Customer Reviews

Magellan RoadMate 360 2.9-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(42)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

My husband bought me this wonderful unit for Christmas and I love it! Since it has all the maps pre-loaded we just plugged it in (with the included cigarette light adaptor), installed it (with the included windshield mount) and in a few mintues we were ready to go. It finds itself in about a minute in heavy tree cover, and in just seconds in open areas. It seems possible that the person who wrote a previous review that his unit regularly took 20 minutes for location could have forgotten to extend the antenna or his unit was defective. Also, the 360 is not meant for handheld operation (hence the name RoadMate) so it needs no internal batteries. After a quick look at the owner's manual, the Magellan is easy to use. The address autofill function is wonderful - I preloaded my personal addresses at home (with the provided AC adaptor) with ease. The voice directions are clear, the screen bright and large, the maps easy to see. It reminds me of the functional design and usability of the Mactinosh computers. I can't recommend the 360 more highly.

I owned RoadMate 360 for over a month now, and I am very pleased with what it has provided so far ! If you focus on the short side of the POI database and address lookup then returned it back, you will miss alot ! I am not sure if other brand will do any better based the reviewed I have read !!
I want to comment on two thing about this unit which I like most compared with reviews from others GPS product !
1) strong recalcute route function - I personally tested it on my way home from work and missed route on purpose for three times, everytimes it came up new route exact what I am thinking in my mind ! That's why I know I can trust it if I am out of town, isn't it ! I live in suburban area of Boston !
2) reminder to turn in advance (0.5 mile) and alert you when you are approaching it with great accuracy ! No need to look at the screen when I am approaching next turn, I can totally rely on the voice instruction and never miss a turn, this is how confident I can trust it ! Thanks !

I felt like I had to write a review, since a couple of previous reviews did not match my experiences. I got mine as a wonderful XMas present in 2005. I used it to drive from Houston, TX to Seattle, WA (by way of Vegas), as well as traveling around TX & Louisiana.

First off, the windshield mount DOES bend. It's adjustable, strong suction, and a ball joint on the end for turning the GPS. Second, you CAN change the brightness. It's under Options -> Configuration -> Brightness. Right around where the volume control is. Mine also came with a paper manual (not like I really read them anyway). I never had any problems with it zooming on its own or taking a long time to recalculate a route. Usually recalculating a route after a wrong turn takes 20 seconds at the most. You CAN choose just a city without an address, you have to choose POI (point of interest) -> City Center -> type in city name. I never had any issues with poor antenna reception due to an overcast sky, and I was in Seattle for a week.

I have had issues on locating itself on startup, especially if you drove with it off for a while. Sometimes it takes up to 5 minutes to find the right location, but usually around 2-3 minutes. Numbered streets are also a bit of an issue. Most numbered streets can be typed in, however a few it will not recognize or allow you to finish typing. Not a problem in Houston, but a pain in Seattle (all the friggin' streets are numbers). It's weird since it will show the street names on the map, but still not make them available for type in.

Overall I'd say it's a winner, especially at its current price. It's worth its weight in gold on a road trip or driving in a strange town.

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EDIT: Jan 2010
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I noticed people are still reviewing this GPS. It was a good model... in 2006. Do not buy this anymore. It is very outdated when compared to the newer models. I currently have a Garmin Nuvi 350 which runs rings around this. A new GPS receiver was developed in 2007/2008 and all GPS moved to it. It's faster and more accurate.

I bought the Magellan RM 500 long time ago for my wife. Since we both are so familiar with the Magellan interface, I bought the RM 360 for our second car.

What I like this device:
1) Price was good(before Garmin dropped the price for the c330 model)
2) Preloaded entire USA and CA maps.
3) Simple user interface.
4) Using very generic mounting. Lots of after-market mounts are available.
5) Sound is loud and clear.
6) Bright screen.

What I don't like this device:
1) The routing calculation is fast, but the satellite detection is slow. The unit will be in useless state while it is searching the satellite signal. It is very annoying while you're in a hurry.
2) Sometimes, it asks you to make unnecessary U turns.
3) The map is not as detail as the RM 500 and above (of course, it is so much cheaper)
4) It routed me wrong one time on the Highway 1. I would not be able to go back to the hotel before sunset if I followed the GPS. This could upset lots of customers.

For the quality, I doubt Magellan put very good QC to the 300/360 series. Don't you notice there are many of these refurbished units in the market? Also, people were complaining the device was broken in the new box. Something you may consider when you purchase it. To me, I have had pretty good luck with Magellan so far.

Last but not least, I've seen many customer reviews complained about the device could not find the streets that have existed long time. I felt the same way when I first just got it. After awhile, I notice the RM 360's searching intelligent was different. Don't ever try to type the whole street name to search. Let's say you're looking for Market Street. You should just just type Market and press OK. The next screen, then, will ask you the city name (you must see this screen to get the right routing.) After you enter the city, it will list all the streets that start with Market in that city. You may get the choices like Market Ave, Market Rd, or Market Street. I've found 99% of the streets so far. The last 1% is I was having problems to search one street that starts with numbers. I found a way to go around it, but I forgot how to do it again.

Hope this help!

This is a fairly advanced unit for the price, for example, compared to the comparably-priced Garmin series. It can now he had for less then $299. PROS: the touch screen interface, all of US maps preloaded, and generally good directions, user interface and options. I particularly like the GPS diagnostics screen where you can see which satellites are being tracked (I am a GPS geek). CONS are: no battery operation possible (Garmin has that), and no ability to load other areas than the US. The BIG problem is navigating to street intersections. This works poorly. Try navigating, as we did recently, to the intersection of 5th Street and Mission in San Francisco. We could not get the unit to find that intersection. It's a very idiotic interface making you type in the street names first, before the city name. There are often many variations of a street name (5th street, Fifth street, 5th avenue, Fifth avenue, Fifth Boulevard, etc., etc.). After typing "Fifth" for the street name, very many such choices show up because they are from the entire multi-state region. If I could have selected the city name first, the list of streets presented for "Fifth" would have been more limited. The really bad part is that the unit would not find a "Fifth Street" in San Francisco. We tried other variants (5th street, etc.) but none showed up in San Francisco. The irony is that as we drove in, the unit showed our location as "Fifth Street". But that would not show up in San Francisco when looking for the intersection of Fifth and Mission. We had similar lack of success trying "Mission" (St, Blvd, Pl, or whatever it is). Whoever designed and tested that feature blew it. Otherwise, a very useful unit. It does addresses much better than intersections.

Overall, I think this was an excellent product for the price. There are a few quirks. (1)The windshield adapter broke after only two weeks of use. I am unsure how to replace it. (2) The device sometimes fails to give local street names for routes. It took me a while to figure out how to type in the route number so it could find it (type in "RT 2" and not "ROUTE 2").
Overall - this product is great...for the price. (Hey...it's cheaper now then when I bought it!!!)

IMHO, GPS is the best technological innovation since the wheel. But the Magellan 360 is clearly not the best execution of the concept. There are several flaws in design of this product:

1) User manual only available on CD. Do I need to take my laptop to the car?

2) Routing preference needs to be specified every time you choose a destination. Why can't I just set "shortest time" as default for everywhere I go?

3) Street address input before city. Now wouldn't the auto-fill function be more streamlined if the system had to look for relevant streets only in your town or city of interest rather than the entire region of the country you have chosen? Also: no city, no address. Say you just want to go to a small picturesque town, but don't have a full address; no can do. Thank God for Main St.

4) Brightness of monitor is not easily adjustable. You can see the display well during the day, but at night, you either have to go three leves deep into the settings to change to night mode or feel as if you had the interior lights of the car on. Other models simply change to night mode at a specific time of the day.

5) No simple-to-access mute option.

6) Slow processor. If you miss an exit (yes I know the point of having a GPS is not to, but still, sometimes you do), it can take a few minutes to recalculate your new route. If you are going 55 miles/hr, that can be an awful long time and a lot of poor choices before you are set straight again.

7) Weak antenna. If you start in a new section of town, or if the sky is overcast, it may take up to 15 minutes for the device to find out where it is. Yes it takes even longer if you fail to pull the antenna out.

8) Can't deal w/numbered streets. I recently went to Miami and found myself constantly looking for the closest street to where I was going that had a proper name, as numbered streets such as 112th SW, will not be accepted.

9) Autonomous zoom. The device decides on its own when to zoom in and out. It would be nice to be able to override this feature.

10) Odd choice of labeling on maps. A map will show the name of only certain streets. Oddly not the main ones, or the nearest ones.

I used to have a simple built-in GPS in my car. All it could do was show right and left arrows on the display and give you a voice warning. But it was fast as hell, and that trumps colored displays and Point of Interest add ons any day in my opinion. If you get this GPS, make sure you don't leave your printed maps at home. You never know when you will need them!

I have now had the magellan 360 for two months and for the most part it does the job. Compared to my friends Tom Tom it definitly has a slower processor. When traveling interstate highways both GPS systems are identical in giving directions, with a two mile get ready message for the next manuvere. So far I have found several weird directions-- such as sleight right turn ahead when the map itself shows a streight road through an intersection. Another strange direction--make a legal U turn when coming toward my house that has grass median strips down the middle, apparently the 360's logic couldn't figure out how to reach my house at the median breaks. Like I said for the most part it does fine, it got us in and out of central Philadelphia without a hitch. It would be nice if their website had a way of giving them map corrections so that they could be incorperated in the next software update.

Didn't even keep for a week. Started off fine, for the first 2 days. Used it for a short 3 hour road trip. At first it worked ok, although it kept getting the sides of the street backwards at our various destinations (said on right, it was really left). It had problems with cloverleaf exits and entrances. The major issue that it had when it was working was around re-routing. When you are driving and it says take a right you take the right, however if there are 2 streets right next to each other it sometimes isn't specific enough...that brings me to rerouting. It takes what feels like minutes, but is actually more like 30 seconds. Try waiting 30 seconds for directions when you're driving the wrong direction.

Now for the truely bad part. 5 days into having the unit it flat out stopped locking onto the satelite. Happened in mid-drive and never came back. For the next few days I started my car, left is in one spot for a few minutes with a clear path to the sky but no lock. Kept it on when I was driving, still no lock. Needless to say it went back.

I don't know, maybe I had a bum unit. In any case I had good expectations, next time I'll try a Garmin. Cheers

I love this little Magellan RoadMate and use it all the time! I go to tons of yard and estate sales and this map gets me perfectly every week! I use this map at least 10 to 15 times weekly if not more. The streets in Seattle and surrounding areas are complicated and I think very confusing and crazy. For instance, you will be driving on 9th Ave. and all of the sudden, 9th ave. turns into 100th ave! The map has never failed to get me to the destination.

I have never read the directions so it took me a little bit really figure it out. It also saves previous destinations as I am sure all of them do.

You must always make SURE you have the antennae up! Otherwise it will take forever to compute. It may not always calculate the absolute shortest time but if you have ever driven in Seattle, it is amazing that the map can even find it's way around. You can also search for certain stores, and other destinations as well. It will direct you to such places as your favorite grocery store, a certain coffee shop etc. You just type in the names and it will bring up all the entries from the shortest to the furthest destinations.

I have never used a more expensive GPS system but as I mentioned, I use this map probably a lot more than most people and it works without a hitch. It is a fabulous system for the price.