Is a Crossover GPS right for you?

The Magellan Crossover GPS is the world's first pocket-sized GPS built for driving on the highways, hiking rugged trails, sailing the open ocean or fishing on thousands of lakes, rivers and streams. The idea of the Crossover GPS is a great one, and the Magellan Crossover is sure to be a good choice for many. However, before you run out and buy one, think hard about how it will be used.

Auto navigation features include an passably sized 3.5 inch touch screen with turn by turn directions and voice prompts. Detailed road maps of the 48 states are preloaded. It has a somewhat small database with 1.5 million points of interest. Interactive POI icons can display a phone number or plan a route with just a touch.
Routing is done with your choice of four methods, shortest time, shortest distance, least or most use of freeways or steer clear of toll roads. Automatic re-routing gets you back on track when you miss a turn or take a detour. The Sirfstar III chip set acquires a satellite signal quickly.
Advanced auto navigation features include Bluetooth support, multi-destination routing (up to 20 destinations), text to speech (pronounces street names) and address auto-completion. Instant location shows your location at a touch of a button in an emergency or breakdown. An optional traffic upgrade brings you live traffic incident reports.
Extras include a Photo Viewer - you can peruse your vacation pictures while you're still on vacation and a Digital Music Player which allows you to play your favorite music through the integrated speaker or your own headphones. Unfortunately it does not have an fm transmitter.
For off-road use its is loaded with light topographic maps of North America. But these are much less detailed than the maps they offer with their handheld devices. However, the unit is SD card compatible and allows you to add more detailed topographical maps and marine charts for an extra charge.
You are safe if you get caught in the rain, it's protected to IPX-4 standards. The rechargeable battery lasts 8 hours; good for an automotive gps but lacking for a handheld unit. Magellan advertises the unit as Pocket-sized & Lightweight. However, It is a little bulky compared to most of their handheld gps units.

As you might expect with any hybrid project, you don't always get the best of both worlds. Sometimes you have to give up a little from each. This is all too true with the Magellan Crossover GPS. As an automotive gps its two biggest limitations are screen size where it is little too small to be ideal, and the POI database which is much smaller than those found in most other automotive GPS units.

As an off-road GPS its relatively short battery life and bulky size make it less than ideal. But the real limitation is the less than detailed topographical maps which any serious hiker would want to upgrade immediately. For Boating and fishing the maps could also be better, but you might also want to combine a gps with a fish finder or other options available on some marine gps units.

The concept of the Crossover GPS is appealing, and the Magellan Crossover might still be a good choice for you. For those who don't like the larger screens of some automotive gps units and who don't expect to seriously tax its off-road functions, the crossover gps could be ideal. However you should consider how well it will perform each function and determine if two separate GPS devices would better suit your needs.

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