Magellan eXplorist GC

With easy operation, the Magellan eXplorist is a great GPSr for causal or regular geocaching.

The Magellan eXplorist GC is a great addition for any geocacher. It is a great starter GPS for beginners, but I would not rely solely on this GPS. It has great integration from the geocaching website, although it is a pain to load the GPX files. You are required to load them through the proprietary Magellan desktop application. No quick loading.  I find when using it on the trail that it tends to be very accurate up until you get near the cache.

One feature that I am missing is the ability to track a trip. Yes, it does track your distance traveled, but only by the birds flight, meaning from point A to B straight shot. I would like to be able to see how far I have traveled after hiking to find a cache.

One of the features that sets it out from the rest is the dedicated geocaching "app." It is great that I can scroll over to geocaches and have it display the nearest ones. The specs say that it has a three to five meter accuracy and I think that this would be a reasonable judgement.

I have tested the coordinates with ones from an actual map to compare and it got me within five feet of the location out in the open and about ten with a few trees overhead. Another things that I sometimes miss is the altimeter. It would be great to see the altitude, it is one feature that would not have swung my decision on my purchase however. 

I would say that it lives up to its promise of being waterproof. I have taken it through mud and rain and it seems to still be going strong. I have also dropped it many times in the dirt. I thought it was done when I accidentally dropped down a hill onto concrete, but it still survives.

I have had the eXplorist GC for about a year now and have been happy with what it has given me. I would definitely recommend this GPSr first to anyone who asks my opinion. I also hope that this review has been helpful in your thoughts about purchasing the eXplorist GC. Thank you.

 i bought this gps for geocaching, just like the name says. it is pretty straight forward and simple to use and does a good job. it is rated @ 18 hours of battery life with the energizers that came with it. i wasn't timing it but i would bet it doubled that with ease.

my only complaint is that there is no owners manual that comes with it. it has info loaded onto it and there is a breif tutorial on the phone but no owners manual. there is on the magellan web site. but its a gps and you may be nowhere near a computer when you need to find info .

i would buy it again with no hesitation. i bought it on ebay for $150 new. and it was retailing for $200 everywhere i looked.

Perfect for geocaching.

First GPS and no bad word to say. Kids use it without difficulty and do the job. 10/10