Magellan eXplorist 600XL/Quest/2610

[Roge]

Having been dithering between the 2610 and the Quest the Magellan eXplorist 600XL gets thrown in.
I am looking for a GPS which as well has having Street Level Mapping aroung town will also have the back tracks and work as a point you in the right direction GPS when the roads/tracks are not mapped in the bush here.
Any opinions on the above or experience of the 600XL would be much appreciated.
So far my thoughts and gleaned info are:

2610 - Big screen, expandable memory, audio cueing to autocom,good street level mapping, off piste don't know, pricey, no battery back up of the bike, physically big, can it deal with the ruff stuff?

Quest - Small, reasonable screen size, non expandble memory, cheapish, dodgey antenna, audio cueing to autocom,good street level mapping, off piste don't know, pricey, battery back up of the bike, can it deal with the ruff stuff? usable off the bike.

eXplorist 600XL - seems rugged, allegedly good off piste (4X4 people here seem to favour it), 12V power from bike in the cigerette lighter bit not nice, no audio to auto com? Independant compass and altimeter, usable off the bike, good street mapping?

I hate choices.

 

[BurnieM]

First some clarification;
There is the Magellan eXplorist 600 and there is the eXplorist XL

Currently there is a RAM mount for the 600 but not the XL.

Yes, the eXplorist XL has a large clear screen.

If you want 'turn by turn' auto-routing for Australia then Garmin is the only show in town.

Magellans DiscoverAus and DiscoverAus Topo mapping have more rural area detail than Garmins City Navigator Australia and MetroGuide Australia which are still reasonable.

If you want to use the GPS for off-road navigation then I would drop the SP2610 because it will not display UTM (eastings and northings) and will not perform trackback.

I would also add the Garmin GPSmap 276C to your list.

Audio out on the eXplorist is not an issue because they cannot output audio.

Note that the eXplorist power cables have a cigarette lighter plug which is required as it contains a transformer. There is not currently any bare wire power cable for the eXplorists.