User Review: Magellan Triton 300

Magellan Triton 300
Above: The current Triton 300, which may differ slightly from the version reviewed.

Reviewed July 19, 2008 by mountainman_270

Rating:
Price Paid: $71

I began shopping for a new GPS last fall. I did not want a unit with 2,000 bells and 700 whistles that I would never use. Just a simple unit that said,"you are here!" and that's it. Then on a river boat trip last fall my friend's unit saved our butts with the topo map ability (long story but that feature saved us) and I thought what a great feature. I would like that too.

After some reading and shopping I bought the Triton GPS unit for these reasons and the 1/2 price deal. Not too many bells and whistles, great price, and the on board topographical map ability. When it arrived I liked the units size, look, fast initialization, colour screen and light weight waterproof design. It is a nice simple unit that does a good basic job. I do like the piece.

For the topo feature I needed a download from the Magellan website, their Vantage program. This would allow my home computer and unit to communicate and to download topo maps from the National Geographic CD. There is where you will find the unit's problem, technical support.

To start, their computer does not recognize Canadian addresses, so to register the product I had to use a family member's American address. Then the Vantage program itself doesn't want to download from the website for some technical reason or another. I called the Magellan support line and tried to work it out with their tech staff but the support staff knew less about the unit's programming than I did-a blind leading the blind thing. They are polite but not much help.

So now I have a nice unit (I am happy with it overall) that I can't use all the features I paid. I suppose I paid half price and am using 1/2 the features so I got what I paid for.

All and all it is a nice unit, good reception, easy menu and screen changes, a beautiful colour screen, and the potential for being a great unit; if only the tech support was there.

The two stars off the overall rating is for the lack of tech support. Garmin does not seem to have this issue (my friend's butt saving unit is a Garmin) maybe look at their line for units that function as advertised.

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