User Review: Magellan Triton 500

Magellan Triton 500
Above: The current Triton 500, which may differ slightly from the version reviewed.

Reviewed September 17, 2008 by Eric Ray

Rating:
Price Paid: $200

I purchased the Triton 500 prior to going on vacation in Kauai, HI. I wanted to go hiking on some of the many trails. After I purchased it, I found out that it had no topos pre-loaded. Why would one buy a handheld GPS without topos?

I live in the SouthEast, so I purchased a Southeast set and a West set of maps found out that they were keyed only to that unit S/N). I downloaded the maps to the Triton and it worked for the first day (of 9 days). The next day, during a hike, the Triton lost the maps including the street maps that were preloaded.

That night, I attempted unsuccessfully to re-load, then to get help from tech support, but no response. It was useless the rest of the vacation. My son had a Garmin and we used it. When I got home, I returned the unit for a refund and attempted to get a refund on the map packages. Magellan refused, even though it could only be used on that unit. I did not trust the unit, so I didn’t exchange it for another Triton.

I finally did what I should have done in the beginning. Do a cost comparison and check the ratings. I found out that the Delorme PN-20 bundle had topos for the whole US for about the same price as just the naked Triton. If I got the equivalent topos for Triton it would have cost me 5 times the cost of the Triton. I decided to take the loss on the Magellan software and purchase a Delorme.

In summary, someone would be crazy or down-right stupid (like I was) to have purchased a Triton. I won’t purchase another Magellan product. There is too much quality competition out there.

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