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Magellan eXplorist GC drains battery?


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I have a Magellan eXplorist GC and it is supposed to have 18 hours of battery life, but I usually end up only getting about 1 and a half hours. I use Duracell alkalines ( I would use rechargables but we haven't gotten around to buying some yet). I think the problem may be that I had it set to the lithium setting instead of the alkaline, but I just change that and Im not sure if that would fix it. Also, can I plug the gps in to charge it? When I plug it into the computer, it gives me an option to power only or connect to pc. Can I charge it by choosing the power only an leave it plugged in? If not, what is that feature for? Sorry for all the questions in one topic. Here are the questions again: Why does my Magellan eXplosrist GC drain my battery? How do I fix it? Can I charge my gps by choosing the "power only" feature? If not, what is that feature used for? Thanks guys!

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I am not sure I ever got 18 hours out of my battery maybe 10-12. You have so many factors to examine. It could be your brightness of screen, it could be other settings.

 

My suspicion is that your batteries were not that good to begin with. You should get some decent batteries, two sets would do. Always have an extra set with you.

 

AA 2500-2300 mAh NiMH batteries are sufficent IMO. I managed to find a set of 1400 mAh AA. They SUCK! Don't get them!

 

Lastly, the GC will not charge batteries period.

 

I was able to get full days of caching out of a set of Energizer rechargeables on the GC.

 

For whatever reason the GC hardly ever read the batteries as "full", but they didn't drop to drained, either.

 

Shaun

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I do have my brightness up pretty high, but if the power only feature is not for charging, than what is it for?

Many times people link GPSrs to other devices that require input data. They often have USB ports for that and this allows the device to power the GPS it is using without killing the batteries... might be your laptop or a marine device of some sort.

 

There are also devices that simply provide USB like power but do nothing else, except maybe plug into a car cigarette lighter socket.

Lots of reasons. When Serial connections were in use, you could usually find a cable with the DC power option as well.

 

I use my USB cable for power when it is linked to the home computer while loading caches etc. Saves having to recharge the batteries.

 

As for killing of batteries... The settings for battery type serve mostly to calibrate the indicator for your use.

Most primary batteries such as alkalines are 1.5 volts each, and rechargeables such as NiMh or NiCd tend to be 1.2 volts.

Set to the regular setting, the GPS will never stay on as long since it reads the low voltage provided by rechargeables as almost depleted. At a certain point it simply shuts itself off. Setting type is important. When set to NiMh etc. it reads the charge correctly and is set to a different low point (or should be). The shut off stays the same, but is slower to work.

Recharge types should never be discharged below 1 volt or they can have problems.

 

The more features you use the more power you drain as noted. However a subtle point is that many people don't 'initialize' rechargeable batteries optimumly... Hard to explain, but I get lots of 'failed' NiMh given to me that go on to long productive lives once charged well. Same for NiCd. Like to keep them out of landfills for sure. Having a good charger/conditioner is the key, or at least the knowledge to mimic one by hand. Sometimes the latter is required to salvage a 'dead' cell regardless. Hard to explain that part quickly.

I've had lots of 'dud' alkaline cells that were sold as new. Check the mfg date. Also when testing batteries don't just use a voltmeter, you need to test under load, that is why battery testers are best. Amen to having spares.

 

Good luck

Doug 7rxc

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I have to agree, battery life is not as long as Magellan says.. Even using the 'Lithium' alkalines.. (which, pardon my chuckling, aren't even close. I thought Lithium batteries had 2x the power, not 2x the life? a single lithium cell should be 3.0V, not 1.5)

 

I've had to add a multi-pack of AA's to my carry pack.. Yes, the back-light is draining, but you also need that backlight to be able to read the GPS screen. (which has always been a gripe of mine between Magellans & Garmins.) At least the ancient Magellan Map 410 has a readable screen without needing to constantly turn on the backlight..

 

It's how the LCD is made, and unfortunately, the real drain of the battery life..

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i have the same unit...and I get easily 15-20 hours of life.

 

Lol, you cant use alkaline and expect much though.

 

Use energizer ULTIMATE lithium...the kind it came with. Theyre blue and silver

Not alkaline, or even the advanced lithium. You'll pay more for the batteries, but in the long run its way cheaper to use to really good ones

 

Alkalines last about 3 for me, advanced litium lasts about 10 max and the ultimate lithium lasts forever.

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The only issue I have is that it stays on full battery life for days and then itll drop to 3/4..1/2 and 1/4 really fast.

So the battery gauge is misleading.

I buy 4 packs of energizer ultimate lithium, put 2 in and wrap the other two in tape and put em in my swag bag.

I pay $10-12 for the 4 pack...as opposed to $8 for the advanced...and they last twice as long.

 

So even though youre spending more off the bat, youll save money as soon its time to buy a new pack

 

So, to sum it up, do not use alkaline batteries, do not skimp on the lesser lithiums, buy the best lithium batteries and itll last longer and save you money in the long run.

 

Ultimate lithiums are blue and silver and theyre great

Advanced lithiums are green and silver and are so-so

Alkalines are no good for these units...period..and youre just wasting time, stress, and money

Edited by Mushroom420
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I have a Magellan eXplorist GC and it is supposed to have 18 hours of battery life, but I usually end up only getting about 1 and a half hours. I use Duracell alkalines ( I would use rechargables but we haven't gotten around to buying some yet). I think the problem may be that I had it set to the lithium setting instead of the alkaline, but I just change that and Im not sure if that would fix it. Also, can I plug the gps in to charge it? When I plug it into the computer, it gives me an option to power only or connect to pc. Can I charge it by choosing the power only an leave it plugged in? If not, what is that feature for? Sorry for all the questions in one topic. Here are the questions again: Why does my Magellan eXplosrist GC drain my battery? How do I fix it? Can I charge my gps by choosing the "power only" feature? If not, what is that feature used for? Thanks guys!

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I am now using energized rechargables and the problem is resolved.

Glad to hear that it wasn't an issue with the eXplorist GC. When you are in the market for batteries again pay attention to the mAh rating. The higher the rating the longer they will last.

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Set the brightness to minimum. The higher the batteries mA rating, the better it is. Sometimes, if you plug in a phone, set it correctly, and take out the batteries (with it still plugged in) it should stay on. Power Only is probably "charge, no sync" sometimes, you turn off the charging if you want to SYNC it with a laptop, as you if you charge it it DIScharges the computer's battery. It could do that, too. Try a Lithium-Ion battery. They may be pricy, but they pack a lot og power. Also, GPS recievers tend to munch on batteries and devour them. So if you can, turn off GPS when not using it. :)

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i have the same unit...and I get easily 15-20 hours of life.

 

Lol, you cant use alkaline and expect much though.

 

Use energizer ULTIMATE lithium...the kind it came with. Theyre blue and silver

Not alkaline, or even the advanced lithium. You'll pay more for the batteries, but in the long run its way cheaper to use to really good ones

 

Alkalines last about 3 for me, advanced litium lasts about 10 max and the ultimate lithium lasts forever.

I wonder what the batteries (non rechargables) BEFORE alkaline would last. 3 Seconds? Also, batteries don't last forever. Period.

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i have the same unit...and I get easily 15-20 hours of life.

 

Lol, you cant use alkaline and expect much though.

 

Use energizer ULTIMATE lithium...the kind it came with. Theyre blue and silver

Not alkaline, or even the advanced lithium. You'll pay more for the batteries, but in the long run its way cheaper to use to really good ones

 

Alkalines last about 3 for me, advanced litium lasts about 10 max and the ultimate lithium lasts forever.

I wonder what the batteries (non rechargables) BEFORE alkaline would last. 3 Seconds? Also, batteries don't last forever. Period.

 

I used to get hours of battery time on my Explorist; then I did a service update and all of a sudden, I'm not getting even an hours use of of my batteries (not rechargables)

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i have the same unit...and I get easily 15-20 hours of life.

 

Lol, you cant use alkaline and expect much though.

 

Use energizer ULTIMATE lithium...the kind it came with. Theyre blue and silver

Not alkaline, or even the advanced lithium. You'll pay more for the batteries, but in the long run its way cheaper to use to really good ones

 

Alkalines last about 3 for me, advanced litium lasts about 10 max and the ultimate lithium lasts forever.

I wonder what the batteries (non rechargables) BEFORE alkaline would last. 3 Seconds? Also, batteries don't last forever. Period.

 

I used to get hours of battery time on my Explorist; then I did a service update and all of a sudden, I'm not getting even an hours use of of my batteries (not rechargables)

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having owned many GPS units, the Magellan GC does not get anywhere near the battery life of any of my Garmin units. I would say the Venture HC and Dakota get twice the battery life of the GC and the Etrex 10 3 times as much. When Magellan switched over to a Windows OS, it shot battery life to pieces.

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I have been using Alkalines instead of the 8X Lithiums since I upgradeed the firmware to 2.15. There have been many times when my GC has gone into the suspend mode when I thought it was powered off. That really drains the batteries. Once I get the new power settings figured out, I'll probably switch back.

 

To extend battery life, I use a 12V USB lighter plug and cable in the car when I'm driving between caches. The only drawback to that setup is that the USB cover at the bottom of the unit broke off a while ago and is long gone. On the trail, I extend the battery life by turning off the GC and using my Triton (and I'm actually able to navigate to the cache).

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Well, I will say the new firmware (2.15) DOES give you some warning, but not as good as expected.. I was on a small jaunt, probably had 1/2 mark on the battery level meter.. Cache was a multi, 1-mile loop.. I managed to find the 1st stage in about 20 minutes.. Meter, still sitting at 1/2. Went after the final.. when I got to GZ, it was saying about 50 feet off the trail (expected, the description said as much.).. went in... looked, looked, roughly 15 minutes since I punched the waypoint in.. nothing.. began walking back out to the trail, preparing to mark it as a DNF, when I spotted the cache not mroe than 10-feet off the trailside.. Just as I knelt down to grab the cache from its hiding space, I hear *BEEP!*.. I looked at the display. "Please replace Batteries GPS will shut down in 15.. 14.. 13......"... last reading I was 35-feet off. I usually keep the brightness down to 25%.. But even that is hard to view. I usually end-up turning towards the sunlight to see the display.. (which, is pretty hard to read through all the field scratches..) So... before I could click on "Found it", I had to shut the unit down. At least I was able to manually mark the find this afternoon, almost a whole day after the actual find. But talk about finding a cache right at the point of death? :yikes: scrap another pair of Energizers! time to carry a big pack of spares with me!

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On Monday, I used Dollar Store alkalines in my Etrex 10, Dakota, Triton, and GC. During the 12 hours I was using the units.... Here's the results. Brightness set to max on all units and settings changed to aklaline.

 

Etrex 10 - the two batteries lasted the entire day (back light set to go off after 2 minutes)

Dakota 10 - batteries lasted about 10 hours (back light set to go off after 2 minutes)

Triton 500 - batteries lasted about 7 hours with back light on

GC 2.15 - dismal, 5 hours, went through two sets, and was on it's 3rd set of batteries. Screen backlight set to go off after 2 minutes. Units gives only seconds of a warning before shutting down.

 

At least with my units, the GC was by far the worst in eating alkaline batteries. The Etrex 10 as expected won this contest. Triton did better then expected considering I left the backlight on the entire time.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Start up times (averaged 3 times)

Magellan GC - 27 seconds

Etrex 10 - 9 seconds

Dakota 10 - 13 seconds

Triton 500 - 51 seconds

--------------------------------------------------------

 

I can't confirm but I think the GC did much better battery wise with the 1.7 firmware in the past.

Edited by gpsblake
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Thanks for this! I have been having the same issue this spring. I was wondering if it had to do with the update... and maybe that is part of the issue. But, I will try the lithium batteries and see if that helps. It's getting frustrating enough to make me think about a new GPSr, so hopefully the lithiums will do the trick.

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Thanks for this! I have been having the same issue this spring. I was wondering if it had to do with the update... and maybe that is part of the issue. But, I will try the lithium batteries and see if that helps. It's getting frustrating enough to make me think about a new GPSr, so hopefully the lithiums will do the trick.

 

I too have noticed severe battery depletion after the update. I really like the new software but I am only getting an hour or two of battery life. I just changed the battery setting to alkaline so I'll see if that helps.

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Hi, I am has also been looking for answers as well to this issue. I have has this unit since 2010 maybe longer. I went for about 4 years before updating the thing and had awesome battery life 18+ hours, no problems. I upgraded it for a trip to the UK and did not use it until I got there and wow the batteries were only lasting 20 mins! Yes you read that correctly, 20 mins!! So luckily we ended up taking a whole pack of batteries for other objects, but I was tossing them in the gps left and right. We ended up only being able to search for 4 caches since we ran out of batteries. I have been looking for answers and was hoping for another update, but there doesn't seem to be any from 2.15. in the meantime I have turned my screen brightness down, to try to help...and have only had this gps for backup. I now use the app on my phone and have a garmin. A complete waste of money for any new person buying this it seems. I at least had a few years out of it before the upgrades made it crap out.

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I've been using 2400mah Duracell NiMH batteries and have been averaging about three hours on a charge, which I think is unacceptable. After spending a lot of time researching batteries, I came to realize that the Explorist GC isn't draining the batteries quickly, it is REPORTING that they are drained quickly.

 

I have a 300ma charger, which should give the Duracells a full charge in about ten hours. However, I consistently recharged my 'dead' batteries in about three hours. This says to me that the batteries are only being discharged by about 1/3.

 

Though I'm using rechargeable batteries, I changed the GC's setting to 'Alkaline'. Using the Alkaline setting, I routinely get more than seven hours of battery life. Though that's nowhere near the advertised 18 hours, it means that I rarely change batteries while geocaching. Changing the GC's setting from rechargeable to alkaline was a night and day difference for me. I have to assume that there is a bug in 2.15 version firmware.

 

With regards to the NiMH cell voltage of 1.2, verses the alkaline cell voltage of 1.5, both types of cells are about fully discharged when the voltage drops to 1.0V. In years past, alkaline cells had more capacity than NiMH. Today, the best NiMH cells have more capacity than alkaline cells. Though the lithium type batteries might offer the longest run time, the 2400mah and 2500mah NiMH batteries that are available today can give us seven hours of run time at a very low cost. I've found that the NiMH batteries really are able to be recharged hundreds of times. The cost per charge is less than ten cents.

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