Megellan trx7 or other gps?

overtheedge

New member
Has anyone used the Megellan trx7? I am looking for a good off road and street gps that's easy to use with a decent sized screen.
 

smritte

New member
Ive owned one for about a year. I was looking for a mid to large screen "off road" dedicated GPS. Ive owned everything from handhelds to tablets and used most of the software out there. I use GPS regularly on my trips and have done so for a couple of decades. Here's my impression so far.

I saw a write up on these and liked what everyone said about them. Water proof, dust proof, easy to use, dedicated off road gps tablet, already uploaded with features. I researched these for quite a while because the price was a bit much. I was currently using a Samsung 8' tablet with BCN. This was close to what I had, so I ordered one.

Good points.
1.Uses a ram mount, with a nice quick release
2.Sd card slot
3.water proof
4.moderately easy to use, maps are fair.

Bad points
1.Not sure what generation the tablet is but it is very slow, have to upload your existing data to their web site then into your gps.
2.Couldn't use SD card to transfer data. In fact couldn't make an SD card work at all and NO response from their tech help (3 emails asking specs for SD card) The last message i sent was last December. It seems they have now made it so you can load data onto SD card. Last week I talked to a rep at the Pomona Off Road Show and he stated that they just found out about the issue and the largest card you can use is 32 meg. All of mine were larger.
3. The unit locks up after about 2 hours of use and reboots it self. The most this has happened was 2-3 times in a 10 hour period almost every day on a 7 day trip. My mount sits in front of the AC vent and in shadow so over heating is not an issue.
4. Screen size would be great if it didn't have huge borders around the map cutting off a good chunk.

Looking back I realized all the reviews i saw were by people who were given these to do a quick review on. I saw no bad reviews and no long term reviews.
My opinion is that the GPS is a beta unit. They put it out and asked the community to give them input on their web site, so they could fine tune it. What I saw was most people complained that their off-road GPS didn't have street nav with turn by turn directions. That was one of the first things they fixed.

I find it odd that a GPS company couldn't put together a good GPS based on their other units. Its not like they don't have good street units.
It is nice to know they finally made the sd card work for uploading (haven't tried it yet).
I used it for seven months and put it on a shelf. I have been using an apple tablet and really like that one best. I will give the Magellan another shot now that the SD card is suppose to work. If it keeps rebooting on me then back on the shelf it goes and im out a bunch of money.

I don't mean for this to be a review or a rant (I did edit my post down to the big things)

Scott
 

Magellan TRX

Magellan GPS Marketing
Hi Scott,

Re-booting in the field is usually caused by low amperage power adapter. Please make sure you're using the cigarette lighter adapter that came with the unit or similar with at least 2 amps output. If that's not the issue, we'll swap out the gps for you.

I took over 15 of the devices along on Ultimate Adventure this year where it was over 120 degrees some days and we didn't have any problems with overheating.

Your comment about uploading to our website doesn't make sense to me. Updates and synchronization to your profile occur over wifi and don't require logging into anything on your computer. The device runs Android 4.4, which is pretty old, but it's not slow. The use of this OS is to keep it simple and we want to handle updates with software so you don't have to worry about buying a device that goes obsolete right away.

GPX file in and out via SD card was added with the last software update late July. Prior to that GPX was imported to your profile on our map site www.TRXtrailhead.com which is still possible.

The reason is housing is so much larger than the screen is because it's rated to dropped onto the ground from 5'. The space is there to absorb energy.

We handle our own customer service just for this product. You can call 877-255-4161 or email trxsupport@magellangps.com

Or call me direct at 949-426-1453 (Steve) - I'm the guy your talked to at Pomona. Thanks for coming by the booth.
 

smritte

New member
HI Steve
It was a pleasure to speak with you even though it was brief.

I don't want to turn this into something past the OP's question, ill send you an e-mail to cover these things. As I posted, I just covered a few basics.

In answer to your rebooting due to a power supply issue, I unplugged it to see it there was a voltage spike caused by a connection issue and ran off battery. I concluded that the issue was most likely something internal. The issue has never occurred on the street.

I run the blue sea 4.8 amp usb port and its the only unit plugged in. It is so far the only thing that i have found that will not let any of my tablets go dead while i was using them for gps. I plug your cable into that and have not modified it.

Quoting
"Prior to that GPX was imported to your profile on our map site www.TRXtrailhead.com which is still possible"

The upload to you site comment was the fact you couldn't upload from home pc to GPS directly, you had to upload way-points/tracks to your web site then download through WiFi to the unit. Now you can load to SD then into GPS

As I had posted I didn't want this to turn into a rant but, just simply answer the OP's question about some one using the unit.
The unit was something that I had wanted, stand alone GPS that I didn't have to upload maps to every time I went somewhere new. There is nothing more frustrating then going somewhere remote and finding you didn't upload the corner of the area you are in or cant see an area you didn't think you were going to visit. That was the main reason for your unit.

I'll contact you directly

Scott
 

andrewh

/dev/4wd
I gave up on mine, i was an early adopter. Old android version and crippled play store means this is a one trick pony. You can try to get the .apks but most new apps wont work on it. A much better value would be a galaxy active or similar IPX rated table and putting the TRX application on there if you need it, its free. You apy almost 600 dollars for a crippled slow tablet, money spent somewhere else in my opinion.
 

salstoy

New member
I’m very interested in the Magellan TR5 or TR7. Both are reasonably priced. I have yet to read any reviews on the products so I’m being cautious. Has anyone used or has any experience with these?

I want the convenience of a GPS unit that has all the trail locations already at my fingertips. I also don’t want a bunch of fancy features like trail sharing. I just don’t want to get lost! I like the cost and screen size associated with tablets, but quite frankly all the map apps are way to complicated for me to use.

The TRX is nice but over priced. The TR7 at $300 is about my max. Now if Magellan sold the software on these units that I could put on a tablet then that would be cool.
 

Magellan TRX

Magellan GPS Marketing
I’m very interested in the Magellan TR5 or TR7. Both are reasonably priced. I have yet to read any reviews on the products so I’m being cautious. Has anyone used or has any experience with these?

I want the convenience of a GPS unit that has all the trail locations already at my fingertips. I also don’t want a bunch of fancy features like trail sharing. I just don’t want to get lost! I like the cost and screen size associated with tablets, but quite frankly all the map apps are way to complicated for me to use.

The TRX is nice but over priced. The TR7 at $300 is about my max. Now if Magellan sold the software on these units that I could put on a tablet then that would be cool.
Try the free Magellan TRX app, it does everything the gps does except navigation, 3D and satellite map views.
 

jhonmiller

New member
Megellan trx7 is a part of the hardware. And it is installed on a system or computer. You need to update the latest Android version. so, you need more information about the system then contact to the technical support and you may have also problem with the printer machine then you contact to the printer support which provides the best solution.
 

brokenhorn

Member
I had the same problems as smritte and put the GPS away for about 6-8 months. I recently blew off the dust and tried it again. Same problems.

One thing I did notice is that the trail I uploaded onto the GPS worked better in preview mode. Now if I can figure out how to expand preview mode to full screen then I may be able to use it fulltime.



Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
Not as easy as that. I have a nice tablet. Downloaded tons of maps from. Back country explorer and topo USA. The problem is you don’t know what detail you get until you out in the sticks and discover that all those hours you spent downloading those tiles is not there. Then there is crappy battery life Mounting issues. See the way it is there is a limit to the number of tiles ou load. Like on Gaia it’s 100,000 so if you want a large area you get less detail. Yeah that’s a problem
 

andrewh

/dev/4wd
Not as easy as that. I have a nice tablet. Downloaded tons of maps from. Back country explorer and topo USA. The problem is you don’t know what detail you get until you out in the sticks and discover that all those hours you spent downloading those tiles is not there. Then there is crappy battery life Mounting issues. See the way it is there is a limit to the number of tiles ou load. Like on Gaia it’s 100,000 so if you want a large area you get less detail. Yeah that’s a problem
Once you learn what you need its not hard to plan. I took a 4 week trip out west to the utah colorado, cali desert. You get used to downloading the areas you need. My backup is a fully downloaded surface pro 4 with maps pro. I used it a lot in the beginning, now i hardly use it im thinking about taking it out of the "must bring" list. There are tons of mount options and i hate to say this, but the only issues ive seen are from"universal" or cheapo mounting options. I spent a fair bit on the gamber johnson active 2 specific mount (integrated charger, lockable and usb hub), probably one of the better investments ive made

My opinion is, as with any tool, you need to use it often to be proficient with it, and preferable that all tools serve more than one purpose. Ive been thinking about trying out the hema app on ipad, i cant justify the entrance cost for one app though. The tablet controls all my gopros via wireless, is my music hub via bluetooth and is my mapping source, both offroad with gaia and onroad with waze. I did find a waze limitation of refusing to map if the dest is more than 1000 miles away. I use the laptop to plan, its a pain to plan on the 8 inch tablet. Having a constant hard wire power source is a requirement. Its water proof and ip rated and has a data only sim. Its also my movie entertainment as i download netflix and some plex movies for offline viewing.

Again, this is where my disappointment is with the TRX7, with a full app store, it would have been awesome. THere were other little things like gpx export and import that it didnt support, which they said they were working on. While they did add a streetmap function, its far behind waze/other apps.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
185,531
Messages
2,875,591
Members
224,922
Latest member
Randy Towles
Top