Cons: marginal battery life, slow screen refresh, not THAT small
The Bottom Line: The Meridian Color is a great GPS unit for someone with mapping needs and not a lot of $$$ to do it with. Very versatile and expandable.
jdmccright's Full Review: Magellan Meridian Color Handheld GPS Receiver
First off, The Magellan Meridian Color is a great handheld GPS. It is small, waterproof (so they say) and shows everything in vibrant color. The screen is a good size, but not as large as more modern, in-car navigation systems. This is due to its portability...it's made to go over the road, hiking in the mountains, or sailing on the waters. It is small enough to fit into a jacket pocket and fairly light, even with batteries. And for the price, I couldn't find any other receiver that had a color display since I intended to use it for in-car navigation.
That being said, if street navigation is what you want, then you will need to buy the MapSend Direct Route software as well since the internal 16MB map is very basic. You will also need to purchase an SD card for saving maps to your Meridian Color. It can take up to a 1GB card size and saved maps can be up to 64MB each. It may not sound like much, but 64MB can cover quite a lot, such as from south central Virginia border to NYC or the entire eastern half of Texas...that's a LOT of road!
I've owned my Magellan Meridian Color for almost a year now (purchased through eBay) and I am VERY pleased with how well it works for me. I work for a party hosting company and so I am always having to drive into unknown territory. Before I had to rely on paper maps or those printed from MapQuest or Google Maps. If I missed a turn, I was out of luck trying to find a new route and forced to u-turn to get back on track. With the Meridian Color and without DirectRoute, I could at least know how far I had driven and could always use the Back Track feature to find my way back home, but I still needed a map or directions of some sort to get there. DirectRoute eliminates that.
For those who wish to use it out in the field for fishing or hunting, the unit does a good job of tracking once it gets a fix your position. Sometimes it is a little slow on startup, especially if you turn it off in one location and then turn it back on in another because it will remember where you were last and try to fix your position in that area. The unit will lose the GPS signal when traveling under long tunnels and under very wide concrete bridges. Tall buildings will affect signal as well, but will generally keep you positioned. If positioning is an absolute MUST, then there is an external antenna option. The unit's refresh rate is a little slow, about 0.75 sec/frame, so smooth navigation is not its forte and there is no internal compass. The unit relies on movement to determine what direction you are moving in, but the compass screen does show the location of the sun and moon to help you in getting your bearing straight.
If you plan on running it using batteries (2xAA), make sure you bring a spare set because the NiMH I use never show as full strength even when freshly charged. Alkaline batteries give a decent run time, and you can dim or shut off the backlight to conserve a little juice.
Overall, I give the Meridian Color a Good rating because for the price, I don't think it can be beat as far as capability and portability. But I also know that there are newer models out there with more features.
Meridan Color handheld GPS unit MapSend DirectRoute CD-ROM 64 MB SD memory card Vehicle mounting bracket Turn-by-turn audio prompts; includes serial i...More at Amazon Marketplace
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