Magellan Triton 300 Waterproof Hiking GPS

I have owned and used a basic model Garmin Etrex for the last 10 years. I decided to try a newer model with a color display that could perform area calculation. I purchased a Magellan Triton 300. After updating it to the latest Operating System version from the Magellan website, it could then perform area calculation. I farm wheat and barley for a living and our family also goes horse camping riding mountain trails. Sometimes I need to measure smaller areas for the amount of acres in them. I was so disappointed by the features of the Magellan Triton 300, that I purchased a Garmin Etrex Legend H. Here are my pros and cons:

Pros: Bright color screen easy to read, but only when back lighted. Sturdy construction. Able to page forward and backward. Reasonable price.

Cons: (Compared to a Garmin Etrex Legend H with a 4 level gray display), Without the back light on, the Magellan Triton 300 is very hard to read even in the sunlight. The Garmin is easy to read without the back light on, in fact I leave the back light off to extend battery life. The Magellan felt too wide in my hand compared to the Garmin. The Magellan is hard if not impossible to manipulate the joystick ring and selector button when wearing gloves in cold weather, the Garmin is much easier to manipulate the control buttons even with gloves. This can be an issue in cold weather and wind. The Magellan takes more clicks through more pages and menus to perform simple tasks, such as deleting a track, than the Garmin. The Garmin gives more options of which pages you want and what order they are in, on the quick scroll button. The Garmin menu is much easier to read and navigate. The Garmin came ready to perform area calculation right out of the box without updating. The Garmin is much easier to change batteries as the back comes off with a quick 1/4 turn of the release knob. The Magellan back release must be unscrewed, then carefully started back on to prevent cross threading and ruining the screw and over tightening.

Overall, I found the Garmin Legend H much easier to use and display easier to see with longer battery life, than the Magellan Triton 300.

First off, I do not own this model. At the time I ordered it, the 300 was backordered, so they sent me a more expensive 400 for no charge. No matter how much a person hates a company’s customer support, you have to admit that’s beyond fair. I’m writing this review for the 300 for a reason…BUY THE 400, NOT THIS ONE!!

There isn’t that much difference in the two. The 400 won’t give you more accuracy, better base-maps, or anything like that. However, the few differences are VERY significant….mainly being that the 400 can use SD Cards….VERY important for replacement high-quality maps. (The other reviewers have told the truth that the included base-map isn’t very good at all.)

Accuracy is right up there with the best of the Garmins. I geocache, a sport in which 1 foot can make a BIG difference. Of course no GPS is accurate to 1 foot, but you can see why I gave that example. And yes, I own Garmins also.

The user interface is pretty decent. It tickles me that some claim to be computer engineers & it took them 3 days to learn how to perform 1 action with this GPS. Well, I’m NOT a computer engineer, nor a rocket scientist, & I had the ENTIRE thing figured out in under 1 day. So maybe it’s just not made for engineers….dunno.

Battery life is decent…not good, not bad. As already stated, the display is hard to see when UNLIGHTED, which tends to happen after a minute or so. With the light ON, it’s about as good as any out there.

I’m not sure why people have had trouble loading maps, connecting to VantagePoint, etc. These things were figured out by me within hours & haven’t failed yet. I even figured out how to take my OWN maps, run them through a 3rd-party program, & import them into the unit….PRESTO, free map upgrades, and decent ones also. But this was very time-consuming when it got down to the really close-up scale maps. So I just searched around, found the best price on the AccuTerra set, & bought them for around $40-$50. Haven’t regretted it yet.

The unit isn’t all sherry & giggles however. This unit will NOT sync up wth most of the 3rd-party software which works with Garmins. Magellan hasn’t released their proprietary commo-code yet, which is going to cost them customers soon. Basically, you’ll HAVE to use the free VantagePoint to do any type of adding files, maps, etc. to this unit….other than adding points manually. (Which actually isn’t very hard either, again contrary to what some have said) VantagePoint works well enough, but it does need a serious overhaul. Last I checked, if you have a 64-bit Vista or Win7 OS…you’re pretty much out of luck. 64-bit WinXP & 32-bit Vista is fine however. I think that there are some workarounds for that Vista problem however. That whole issue SHOULD be a NON-event however. Magellan should stay on top of all current OS’s immediately, or release the required code so that 3rd-party programs can do it for them. That’s the biggest boo-boo about this whole Triton line, & it’s a significant one. You also have to remember to have the .Net Framework installed on Windows or VP won’t work at all.

Bottom-line, if you want a GPS which is a skill level zero to operate….the Tritons aren’t for you. If you don’t mind experimenting a bit (which has turned out to be kinda fun for myself), then you’ll get a very decent GPS, which can run ircles around any other one IN THE SAME PRICE-RANGE!! You simply will not find another GPS that offers the same advanced features that these units do, for as cheap of a price.

But that price comes at the cost of a bit of convienience & simplicity of use. So if that’s what you are looking for, then just cough up an extra 75 bucks or so for a comparable Garmin, because in that case, you’ll not be happy with a Triton.