Magellan SporTrak Color GPS
Rating: 
Manufacturer: Magellan
List Price: $399.99
Lowest Price: Click For Low Price
Buy Now: Magellan SporTrak Color GPS
Magellan SporTrak Color GPS
SporTrak Color provides superior tracking and accuracy, showing your position to within 3 meters, even in difficult environments such as cities or mountains. Featuring an impressive 10 MB North American or 11 MB European, built-in mapping database, SporTrak Color puts rich color maps at your fingertips. The large, high contrast, full color 240 x 160 pixel display enables you to easily find your location, heading and route. An additional 22 MB for North America or 21 MB for Europe of memory enables you to expand your mapping capabilities by uploading detailed maps from optional Magellan MapSend software products. A clear advantage over the competition, SporTrak Color also offers a built-in barometer, giving you an advance on the weather and an innovative 3-axis compass for superior navigational accuracy no matter how you hold it. Built tough, SporTrak Color is waterproof and rugged enough to go with you on any adventure.
Magellan’s SporTrak Color GPS gives you all the great advantages of GPS navigation in one rugged, compact, lightweight, and full-color device. The high-contrast, full-color 240 x 160-pixel display lets you easily see your location and route, helping you differentiate between roads, interstates, and other designated points of interest, all at a glance. The unit shows your position to within three meters, even in difficult environments such as cities or mountains.
 Navigate with ease using the SporTrak Color’s intuitive controls. |
Built to be both intuitive and easy-to-use, the SporTrak Color lets you rest assured knowing that all its major functions are described in step-by-step instructions built right into the unit. Start navigating right away with its 10 MB built-in mapping database of North America, which includes highways, major roads, parks, waterways, airports, cities, and marine navigation aids such as buoys, beacons, lights, and other items. You can expand your mapping capabilities by uploading detailed maps from optional Magellan MapSend software (up to an additional 22 MB for North America).
Store up to 20 routes, 500 waypoints and 2,000 track-points to easily find your way back again. The Save Track-to-Route feature lets you convert complicated track files into easy-to-follow routes. Save hundreds of routes by transferring them to a PC using the optional MapSend software.
Nine customizable graphic navigation screens include a map, compass, and speedometer with text readouts of heading, bearing, speed, direction, and ETA, among others. Choose from 12 built-in coordinate systems and 76 datums, including Latitude/Longitude, Universal Transverse Mercator, and Military Grid Reference System.
Built with rubber-armored, impact-resistant plastic, the unit nevertheless weighs in at a mere 6.8 ounces, keeping it compact and light enough to slip into your pocket and accompany you wherever your road leads. Further, the water-resistant SporTrak Color is sealed to IEC-529 IPX7 specifications–and it even floats.
The SporTrak Color uses WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS) to provide the maximum GPS accuracy and reliability available. A built-in barometer helps you forecast the weather, while an innovative three-axis compass offers superior navigational accuracy no matter how you hold it.
Other features include the ability to show when the sun will rise and set and the phase of the moon for any date and location in the world. Want to know when the fish are likely to be biting in your corner of the world? The SporTrak Color tells you that, too. It can also monitor the GPS satellites in view and get information about their status.
If you speak English, French, German, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, or Dutch, you’re in luck–so does the Magellan SporTrak Color. A pair of AA batteries powers the device for up to 14 hours of continuous use.
What’s in the Box
GPS device, PC cable, user’s manual (English and French), user’s manual on CD-ROM (in nine languages), two AA batteries, and a wrist strap.
Magellan SporTrak Color GPS Features:
- Large 240 x 160 pixel, high contrast, backlit, full-color display
- Uses WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS) to provide accuracy to within 3 meters
- Built-in barometer and 3-axis compass
- Features include Save Track-to-Route, sun/moon positions, fish and game calculator, and satellite status
- Compact, lightweight, rugged, waterproof design
Magellan SporTrak Color GPS Reviews
Disappointed
I have a Magellan Sportrak Pro and I like it a lot for its practical design and accuracy. Naturally I was keen to move up to the Sportrak Color and improve performance. Instead I have found the Sportrak Color has what appears to be a design flaw so serious the unit is almost unuseable.
The problem is that the screen is so dim it can’t be seen in normal daylight. I’m used to my Sportrak Pro’s screen and I’ve never had problems in any environment, day or night. This unit is very nice at night only, I mean ONLY. In the daylight, you can’t see any detail on the screen at all - Period. The screen is so dark, you just can’t make out any details.
I tried contacting Magellan and they were unresponisve, saying only that the contrast control would adjust brightness - It Doesn’t - and nothing else.
It appears to me that Magellan did not do its homework on this one and I am disappointed, both with the unit and with Magellan’s response, which is basically zero.
I am now back to looking at Garmin.
Good GPS Outstanding Price
I recently revieved this GPS for a gift and I love it. It’s very sturdy and it has a nice color display. The reception is outstanding, I can even recieve strong signals in my basement. The only down side to this device would be the roadways. They are not very detailed, but interstates, state roads, and county roads still show up. I find the ammount of roads in the US plentyful, but there are very few roads in Canada displayed. Although this may seem as a downside it is not that bad, because software can be purchased giving the roadways full detail. Another Pro to this device is that it is much smaller than it looks in the pictures. This makes it nice and easy to fit in your pocket or put in a cup holder in a car. I especially like the GO TO features on this device. You can search airports, parks, lakes, cities, roadways, etc. You just type in the name of the place you want to go to on the GO TO display and it will draw out a route from your current position. The routes that are displayed are shown as a crow flies, which is a downside, but it’s quite simple to find the quickest roadway, allong the line drawn. This device also has many points of interest to mark including, highway exits, hotels, gas stations, airports, campsites, and a whole lot more. In other reviews it has been said that this device is “hard to use with too many displays” I disagree. This divice is very easy to use once you get the hang of it. It has many features and the screens are customizable to your preference. It has many helpful features like a barometer, fish and game calculator, and sunrise/sunset. I also enjoy how it gives me an exact speed (more acurate than the actual speedometer in the car) It tells you estamated time of arival, how many more miles to arival etc. So far I have only gotten to use this device on one trip, but it was extremely useful. Instead of searching through a huge map I just scrolled around on the display making it allot easier. The best advantage of this device is the price. For a device of such high calibar it is extremely cheap, although only on AMAZON. There are better color devices, but you are going to be expected to pay a couple hundred dollars more. This is a great item, and if you are looking for not-so- complex GPS, or you want a more economic device, and want a beutiful color display, this is definately the GPS for you.
Many components, poorly thought out..
After reviewing different gps devices for months I finally came down to the sportrak color. The only experience I had with them was the garmin rino we use at work. When I opened the box for some reason the gps unit was in there upside down. Shortly after opening it I noticed that the control pad was stuck off to one side. That upset me but I wasn’t going to return it over just that. Me and a few of my friends went down to the lake later that day to do some geocaching. I felt pretty secure climbing the rocks next to the shore, its water resistant right? WRONG. I dropped it in 3 inches of water and in the 5 seconds it took me to get it out of the lake water had leaked inside of the screen and the gps itself. Needless to say it didn’t work after that. BAD design flaw. In conclusion.. the sportrak color is very fragile and has many flaws that magellan needs to work out.
Works great, but you can’t see what’s on the screen
The display on the SporTrak Color is very poor. I’d take a sharp B/W display over this any day. It is unreadable on the dash of your car unless it is dark and the backlight is on. The battery door is really flimsy too. There is only a small plastic tab to keep it closed instead of a screw or something more trustworthy (like on the SporTrak Pro). Waterproof? Maybe. The unit works great, […].
I Returned Mine
This was my third GPS. I’ve been using a Garmin EMap for several years and love it. Most of my use has been while driving in the boondocks of New England, to get me back to a highway. I also use it while hiking. But I’ve been getting into geocaching lately and I wanted a WAAS equipped unit. Since I only kept this unit for a week before returning it, I’ll concentrate on what led me to take it back.
Display: It’s smaller than on the EMap. Sure the resolution is better, but while driving I had a lot of trouble watching the screen. The color display is also a lot darker than the EMap’s. I needed to use the backlight a lot.
Menus: After seeing comments about how intuitive, or not, the menus are I spent a bit of time with them. After 5 hours spent sitting and walking with the GPS, I still had problems.
I liked some of the the ergonomics. This GPS feels good in the hand. But the buttons are awkward to push. if you aren’t spot on, you can easily miss your button.
The receiver is also very good. It picked up more satellites indoors than my EMap.
Click Here to find out more about the Magellan SporTrak Color GPS