This 4700 is my 4th Magellan. The first was a 750 which was the same as the Hertz 'Never Lost'. Worked great but when the 860T hit the market I had to have it. One year ago I bought a 3250 for another car, a little "funky" but it gets me where I need to go.
Last week my old reliable 860 was unfortunately stolen from my car. So since I have had good luck with Magellan I started to look for a new GPS. First I purchased a RoadMate 1340 which looked good in the box but had a display that was unreadable in daylight; any daylight. Returned the 1340 and then purchased a Maestro 4700... then the fun began.
Positives: Nice display... AAA Tour Book... Clear and loud voice... mostly (not always accurate)... Ability to do multi-location routing... Basic voice commands... Bluetooth & Traffic neither of which I have used.
NEGATIVES: Constant RESTARTS: When certain locations are requested. The display reads "YOUR DEVICE NEEDS TO BE RESTARTED TO INCREASE PERFORMANCE, PLEASE WAIT WHILE YOUR DATA IS SAVED. And then the unit turns off and restarts. I have spoken with Magellan support several times in the past week and, at first, they claimed that they have had no problems before. Today they said that I should return the unit for repair. For example: I live in Connecticut and often drive to Florida, when I put in ANY address in Florida the unit restarts. This is also true for many cities in Georgia and South Carolina. If you need to go to Mobile, Alabama however no problem.
The in-putting of locations is done by Town or City not by State; so if you want to go to San Francisco and type that in you get to choose from every town in Mexico that has San Francisco in the name.
For the most part it works locally BUT, from Connecticut, you CAN NOT go to ANY city or town in Florida, as well as many cities in Georgia and South Carolina. The same error message: YOUR DEVICE NEEDS etc. appears and you can't navigate to your destination! Therefore this GPS is useless for me the way it works today.
In time I believe that Magellan will get the 4700 'right', at least I hope so. When and if Magellan fixes this fatal problem I will change my rating to 5 stars, until then I will not go South of the Mason Dixon Line.
Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS NavigatorHOPEFULLY THINGS WILL GET BETTER Added August 16, 2009
And now for some history:
The checkered history of the Magellan corporation, as we know it today, may have contributed to some of the issues that have been illuminated in this and other forums. Since my first experience with Magellan labeled products was positive, I tried to stay with a known entity. In the early 1980's I bought a Magellan Loran C for marine use. It ALWAYS worked providing me with accurate TD's and, with the Loran C overprinted charts got me to my waypoints and destinations. BTW Loran was developed by the Military as Loran A during WW II.
While GPS was not developed until the late 1970's and early 1980's it was not available for commercial use until the mid 1980's. All through this period Magellan, or as it was previously known as Navistar, was in the forefront of navigation product development. Later, a number of Silicon Valley companies were involved with or owned Magellan. In 2001 Thales, a French based Fortune 500 communications and defense company acquired Magellan and tried/did change Magellan's name to Thales Navigation; not a household name.
Five years later, in 2006, Thales sold Thales Navigation to an Investment group named Shah Capital Partners which changed the name back to Magellan. Recently, in January of this year, Magellan was acquired by MiTAC, a Taiwan based company that is, along with other products, in the GPS business. MiTAC owns Mio and NAVMAN and now Magellan. To me, it looks like MiTAC is committed to the GPS marketplace.
From the foregoing, one might see that while Magellan had some less than satisfying marriages in recent times, its beginnings were superb.
Now we have an industry (popular priced GPS devices) that brings out new products every few months just to keep up with the competition. Often these products are released; "not ready for prime time". Virtually all of the companies in this arena (Magellan included), have to recall or upgrade or `ship' updated firmware or hardware. Even the industry leader (by units shipped) Garmin/Nuvi have had their share of problems. What is critical to the success of these companies, in my opinion, is the manner in which Customer Service is addressed. Starting with the contracted, offshore-based telephone and e-mail support, without an escalation plan to the refusal to acknowledge that a problem is not a one off.
I, for one, am encouraged that Magellan is now owned by MiTAC. I like my new Maestro 4700, warts and all, and in time hope to love it when it works as well as my stolen 860t did. For now I will do `workarounds'.
That's my opinion, I could be wrong.
UPDATE: 4/29/10 Finally, after 2 updates from Magellan, everything works as it should! There are no problems, all locations can be entered and no error messages or restarts appear.
I can now say works like a Swiss watch and, in my opinion, the Magellan Maestro 7400 is the best implementation of a GPS for the price. Five stars!