egale's Full Review: Magellan RoadMate 1470 Car GPS Receiver
This gps has a lot of things going for it. The screen is big, bright and easy to read. Routing is good too and on par with the Garmins and Tomtoms. Price was great too. The POI database is large, approx 6 million and well organized to boot. I found the touch screen to be quite adequate as well.
It is a no frills type of unit, no bluetooth, no voice control. Honestly, I have these features on other units and I never use it.
The gps has text to speech so it announces the upcoming road names. It does a pretty good job at pronouncing too. One thing it does at the point of the turn instead of say turn now on XXXXX street, it sounds ascending chimes for a right turn and descending chimes for a left turn. It's a gimmick for sure but I guess Magellan felt they had to do something different.
The gps is slow to boot up. The newer Garmins and Tomtoms are almost instant on and signal lock. This unit takes a minute or two. I had an older Garmin that could take many many minutes sometimes so this is really not too bad.
There is function to save current location. On all other gpss I have used, when you do this, the coordinates are saved and you just have to name the position. On this unit though, it shows you the coordinates but you have to enter the street address. If you are in a spot with no address or number unknown, this function is useless.
The gps also has a day and night screen and will automatically switch at its own predetermined time. Unfortunately, it doesn't dim the screen so you manually have to do that. I wind up setting it to not switch to night view as I find the day screen is easier to read and manually dim the screen. Not a major problem, just a minor bug.
Where this unit fails is in the way it stores city or town in its POI and favorites database. For whatever bizarre reason, in many cases, they decided to store township instead of city or town. Townships are political groups of smaller towns and cities. They are not postal addresses and unless you are very familiar with an area, you would not know the township.
For instance, I searched for a Home Depot in my area. The gps finds a bunch of them. There is a Home Depot in West Nyack, NY about 20 minutes from me. This gps lists it as town of Clarkston. I had no idea what the township was. The other Home Depots were saved the same way. I had no idea which was which.
It does the same when you save a favorite. You must type the city or town when searching for an address but when you save it, the city or town becomes township. Weird! When you tap My Location in case you need to know where you are in an emergency, the unit displays the coordinates and the township, not town! Nobody will ever be able to find you based on township. Again, why they use it is beyond me.
Another major problem with the unit is the optional traffic receiver. All it has done so far is stay in "Aquiring Signal" mode. My other gpss get a signal in my area so I know I am in a coverage zone. According to Magellan, the unit has to stay on for 12 hours in a set location for it to be able to pick up a signal. Thats not going to happen so the traffic receiver is totally useless.
Garmin and Tomtom has regular map updates. I am not so sure Magellan will do the same. Only time will tell.
Overall, if the township problem was not there and the traffic receiver worked a little better, I would be extremely happy with the 1470. Even if the traffic receiver never worked well and the township problem was fixed I would be happy. But, the township problem really ruins it for me.
Recently, Magellan released a new firmware, 2.05. This update addressed some of my main concerns.
1. The unit boots up considerably faster although not quite as fast as other brands.
2. The township problem is just about gone. Looking up POIs and adding favorites are no longer a problem. Addresses are saved with town or city name. Township names are still saved but are saved in paranthesis. Setting your "HOME" setting and also tapping on "WHERE AM I" still yields the township name. Why they fixed the problem in one place and not the other is beyond me but I am thankful for that.
What isn't fixed:
1. Screen still lags about 50 feet behind your actual location. It is something I can live with once I get used to it. If you know the screen is always 50 behind, it is easier to judge your actual location.
2. Traffic. With the old firmware, the traffic receiver almost never connected even when Tomtom and Garmin had a connection. This hasn't changed but .... The old way the screen always showed a green connection and tapping on that said "Aquiring Signal". Now, the screen still always shows a green connection icon but tapping on that now says "No traffic on route". Tapping one screen down you now see you don't have a connection at all. There may be traffic on route.
You work hard so don't you deserve to relax on your next road trip or cross-country family adventure? Let the Magellan RoadMate 1470 4.7ā€¯ Widescreen...More at HSN
Wide 4.7-inch color touchscreen and ultra-thin design for powerful navigation in a compact package Includes maps of United States, Canada, and Puerto ...More at Amazon
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.