Magellan eXplorist 310, I know it’s the best GPS receiver for outdoor activities. If you have one, increasing GPS performance for geocaching should be exciting. Below I want to share the hints that should help you get the most out of eXplorist 310 GPS (for geocaching anyway) right out of the box:
1. Go to Tools -> Settings -> Power, and set your battery type. Honestly don’t know what this does, but I’ve had my GPS on for 5 hours tonight and almost no reduction in battery power. It must do something! Battery life is so much better than my Triton, for this reason alone I’m glad I bought the GPS.
2. Go to Tools -> Settings -> Brightness & Volume, and set up these settings to your preferences. I set the Backlight Timer to 5 minutes (and you can keep it on longer), keeps me from pushing buttons just so I can see the screen after a few minutes
3. Go to Tools -> Settings -> Night Mode, and change the setting to “Off”. The factory setting will change the screen to night mode as soon as the sun sets, it’s really annoying. Maybe it’s preferable for some people, but definitely not for me.
The next two are the most important for geocachers, without changing these settings you will hate this GPS:
4. Go to Map, select it, then hit the Menu button. Scroll down and select “Map Options”. Find the “Auto Zoom” option, and turn it OFF! If you don’t, the screen will always zoom out to the point between your location and your destination, very annoying and makes it almost impossible to actually get to a cache.
5. Go to Map, select it, then hit the Menu button. Scroll down to “Geocaches” and change the setting to “Not Found & Not Attempted”. I initially changed this to “Not Found”, thinking this would show me the caches I didn’t find yet. I found out the hard way that that setting will only show caches that you looked for but couldn’t find.
That’s all I have for now. Like I said, so far I really like the unit. My only comparison is the Triton 400, but there are some HUGE improvements over that unit. Deleting the existing set of geocaches is almost instant, vs. 3+ minutes on the Triton. I can actually save my finds on the unit, on the Triton there was no option for this. I can see the last 5 comments from Geocaching.com, so I don’t waste my time looking for muggled caches. I will post an update if I find any more significant pros/cons to eXplorist 310, or any more helpful hints. Read more Magellan eXplorist 310 Waterproof Hiking GPS
