Since many people are planning their holidays as we speak and some of them can't wait to go back to the great outdoors, re-visiting their favorite mountain tracks and maybe do a bit of geo-caching along the way, Magellan has decided that this is a very good time to announce the latest additions to its eXplorist line of rugged handheld GPS navigators, namely the 510, 610 and 710 models.

According to Magellan, all three new eXplorist handheld GPS units come equipped with a camera, microphone, and speaker to enable users to record and share their adventures with friends. Furthermore, each eXplorist device features a 3.0-inch color touch screen, a 3.2 mega-pixel camera with auto-focus, microphone and speaker to record geo-referenced images, videos, and voice notes.

All products in the eXplorist series are waterproof (IPX-7) and come preloaded with a very detailed worldwide map. Magellan's World Edition map includes a complete road network for the U.S., Canada, Western Europe and Australia, as well as water features, urban and rural land use, and a realistic shaded relief background.

Each model also includes several innovative features, such as Magellan's OneTouch favorites menu, enabling users to instantly access bookmarked locations, searches, and functions. The industrial design incorporates silent proximity alarms and, to complement the 3.0-inch touch screen, each device has two customizable hard buttons to take a photograph, mark a waypoint, or provide quick access to a number of other preferred features.

The new eXplorist devices also include essential outdoor features such as expandable memory, paperless geocaching, GPX compatibility, 16 hours of battery life, high sensitivity GPS enabling 3-5 meters of accuracy, vertical profiling, a digital almanac, track summary statistics and area calculation.

We've seen what these things have in common, so it's about time to talk about each of these models' particular features. So, the top-of-the-line eXplorist 710 comes with built-in maps that get adventurers from doorstep to trailhead to summit and back. The eXplorist 710 includes both Magellan's highly detailed Summit Series topographic map and its City Series turn-by-turn map which allows users to navigate their vehicles through busy city streets on their way to their outdoor adventures.

The eXplorist 610 and 710 feature a 3-axis electronic compass and a barometric altimeter that provide precise orientation, accurate elevation information, and enables for weather pattern tracking.

The Magellan eXplorist 510 GPS device will be introduced at an M.S.R.P. of USD $349.99, the eXplorist 610 at an M.S.R.P. of USD $449.99, and the eXplorist 710 at an M.S.R.P. of USD $549.99. The units will ship with a standard mini USB cable and 2 lithium disposable AA batteries, and they'll also become available on other markets in the near future.  


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