Automotive GPS Systems

5 comments

1. 

   LiteJazz53 says:

   November 9, 2009 at 6:06 pm (UTC -6)

   I purchased a 760 series Magellan GPS, and made the terrible mistake of storing the unit in my bedroom drawer, as I subscribed to VZ Navigator on my cell phone. Well, when I changed cell companies, I decided to take the 760 back out of the drawer, plug it in and use it again, WRONG. I was not going to use anything, as it kept giving me an error message “too Cold” on a 65 degree day! Obviously I investigated this situation, called Magellan, and they offered a new unit at a, what they called, a discounted price, what a joke! The unit could be bought at Costco or Amazon for the same price, and at Costco, if it fails “they”, not Magellan, stand behind it. Unless Magellan is willing to tell Costco to take a flying leap, they are going to have to take their products back, BECAUSE COSTCO DOESN’T HAVE UNHAPPY CUSTOMERS. So, my suggestion on buying ANY Magellan product, buy it from Costco, as they have the clout to force Magellan to take back their faulty, failing products. All the reviews I have seen address the functionality of the Magellan 760 series product, and that’s fine. My review is what happens when it fails, and you have missed your warranty period, you are DEAD IN THE WATER! I sent three e-mails, called their customer service people and a supervisor, NO LUCK, they would replace the unit for what one could be bought on the street for, not any kind of consideration that I can see! You never really know how good a product or company is, until the product fails, then you learn the bitter truth! If you must buy a Megellan GPS, you darn well better buy it from Costco, in case it fails, as mine did, and I just lost several hundred dollars with NO help from Magellan. If you really want to be covered, I suggest your purchase a Garmin or TomTom from Costco, and forget Magellan completely!
   Rating: 1 / 5

2. 

   TBLong says:

   November 9, 2009 at 7:29 pm (UTC -6)

   The 1475T is marketed as a brand new device, but it’s really just a 1470. They bundle it with a car charger cable that has a little inline component (about 1.5″ x .5″) that acts as a receiver for traffic info. The GPS unit itself has a 1470 tag. So what happens is that you have to have the GPS plugged in at all times that you want the traffic to work. Note that it may be possible to purchase a 1470 and the “traffic charger” separately for a lower price than the 1475T box…you’d have the same thing at the end of the day.

   Other than that gripe, the user interface also leaves a bit to be desired for me coming from a TomTom. My TomTom shows eta, distance to destination, speed, current time and time to destination all on the same screen….on the 1470, you have to cycle through display modes to get it, which is one tap per piece of info. If you don’t care about all info at once, or don’t mind tapping the screen a lot, then that won’t be a big deal.

   The traffic link, once enabled seemed to take forever to acquire a signal, and even then did not report any traffic issues even though the road I was on had an accident in the clearing stages. So I’m not sure the traffic service is worth a flip. Of course, it could be that the traffic service portion of my unit is defective.

   I have to say that their quality control is quite poor. Right out of the box, mine powered on for 3 minutes and died (while plugged in). Then, even after charging all day long, it would not power back on until I had tried several times. Since then, I’ve found that it takes several attempts to get it to power on, and sometimes I can’t get it to come on at all. Support is going to replace it, but wow…what a horrible out-of-box experience and terrible welcome to Magellan.

   I’ve had this for 3 days now, and given the chance, I’d just return it, but it was purchased at an online retailer who charges a restock fee plus return shipping and I’m too cheap to “lose” my investment . Once I get my replacement unit, I may just ebay it.
   Rating: 2 / 5

3. 

   P. Taylor says:

   November 9, 2009 at 9:34 pm (UTC -6)

   Hi

   I’ve been using a Garmin StreetPilot 2720 for years and love it. Then I thought, free traffic and a battery would be nice so I ordered the Nuvi 755T. See my review there, but I was shocked at how bad the menus are on the Nuvi systems. So many button pushes it drove me crazy. It took 19 button pushes to do what I could do in 8 on the old StreetPilot. So I returned the Nuvi 755T and ordered the Magellan 1475T to see if it was any better.

   The 1475T is clunky. My first shock was that Magellan only have ABC keyboards! That’s incredible, do they not understand it’s 2009? It was very damaging of my opinion of Magellan to see this long gone way of thinking still hard coded in, no option to select ABC or QWERTY. Crazy!

   It’s slow to start compared to the Nuvi. It has an equally tiresome menu system that sees you pushing buttons like your playing a computer game. It also has many sub menus to try to make POI’s easier to find I guess, but you find yourself searching and searching the sub menus when it would be quicker to do a global search.

   Like the previous reviewer I found the Magellan had a few quirks. I set my home location while parked in front of my garage. When I returned home from one end of the street the Magellan told me my house was on the right, when it is, on the left. Coming from the other direction it said it was on the right and it was, someone moved it back!

   Testing the recalc function had some quirks also. I left my house and turned the wrong way out of my drive, it was two blocks before the reclac kicked in then it had me doing 3 rights and a left to get back on track, not a simple left at the end of my street! Odd. Other recals have been better but I lost some confidence in it. (Garmin has some quirks also but I’ve learned to watch for them and can correct accordingly, basically never trust a GPS totally to find the best route, local knowledge is often better. Watch for GPS units running you parallel to freeways thinking the shorted route through a minor road is quicker. GPS don’t understand about traffic lights and stop signs!)

   The Magellan screen display is only ok. The lane assist is not really that good, it shows a mock image of the highway signs. Garmin lane assist is slicker and more informative. The Magellan display has some lag, it’s not smooth and could be refined a lot. In fact the display lags the actual location of the vehicle so you pass a point a moments before it shows you arriving at a point.

   Now the big issue that had me returning the unit, the sound, my god it’s shocking. The text to speak is not good at all. There seems to be two systems operating in the Magellan. One is the standard repeated commands like “turn left on…”. The “turn left on”, comes out well, but the next part “…Chicago Ave” sounds like a person trying to speak out the sides of closed lips! Imagine someone trying to talk with their lips almost closed and not moving them, then add in some speaker distortion! That’s the exact sound quality of the street name announcements. It made it very hard to understand what the street names are that are actually being spoken, I had to keep looking at the unit and read the street names to check I heard right. Any noise in the car and it was impossible to understand at all.

   The “turn left on..” was clear, “street name.” was absolutely fuzzy. I think Magellan use prerecorded language for the common instructions and a voice emulator that simply is not up to the job for the street names. It was a deal breaker for me, what’s the point of text to speech if the speech is just a mumbled sound?

   I now have returned to Garmin and have the Nuvi 765T. The speech emulator is wonderful, clear and load. I actually think Garmin have done a wonderful job of this aspect in their systems, it’s close to natural speech. Their displays are also a cut about Magellan. Garmin provides great info in a logical way on the map screen. Both have cumbersome menu systems with excessive button pushing and these could easily be much improved, but I’ve worked out some of the shortcuts and I’m feeling happy enough.

   Here’s the bottom line… I would recommend a Garmin over a Magellan and be confident in my recommendation. There is nothing in the Magellan system that would make me say it was a better deal than a Garmin, even though Garmin models are a few $$ more than Magellan, I think you “get what you pay for!”

   Rating: 2 / 5

4. 

   Beechwood Knoll says:

   November 9, 2009 at 9:51 pm (UTC -6)

   Purchased the 1475T – enjoyed some of the nice features, good menu, crystal clear display, AAA information, auto zoom in/out feature… BUT it has MAJOR flaws.
   
   The “voice” that announces the street name is unintelligible – it is like that TV ad where you had a Tibetan goat herder in the car giving you directions. The speaker sounds like it cost about 10 cents to manufacture – if you hold the unit in your hand the audio are somewhat clearer – the plastic housing on the unit may be part of the problem – but I need my two hands on the wheel. As with another reviewer – my house appears to move location. Sometimes is 50 yards down the street, but EVERY time – no matter if what direction I approach the house – it announces that my home is on the other side of the street that it is actually on. Bad Mapping – next to my place of work it has street names transposed – then when I drove to pick up my son at school – the streets on the left hand side were actually the streets on the right hand side and the streets on the right should have been on the left! So clearly if I were driving to somewhere I didn’t know I could not trust the unit to get me there. I naturally returned it ASAP! So my advice, steer clear of this puppy… Magellan RoadMate 1475T 4.7-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic Receiver
   Rating: 1 / 5

5. 

   Recorder says:

   November 10, 2009 at 12:30 am (UTC -6)

   I previously owned a Magellan Maestro 4250 and was pretty happy with it except that it was a little slow to acquire satellites and re-route. When it broke, I researched and decided to buy a Garmin Nuvi 765. It had all the bells and whistles of my old unit and more. While it did a good job of getting me to my destinations, I found the interface to be quite clumsy. Often, you got into a few pages of menus and the only way to get back to the map or routing screen was to hit back-back-back-back until you finally got there rather than having a menu tab to hit. Entering an address is odd too. You first pick a state, but if you forget to change from the last state you used it keeps it and you go on entering street and number and it can’t find the address. Then it hits you that you did not pick the right state. You can enter a zip code, but it does not confirm the state until you are completely done entering the address. The Magellan lets you either enter a city name or zip code first and it displays the matches for you to chose from. You then just type in the street name and number. It uses a typing aid that blocks out letters and numbers that can not be part of your address. For entering destinations, the Magellan wins hands down.

   A feature I liked was the lane assist on the Garmin. Problem is that the nice photo like image that they promote seldom appears. When it does appear, you must catch it right when the exchange is announced because it goes away very quickly. Nice feature but poorly implemented. At other times, lane arrows appear with the proper lane highlighted. This is nice and seems to work well. The Magellan seems to use the lane arrow system, but I have not used it enough yet to make a valid comparison.

   Turn buy turn. The Magellan dings a bell as you reach the turn and the Garmin announces the street again. Personal preference, but I like the bell. The Garmin changes from miles to feet as you approach a turn-nice. The announcements on the Garmin usually come a tenth or two of a mile late. It will say to turn in one mile and the display will have 0.8 miles as the turn-irritating.

   Map look. I prefer the Magellan maps. The Garmin pretty much displays a wide line that you are driving on with little detail around it even in the most detailed mode. It is a very bland looking map with little color and contrast. My old unit displayed the next turn at the top and the street you were on at the bottom. Both new models omit the current street at the bottom. The name of the current street scrolls down by the road on the Magellan, but you have no indication where you are on the Garmin.

   Traffic alerts. Both have it as an included lifetime service. You get little ads that do not interfere with the map and they go way after a time. Whether they work depends on the traffic reporting. At times the Gaming re-routed me, but it stuck me in a 2 hour traffic jam by Arrowhead stadium and the green traffic indicator was on all the way indicating clear sailing. My old unit had it and seemed to work about the same way. It is no guarantee and only works in and near cities that broadcast the info. It is useless out on the freeways.

   Bells and whistles. The Garmin has more features but at a higher price. I had bluetooth on my old unit and did not like it. Did not use it on the Garmin. Don’t have it on the Magellan. If you do not need an MP3 player(that only plays MP3 format) or a picture viewer, the Magellan has all the other features for about $100 less.

   The Magellan has a slightly bigger screen and is thinner. The Garmin has a little better mount. The Magellan seems to have more settings you can tweak to your tastes. Both units are smoother and quicker than my old unit. Both will get you there, the Magellan just seems to make it easier and slicker.

   I hit the wrong button. I really rate this unit at about 4 1/2 stars.

   Update.

   After more time with the unit, I like it even better. The lane assist, while not as visually appealing as the Garmin, is a lot more useful as it stays on until it is time to make the turn unlike the Garmin that just stays on for a short amount of time. Turn assistance is also better on the Garmin. On a turn that comes up soon after your next turn, it will announce “Right turn at 1st street followed by a left turn”. This allows you to get in the proper lane. The Garmin merely announces “Right turn at 1st st.” The AAA info gives you much more info than just POIs. You also get ratings, descriptions and prices. Nice.
   Rating: 3 / 5