Review by Dave Burrows

The Meridian Gold is one of Magellan's newer range of handheld GPS Receivers.   The Meridian range are very rugged, built to last and are for the serious navigators in mind.  I have large fingers, and one thing I find with the Garmin receivers is that sometimes my fingers are a little too large, the Meridian Gold, not only from a size proportion, but it's buttons are better laid out and easier to press. 

The Meridian Gold comes standard with 16mb ram which includes a base map.  The North America base map includes US Cities, Interstate highways, political boundaries, major waterways and airports. 

The European version contains the same information except the UK edition base map has UK Towns/Cities and major roads and motorways.   Like with Garmin, Magellan also offer an extra installable map CD called MapSend.  This allows you to upload and store these maps to the Meridian with greater map detail than provided in the base maps.  The Meridian range comes standard with an SD slot allowing you to use an 8mb, 16mb, 32mb or 64mb SD card.  In fact, the only thing limiting the storage capability is the size of the storage card that can be purchased.  Currently 512mb SD cards are available which could be used, giving you more than enough storage space!  The SD slot is located inside the battery compartment, and you do need to remove the batteries to get to the SD card slot.  The SD memory card is optional and can be purchased from any computer store, or direct from Magellan or a Magellan authorised reseller although the Magellan store currently only ships up to 64mb cards.

The Meridian looks and feels rugged, and reminds me of a dingy.  Magellan do say the Meridian is waterproof, I can see it certainly being splash proof, but there seems to be a little bit of play on the back battery compartment when closed and locked, so I wouldn't really want to submerse this unless I had to.  It's sides are rounded and rubberised and easy to grip, it has a large backlit keypad and a very large backlit display which caters for large fonts.

The Technology

Like many other handheld GPS receivers, the Meridian Gold can track up to 12 satellites at any one time out of the current constellation, and fully supports WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) in the US and EGNOS in Europe.  With current GPS accuracy, the Meridian will be accurate within 3 meters or better depending on line of sight to the satellites and the amount of strong satellite signals the receiver has. 

The Meridian GSP 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 Bearing/Heading screens and Track Screens give information like Bearing, speed, direction and ETA options.  The Meridian comes standard with support for up to 20 routes, 500 waypoints and up to 2000 track points which should be enough for the average walker and supports 12 built-in co-ordinate systems and 76 datums. 

Screenshots from the Meridian GPS

If you're looking to use the Meridian Gold for walks and hikes, you will certainly like the Track back feature which is more accurate than Garmin's equivalent system allowing you to accurately track back to each waypoint, which makes it easy if you get lost and need to re-trace your steps.

Like many other GPS Receivers, the Meridian also has compass support with Northfinder technology showing you which direction is north no matter where you stand on the earth, it also contains sun rise and sun set times and moon phase for any date/location in the world.

Back Cover

The back cover is locked into position with two slider bars.  Locked to the right and open to the left. 

Once removed you'll find the battery compartment which contains 2xAA batteries which are included in the box.  Remove both of the batteries and the small indent you see above the top battery, contains the SD card slot.  Once batteries are removed you can insert or eject the SD card.

The PC/Pocket PC connection support on the back I don't particularly like.  You have 4 metal contact plates and a screw

thread.  You then have to match the cable up exactly, and turn the screw head about a dozen times before it fully locks into position.  Although this does give a firm connection, I much prefer Garmin's cable connections over Magellan's.  You shouldn't have to keep screwing or unscrewing the cable, but when you do it takes a while, where as Garmin's like many plug/sockets are keyed and push straight on giving a tight connection.

The Meridian Gold will run for approx 15 hours of use on a set of 2xAA Batteries.

MapSend & DataSend Maps

MapSend offers detailed street-level maps of the U.S. available in regional files allowing you to download just the maps you need, saving memory while making GPS navigation even easier.

The MapSend® Streets in the US CD-ROM 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.

Map details include streets, lakes, rivers, coastlines, parks, hunting and fishing, 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.
 

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.  Plotting your current position in relation to surrounding landmarks is fun and easy, and your GPS search function will find street addresses and points of interest, quickly and safely guiding you to those locations.

MapSend is currently available seven different flavours:-

• MapSend BlueNav Charts

• MapSend Streets & Destinations Canada

• MapSend Streets & Destinations in the US

• MapSend Streets Europe

• MapSend Streets in the US

• MapSend Topo in the US

• MapSend WorldWide Basemap

Magellan also offer DataSend and DataSend Europe which allow you to create your own personal charts.  The unique DataSendTM 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.

Comparing Handhelds

Pitting the Magellan Meridian GPS against the Magellan SporTrak Map and the Garmin GPSMap76S, on a windowsill which really doesn't pick up much of a signal at all, it's good to see the antenna included within the Meridian is powerful enough to match it equally amongst all three receivers.  In-fact, on several occasions I've received a stronger signal by 1-2 sats more than the SporTrak Map!

Garmin GPSMap76S, Magellan SporTrak Map and Magellan Meridian GPS

One thing that makes the Meridian GPS stand out is how rugged it is.  It looks large here, but it really does fit in the hand nicely and contains rubber armour, impact resistant plastic allowing you to take the Meridian on any outing and not having to worry about it being damaged and is waterproof sealed to IEC-529 IPX7 specifications.  The Meridian is also kitted out for most European countries including language support for English, French, German, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch. 

All the Meridian's seem alike, what are the major differences between them ?

Magellan

Meridian GPS

Magellan

Meridian Colour

Magellan

Meridian Gold

Magellan

Meridian Marine

Magellan

Meridian Platinum

The main differences between the Magellan range of GPS Receivers are shown above.  If you would like to see full comparisons, please take a look at our Handheld Comparison Review.

GPS Hardware TTFF (Time To First Fix)

Connecting the Magellan to a PC or Pocket PC

Magellan ship a PC data cable in all their GPS Receiver boxes so you can connect the Magellan GPS Receiver to a PC which has a DB9 (9 pin Serial) connector.  These are pretty much standard on all computers, except some newer computers tend to favour USB or Firewire over Serial.

You can also connect a Magellan GPS Receiver to a PDA like a Pocket PC or Palm PDA.  You can do this by purchasing a cable set from PC-Mobile.  The cable should comprise of two parts, the first part is the cable that screws onto the back of the Magellan like the one below.

The second part of the cable will have a 3.5mm socket on one end which will connect with the 3.5mm plug (left) and the other end of the cable will have a PDA connector.  This then allows you to use your favourite GPS Receiver on your favourite PDA and utilise a whole host of other mapping products anything from Topographical products like Fugawi, OziExplorer, Memory-Map to Street Routing software like TomTom Navigator, PowerLOC Destinator and you don't then need to purchase a second GPS Receiver if you're primary use going forward will be on the Pocket PC!

Summary

The Magellan Meridian Gold is a great GPS Receiver, and one I'm having trouble putting down.  The receiver has all the standard features that you'd want in a handheld GPS Receiver, it fits into the hand neatly and you just feel at home with it. 

Conclusion

Manufacturers Website

http://www.magellangps.com

Pocket GPS Reviewer

Dave Burrows

Pocket GPS Reviewer Website

Dave Burrows.com

Rating

Construction

Useability

Robustness

Overall Rating 96%

How did we achieve these ratings ?

Review Ratings

Comments ?

Have any comments about this review ?  Post them here.