The Miracle of Visual Navigation
Written: Dec 23 '05 (Updated May 14 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Very bright and amazingly deep, functional interface, excellent reliability and performance
Cons: street hunting interface can be clunky, streets sometimes missing or hard to select
The Bottom Line: An excellent unit which I now take for granted
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| c-post's Full Review: Magellan RoadMate 300 Car GPS Receiver |
Visual navigation systems are one of the modern miracles of the 21st century. I've seen and used some of them, such as Hertz Neverlost, and also my nephew's factory installed navigation unit in his Toyota Camry, and I think they're just astonishing.
My niece gave me a Magellan Roadmate 300 pre-emptively for Christmas because she knew I was taking a trip out of town. Since I had been wanting a visual GPS navigation system for some time, I was naturally delighted to receive this gift, and I wasn't disappointed.
Despite the fact that, as I understand it, this is one of the lower end units, I am pretty happy with it.
The Magellan is beautifully designed and the software in the unit is versatile and a joy to use. The display is bright and clear. The satellite pickup, once it locks on (sometimes takes 10 seconds to maybe a minute MAX), seems reliable and rock solid. As visual navigation systems were something I discovered in the past year, I can tell you I am totally addicted to them and do not wish to go anywhere without my Magellan 300. More on this later.
THE INSTALL CHALLENGE
You must register your product on the internet to get the entire support and interface process going. The main challenge of getting the Magellan Road Mate running was installing the software on my windows 98 Pentium machine.
The phone support people in New Delhi or whatever were very patient with me, but ultimately they were unable to solve the problem of software installation and I ended up solving the problem myself. They said the software would not work on Windows 98, but that's not true.
See, I don't know if anybody else's Windows 98 machine runs quite like mine, but the installation involved the use of two CDs supplied with the Roadmate. My PC confused the files on the first install disk with files on the second install disk.
My solution to the problem was to copy the entire contents of the second CD to a designated directory on my harddrive, and once the installation process was underway, I told the Magellan software installer to continue the installation from there.
Once I had solved this problem, the Magellan PC software did everything it was supposed to do and works as well as on Win 98 as it does on Windows XP.
HOW IT WORKS
The basic modus operandi of getting the Magellan Roadmate set up is you plug it into your computer's USB port and your computer recognizes the Magellan as an 80 meg harddrive, assigning it a drive letter when it is plugged in. The Magellan software contains the critical USB driver that helps this happen.
When you install the software to your PC, it gives you a choice of "typical" or "full" install, the difference being that a full install copies ALL the map data from your CD onto your computer"s harddrive. This makes compiling new territories in your Magellan's memory faster and easier.
The software interface is a little strange, not like a familiar Adobe or Corel interface, but it's not too hard to get used to. I'm a computer professional, so some non-tech types may be a bit challenged.
But once your Magellan is powered up and connected on the USB port, from the software on your PC you can set everything up. You have access to everything in the unit, from display preferences, an address book, language and guidance voice (male or female) and so on, which is extremely cool. From your computer or the internet you can find the addresses you want, then type them into the Magellan for easy recall once you are on the road. Incredible!
But again, if you're not a computer geek, you may have a little more difficulty than I had.
As I said, the Magellan itself when connected to PC acts basically like an 80 meg harddrive, but when you register online, Magellan will send you a preconfigured 256 meg card that holds detailed map and navigation data for whatever area of the United States you specify. You insert the card into the Roadmate 300, thus effectively quadrupling available memory. In my case, the 256 meg card will contain all the Western states, from Idaho and Colorado to California and Arizona. This leaves 80 megs of internal memory free and available so if I wanted to travel to Hawaii or New York and rent a car, I could load that data as well, then leave for Honolulu or Hempstead.
The Magellan already contains a rough map of the United States' major highways, but in the PC you will load in very detailed street by street information. In my case, 80 megs was sufficient to hold all of Southern California, the Southern tip of Nevada, and all of Arizona, but no more. On the screen you see a map of the US and you drag a rectangle over the area you would like to load in detail. Check to make sure that the area you have selected does not exceed the storage capacity of the available memory in the Magellan. Then you launch the compile process, which will likely take a few minutes. Just remember that if you want to navigate more than about a third of the United States, you will probably need to buy another 256 meg card, or stop at a connection point in your travels and load up more map data. It is possible to install a larger 500 meg or 1 gig card, but I have no experience with that just yet.
ON THE ROAD WITH THE ROADMATE
The Magellan roadmate attaches very firmly to your windshield with a clamping suction cup and a gooseneck with ball mount. A cable supplies power from your cigarette lighter plug or any 12 volt outlet in your vehicle. Some people are now buying cars with navigation systems built into the dashboard, but a suction cup gooseneck navigation system like the 300 is, in my opinion, far superior, because you can easily carry it from one vehicle to another with all your personal navigation data and preferences -- perfect for the rent-a-car man on the go. The Magellan must be mounted on the windshield so the antenna has an unobstructed view of the sky, where it makes contact with GPS satellites orbiting our planet.
The actual navigation interface of the unit is somewhat deep, and I still don't know every function (which is good), but basically you enter an address you would like to go to, or use the Magellan to search a nearby restaurant, hotel, rental car agency, or other business establishment, and then hit the button for the Magellan to calculate your route, which takes a few seconds.
Then, through a combination of a visual scrolling map with a highlighted path, onscreen instructions, and a calming, soothing voice prompter, the Magellan actively leads you to your destination. This is an amazing piece of technology.
On the left is a 3.5 inch color screen, and on the right you have illuminated buttons which take you to the various menu layers. Screen brightness and voice prompting volume levels are adjustable of course, and there are a surprising number of color display options. English is optional as other languages are available to install.
Visually, the Magellan is a very attractive instrument. The brightly illuminated color buttons, arranged in a circular layout, are simply beautiful to look at. The screen is touch sensitive, so each page in the menu layers brings a wide variety of touch screen buttons, the most useful of which allow you to enter the numbers and letters of street addresses.
Once you specify a destination, the Magellan stays assigned to go there until you tell it to cancel the route, or when you actually arrive. Even if you power down, the Magellan will prompt you to continue on your route when you turn it on again.
The most amazing and intuitive aspect of the 300 is it's scrolling map. As you are driving you can actually see the streets and highways as you pass through them. You can zoom the screen through a variety of depths, from close street level to a view of the entire US. At lower zoom levels, the Magellan will display symbols of various business establishments such a restaurants. You see a little fork and knife on the screen, touch it with your fingertip, and the name, address, and phone number of the culinary establishment is displayed. This is serious magic.
Display combinations are available, including full or split-screen text instructions, cheezy 3-D, and overhead map, which is my favorite. I don't need to have an MP3 player or picture viewer such as is available on the Roadmate 800.
Soon, I'm sure the software will offer (somebody probably already has this as a software plug in) restaurant reviews and ratings. (And how about gas station restroom cleanliness ratings? yikes!)
PROBLEMS AND COMPLAINTS
Alright, let's talk about some of the problems and complaints I might have about the unit. When I first compiled California and Arizona into the 80 megs internal memory in the unit, I gradually learned that there were some peculiar gaps in the database. Some streets that I keyed in to the search -- even major ones -- did not register at all in their respective cities. Yet they showed up on the map screen as I drove to the location.
A week after first using the unit, the 256 meg card from Magellan came in, I switched the database to the card, and all the missing or miscorrelated streets seem to have been fixed.
Still, the main drawback of this unit is the selection of streets. First, you choose your street name, then you choose the city in which the street is located. Ah, there's the rub. If you live in Los Angeles, which district is your street going to be in? Is it going to be Northridge or GRanada Hills or Pacoima? You have to know which city or district to select, and there can be curve balls in there. In choosing cities and the numbers they correspond to we have on occasion run into some frustrating problems. Once I chose the right district for the business establishment located on the correct street, but the address numbers were out of the desired range. It doesn't happen too often but when it does, it can be frustrating.
Another key issue is that very new streets and highways may not be in your map data. This may be an issue if you are going to a new housing tract or travelling to a rapidly developing area such as Phoenix.
Yet surprisingly, even if the global location you are at is not a legitimate address, the Magellan can at least memorize it if you want to come back to it. Wherever you are, simply hit locate and then save it to your address book with the name you specify. I was able to do this to memorize a house in a new housing tract that had no streets in the database. If you had buried treasure in the middle of the desert, you could definitely memorize it's exact location with the 300, and get back to recover it with your 4 wheel drive vehicle.
I'm sure higher end units would have a more elegant way of doing this, but for me the Magellan handles the basics just fine.
In my case the on ramp from highway 10 to highway 19 in Tucson had been modified in recent years, and the Magellan prompted me too late to get onto the proper freeway. If you accidentally take the wrong road however, the Magellan quickly adapts, automatically recalculating your route and issuing new directions in a matter of seconds.
On some rare occasions, the Magellan may try to take you to your destination on an indirect route, such as getting you onto a major highway when if you stayed on the street you were on, it would get you directly there. It's fairly rare, but it can happen.
The buttons on the unit are not as sensitive as they could be (in the trade they call it positive control). The navigational wheel in the middle has arrows on the diagonal that pretend a button response that isn't really there, a minor issue. Sometimes the touch screen buttons are too close together, but that is the tradeoff for having such an amazingly compact unit. If you have big, fat fingers, or long fingernails, it could be a problem. I have read other complaints in epinions about this and I don't believe it is a major issue. But you could say the same thing about any Blackberry or Gameboy. They have to pack a lot of tiny buttons onto these things. The 300 is less cramped button-wise than my cellphone.
Another complaint I read in another review is that the Magellan makes an annoying whining sound. For my unit, perhaps of later manufacture, this is not true. There may be an almost inaudible harddrive sounds as it searches for addresses, but the unit is otherwise silent, except for the voice prompt, which is of good audio quality, probably 8 bit.
Two things to watch out for. Be careful not to leave the Magellan on the windshield in the warm sun. Heat can be detrimental to any electronics, and the Magellan Roadmate 300 is likely no exception.
Also remember, as wonderful as the interface and capabilities of the unit are, there is a real danger that a driver would be sufficiently distracted that he could get into an accident. On the other hand, a visual navigation system could also prevent accidents because you can focus on the road instead of trying to make u-turns and looking at a paper map trying to find out where you are. Just don't get too distracted by the beautiful graphics and menu choices. Pull over by the side of the road if you have to, or have a passenger assist you.
IN SUMMARY
I can't go into further detail about the Magellan's wonderful capabilities and functionality in the limited space I have here. But I love this unit, it's the most wonderful adult toy I've had to play with in many years, but that doesn't mean everyone is going to love it. My wife just tried to use it to take a trip here in town, I even punched in the address for her, and she didn't like it and was very frustrated. I don't understand this because when I was in the car with her with a Hertz Neverlost, she never lost her cool, perhaps because we were operating it together.
All I know is, the Magellan makes me want to travel. Wherever I go across the country or across the world, I'm now really looking forward to having the Magellan as my indispensable companion.
Travelling by car is now a whole new experience. You can focus on the sights and pleasures, the people, the environment much more, and worry much less about how you are going to get there or where you are going to turn. The Magellan is like a persistent and very intelligent hounddog companion, never letting up on the scent of your destination. It's a whole new way to travel.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
c-post
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Location: Los Angeles, California
Reviews written: 26
Trusted by: 2 members
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