I wanted a GPS for my car, hiking, and boating. Meridian Color is what I bought and I’m glad I did.

Batteries drain quickly when using the backlight. I recommend using Ni-MH batteries with an 1800 ma or higher rating. They seem to last longer than alkaline batteries and they are rechargeable. Use a car adapter power cord on long road trips.

If you plan on using it for street navigating, I recommend the Mapsend “Direct Route”. After downloading a map region, a route can be created directing you to your destination. The gps will beep as you approach your next turn and show an arrow. You should practice creating routes to places you know. You will find the gps may not plot the most efficient route, but it will get you there. Then again, if you ask someone for directions, you may get more than one answer. It has successfully directed me to places I have never been.
The base map has a wrong name on a road near my house. Downloading my local map region corrected the error.

Get your self an SD memory card read/writer and buy a large memory card 128 MB or larger. Direct Route allows you to download 64 MB map regions directly to the memory card read/writer much faster than through the gps. When a map region is downloaded, it saves it with a default file name. You must change the name or the next region downloaded will overwrite that file. You can then download many map regions. The start point and end point must be in the same region in order to create a route. I have one region covering most of NY, VT, NH, and MA.

The speedometer on the GPS is very Accurate. I am looking forward to use it in my boat.

I paid $285 for a new Meridian Color, $75 for the Mapsend Direct Route and $14 for the car power adapter, $10 for the SD memory card read/writer. I don’t have the car mount. I use the cup holder. I am now looking to buy Mapsend Topo.


Recommended: Yes