Magellan Meridian Color Review

Colour GPS Handheld's have now come of age, and you can have all of the best features of a handheld GPS Receiver now with a bright, vibrant, colour screen!

The Meridian Colour is a newer handheld from Magellan and offers a huge amount of features. A handheld GPS Receiver is great for use when out hiking, in the woods or climbing, it can be stored in your pocket, you can plot waypoints, follow a track, show a breadcrumb trail to enable you to re-track your steps and much more. What's even better is if you can go from a gray scale screen to a vibrant colour screen giving you a higher resolution, lots of colours, it opens a whole new world to mapping on a Handheld GPS Receiver.

The Meridian range of GPS Receivers are very rugged, built to last and are for the serious navigators in mind. The Meridian Color comes standard with 16mb ram which includes a base map. The European version includes a base map of Cities, major roads, political boundaries, major waterways and airports.

The Meridian range comes standard with an SD (Secure Digital) Storage slot allowing you to use an 8mb, 16mb, 32mb or 64mb SD card. The SD slot is located inside the battery compartment. The SD memory card is an optional accessory.

The Meridian Color looks and feels rugged, and is waterproof, so you should be good to go in almost any terrain.

Box Contents
In the box you will find the following items:-

  • Meridian GPS Receiver loaded with a basemap of the region you are in
  • PC data cable
  • Manual
  • 2xAA Batteries
  • Wrist Strap

Technology
The Meridian Color supports up to 12 all-in-view satellites at any one time, with additional support for WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) and SBAS which will give accuracy down to below 3 meters. The Meridian Color comes with 8 rich screens and 7 of which are fully customisable which show satellite constellation, maps, compass, Bearing/Heading screen, GPS Co-ordinate screen, Track screen, Track details screen, and speedometer.The Meridian Color also operates off of 2xAA batteries which will give up to 13 hours of continuous use using the backlit colour display.

Adding Rich maps to your Magellan Handheld GPS
If the installed base map does not give you as much detail as you require, you can also purchase one of Magellan's MapSend CD's which will give you a huge range of mapping solutions for the Meridian. MapSend CD's will allow you to upload from a PC and store these maps to the Meridian with greater map detail than provided in the base maps and installable.

Adding map support to your Magellan Handheld GPS Receiver couldn't be easier. All you need is to purchase the MapSend CD that covers your requirements, have access to a PC and use the supplied PC to Magellan data cable that comes with the handset to transfer the maps to the GPS Receiver. Here's a selection of MapSend products that you can purchase.

MapSend BlueNav Europe includes 191 local European navigational charts, offering a complete range of detailed marine cartography for your Magellan ® Meridian TM Gold, Marine, Platinum and Color or Magellan SporTrak Pro , SporTrak Pro Marine and SporTrak Color. Derived from Navionics ® Gold TM charts, MapSend BlueNav charts are the most advanced marine cartography available, providing large, highly detailed coverage areas and enhanced marine navigation information, including marine currents, tides, port services and much more. MapSend BlueNav North America includes 83 local North America navigational charts, offering a complete range of detailed marine cartography

Purchase MapSend BlueNav Europe
Purchase MapSend BlueNav North America

MapSend WorldWide Basemap software enables you to create a basemap for any region of the world and upload it to your mapping Magellan ® GPS receiver. Adding WorldWide basemap's to your Magellan GPS receiver does not erase your built-in basemap -- it enables you to add basic reference map coverage for areas not covered by the built-in map. New basemap's can be loaded and saved via a PC to GPS cable from your PC to your Magellan Meridian ® series handheld (requires an optional Secure Digital (SD) memory card), directly to the SD card using a card reader/writer, or directly to the memory of your Magellan SporTrak ® Pro, SporTrak Pro Marine, SporTrak Map, SporTrak Color or MAP 330 GPS receiver. Each basemap region you define contains the essential basic map features such as cities, highways, waterways, railroads, national boundaries and shorelines. WorldWide Basemap also includes basic topography contours, which can help you stay oriented to your environment and find Points of Interest.

Purchase MapSend WorldWide Basemap

MapSend Streets offers detailed street-level maps of Europe make GPS navigation in the region even easier with your Magellan ® Meridian ® series, SporTrak ® Pro, SporTrak Pro Marine, SporTrak Map, SporTrak Color, or MAP 330 handheld receiver.

MapSend ® Streets Europe contains highly-detailed maps that can be easily downloaded from your PC to your handheld GPS receiver for a fun and simple way to navigate. Create your own waypoints and routes on your PC, edit and download them to your GPS receiver for use on your adventure. Save thousands of routes on your PC for recording your every journey.

MapSend Streets comes in a variety of formats including a MapSend Streets Europe, MapSend Streets & Destinations Canada, and MapSend Streets & Destinations US.

Purchase MapSend Streets Europe

DataSend Europe - Create your own personal charts. The unique DataSend TM Europe software allows you to download your routes and waypoints from your GPS receiver to your PC, to easily record your journeys and edited them for future use on a new adventure. For use with your Magellan SporTrak, GPS 315, GPS 320 or SP24 receiver. FREE Nautical Waypoint databases

Take advantage of FREE regional nautical waypoint databases*. Download waypoint coordinates for harbors, lighthouses and more, then edit and add your own waypoints to create personal charts on your PC. Download these .zip files and open and edit the waypoint database files with Personal Mapping System Waypoints & Routes.

DataSend (US) - contains coordinates for more than 500,000 points of interest, including harbors, lighthouses, wineries, museums, parks, campgrounds, hunting and fishing spots,restaurants and much, much more.

Purchase DataSend Europe

MapSend Topo (US)- The most advanced GPS topographic software available, Magellan ® MapSend ® Topo In the US maximizes the navigation capabilities of your Meridian ® series, SporTrak ® Pro, SporTrak Pro Marine, SporTrak Map, MAP 330 or MAP 330M handheld receiver. The MapSend Topo in the United States software contains highly-detailed 3D topographic maps that can be easily downloaded from your PC to your handheld GPS receiver for a fun and simple way to navigate.

Map details include streets, lakes, rivers, coastlines, parks, railways and points of interest for the entire United States. You choose the regions and level of detail to download for maximum memory efficiency. The data can then be updated or overwritten with new map regions. Topography derived from the U.S. Government Digital Elevation Model (DEM), provides elevation details for every location on the map.

Purchase MapSend Topo US

Conclusion

The Magellan Meridian Color is a superb GPS Receiver that will give you all the features you will need and gives full support for downloading of large MapSend data maps, and with a bright, vibrant colour screen!

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