Run -- don't walk -- away from this unit
Written: Jun 29 '05 (Updated Jul 03 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: None that can't be had in any number of better GPS's. Has no distinguishing benefits.
Cons: Too many to list here -- read the full review.
The Bottom Line: Depending on your needs, consider Garmin 2610 (with or without memory upgrade), Garmin Quest (my personal favorite), or Garmin c320/c330 instead.
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| cpurick's Full Review: Magellan RoadMate 300 Car GPS Receiver |
I was very disappointed with this product, and returned it promptly. In my opinion, it lags at least two years behind the Garmin StreetPilot c320 and my personal favorite, the Garmin Quest. Shoppers are strongly encouraged to consider those products instead.
The Roadmate 300 trails the competition in areas of physical packaging, user interface, memory management, display control, upgrade complexity, and PC software utility. If you're spending more than $200 for a GPS receiver, there's probably a better alternative at every price point.
To save time, I'm just going to list the "cons" of this unit. I owned it for a day, and took it back. (It was NOT my first GPS purchase.)
The RM300 is medium-sized unit, and mounts on a semi-rigid cable (sort of like 3/8" plumber's snake) that attaches to the windshield with a suction cup. The length and flexibility of the cable, combined with the weight of the unit, result in a mount that moves around quite a bit as you maneuver your vehicle.
The power cord is not integrated into the mount. It must be attached separately each time you mount the RM300.
My RM300 had an annoying electronic "whine."
The buttons are flimsy, and do not register keypresses accurately.
The touchscreen is recessed into the unit by a quarter of an inch. It's very difficult to "touch" the area along the bottom edge of the display.
You have to manually manage display brightness between day and night.
While the automatic display management kept the unit zoomed pretty well, details like street names are not displayed unless you zoom in further. Traveling down a collector road, the intersections are displayed, but the names of the cross streets are not. The screen was nowhere near being "cluttered," and could have really used more detail. But there is no control for this, except to zoom in further manually each time.
The SD memory security system requires individual cards to be registered with Magellan (can be done on-line). Though larger cards are available, Magellan will only register up to 1GB cards -- not enough to hold the entire USA.
In addition to the basemap, the RM300 can only have one active "map" in its working memory at one time. The map is built of a max of 3 "regions" (select by dragging a rectangle over a picture of the US). Each region is limited to 80MB, for a total of 240MB. (Florida, for example, takes just about an entire 80MB region.) If you want to cover more geography than that, you have to build separate routes on different maps, and then change maps (requires a reboot) as your trip progresses from leg to leg. Also, regions on the same map cannot overlap, yet it's very difficult to align adjacent regions without gaps. When I complained, Magellan offered to sell me memory with preloaded maps...
You have to remove the SD card to program trips.
The RM300 does not support "via points." Routing is automatic; except for telling it to avoid things like toll roads, or telling it whether to use shortest distance vs fastest time, you have no other control over route selection. You can construct "trips" comprised of multiple destinations to "force" a certain route, but the RM300 will not automatically navigate the whole trip -- it needs to be told to resume navigation as each destination is reached. That's "poor man's routing..."
My RM300 locked up on me once in only a few hours of use.
No printed manual was provided. There's a CD with a 6MB PDF file. Curiously, the PDF manual is not available for download on Magellan's site.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
cpurick
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Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 0 members
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