the units that I¡¦ve used in the past I¡¦ve had to spend hours and hours working on maps and preloading the units before hitting the trial. Then, after turning home, again spending hours afterwards trying to work through the logging process of getting everything properly input into GC.com or downloading my tracks ¡V which pretty much became a hobby in itself. However, with this unit I just load it and go and then when returning home I connect it and within a few minutes everything is logged. The other day, after returning from a Jeep run I had everything logged and put away in about 20 minutes, after logging 60+ caches¡K
This is a great GPSr and you will enjoy it!
David
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|Loaded with maps and functions but gobbles batteries,
There are a lot of features on the eXplorist 710 GPS and for someone who isn’t familiar with all of them, it takes quite a while to grasp everything it can do. The included demo video isn’t really a demo, just an advertisement. The quick start manual isn’t very helpful at all beyond the absolute basics. The 51 page PDF manual that can be downloaded from Magellan is more helpful but it is designed to show how to find functions you already know you want it to do. An instructional video tour of how to actually use the device would be extremely helpful.
The topographic maps and contour profiles are very handy and are interesting to explore. The amount of information this thing holds is simply amazing. The menus are easy enough to navigate and the four-corner navigation is nice once you get used to it.
The camera and audio recording work well although there is no flash and the moving video quality could be smoother. There is about 3 GB of empty space on the hard drive but there is also a place for those tiny little SD cards under the batteries and they are surprisingly inexpensive.
The compass and altimeter are very useful and seem to be accurate. It takes a minute or two to find a satellite connection even in the open and it has quite a bit of difficulty hooking up to one in the city but that isn’t unique to this particular GPS. The satellite status screen is absolutely fascinating.
The touchscreen works even when damp which was a nice surprise and the battery cover and rubber plug for the USB port keep out water when it’s held under a running faucet although I didn’t take a chance on immersing it completely. It fits well in the hand and has that nice rubbery finish that is so easy to grip. It feels solid and well-made, the positive side of being very heavy. The battery compartment door in particular is sturdy and locks on securely and it seems like it would survive any drop that the touchscreen would survive.
My eXplorist 710 came with a dead battery and a $2.00 coupon to buy more of the same. (Apparently this is more common than not.) I figured the device was just left in standby or sleep at the factory after testing and put my own batteries in.
The on-screen battery meter shows just how rapidly this device drains batteries and it’s startling, even when following the instructions on setting the battery type and using a dimmed screen. After 45 minutes, my e2 lithium batteries, new and with more than a year left before expiration, were more than halfway drained. I don’t believe that it could be used for anywhere near sixteen hours on a pair of batteries regardless of type. Worse yet, four weeks later the batteries were dead, even though I had shut the device completely off.
Lessons learned: Don’t store this device with batteries in it. Don’t expect long battery life. Carry spares. Definitely use rechargeable eneloop batteries or similar to reduce waste and expense.
Battery life is a serious issue aggravated by the second major problem: the eXplorist 710 GPS is very heavy to begin with and to also have to carry several extra sets of batteries while hiking long-distance is a deal-breaker. It’s so heavy that you can’t comfortably carry it in your pocket or on your belt with a carabiner although you could stash it in an outside pack pocket or a belt bag.
This GPS would be much more suitable for dayhikers, bicyclists, and geo-cachers. The 710 really ought to be called a Geo-Caching GPS rather than a Hiking GPS because that’s really what the hardware and software both seem to be designed for.
A much more minor issue is that it takes almost a minute to boot up which is aggravating since the little timer icon is frozen so it looks like it isn’t doing anything.
I can only give the Magellan eXplorist 710 Waterproof Hiking GPS three stars because it is marketed as a Hiking GPS but is heavy and has major problems with battery life. For geo-caching and dayhiking where rechargeable batteries could be used and easily replaced, I would give it four stars. Let’s hope that for the next generation Magellan fixes the battery issues, reduces the weight, and improves boot time and video quality so it can get five stars.
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