Magellan Triton 400
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The actual design of the Triton 400 over the previous line of handheld GPS units is much better and more user friendly with the better controls on the unit. Navigating through the various pages, menus and sections is pretty simple and just picking up and using the GPS unit without much in the way of reading through pages of manuals or through websites is kept to a minimum.
Using the included Vantage Point software is also much easier than the previous version and is somewhat intuitive but you will have to do some reading to use the program. Loading base maps, waypoints for geocaching and even third party maps is very simple with a basic layout that is kept to a minimum of buttons on the pages.
This simple layout can be pretty easy to use but there are some things that may be a bit confusing if you don’t read about it before hand like not being able to load LOC files for geocaching information. Another slightly odd one is what they have termed Exchange, this is actually you’re upload and download buttons. Just a little different wording and once you find it there is no problem using the functions but they have done a pretty good job of keeping things simple despite these little idiosyncrasies.
Using the Magellan Triton 400 in the field, as it were, is fantastic and very fun, the GPS WAAS system finds satellites very quickly and is very accurate, up to 3 meters. This puts you very close to the actual location of things that are very accurately known like benchmarks. I checked out this accuracy and was only off a small amount for both the Triton 400 and the Triton 2000 I will also be reviewing.
The Triton 400 does a quick and easy job of finding where you are using not only the latitude and longitude with a good but basic base map you can also use the accurate compass and odometer. The odometer is a handy feature for measuring the distance you are traveling and the compass would be nice for hiking out in the great outdoors. You also get a speed of movement when you are walking or driving so there is plenty of regular GPS functions here that are common to many GPS units.
The compass is very accurate and I had no problem working with that as well as the pedometer for finding pretty accurate distances. I have a library that is one half mile from my home and the Triton showed this very well. I drove one day and the distance from the corner of my house to the parking lot just as you enter is pretty much one half mile, I also checked this with a mapping program on the internet as well. I checked this same distance with every handheld GPS I have reviewed and all of them agree that when I walk from the corner of my home to the same spot it is pretty much the same distance with all of them give or take a few feet.
The Triton 400 does a great job of simplifying the handheld GPS and making things like geocaching, finding your way on a hike, or even simple navigation like vacationing and finding that hotel much easier. You can enter tracks to help you find various locations on a computer and easily upload them to the GPS unit.
Magellan has listened to the complaints and suggestions of users and designed an easier to use and user friendly GPS unit and the Triton 400 is a reasonably priced and full featured unit. The Triton 400 does get really good marks from me and an almost award winning score as they have improved many points that I found were not exactly fantastic but still very good.
I highly recommend the Magellan Triton 400 for a good full featured handheld GPS unit for all your GPS needs. We’ll see how the higher priced model Triton 2000 stacks up to this model soon.