Magellan RoadMate 500 3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

by Magellan

Product Details

Product Manual [1.82mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000DJEIT
• Item model number: 980652-02
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Imagine having a personal assistant in your car, guiding you turn by turn, with a friendly voice and visual signals, even when you don't know the address. That's exactly what you get with the Magellan RoadMate 500 portable GPS auto navigation system. The unit comes with an extremely detailed map of the United States and major metropolitan areas of Canada on CD-ROM, from which you can select and load different 100 MB regions to the included memory card when making excursions to different areas.

Lightweight and truly portable, the RoadMate 500 goes wherever you go, from your personal vehicle to your business car, to your RV. Built on the same Magellan technology found in the Hertz NeverLost system (proven and road-tested by over 4 million drivers), the RoadMate 500 makes your driving adventure easier and more enjoyable. The unit has access to over 2 million points of interest, making it a cinch to find your destination. Search by name or category for gas stations, restaurants, hotels, sights, amusements, and more, whether you're driving cross-country or to an unfamiliar address across town.

Dynamic turn-by-turn guidance with TrueView 3D navigation and friendly voice prompting indicates when to make your next turn. The voice prompt tells you when to turn and you can confirm the direction at a glance. There's no need to watch the screen. The RoadMate 500 finds your location and the map continues to move with you by tracking up to 12 GPS satellites simultaneously. Assisted by the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS), the RoadMate is accurate to within three meters or better.

You can select your route from one of four ways: by shortest time (an advanced algorithm calculates your route using shortest distance and speed-limit factors), by shortest distance (determines your best route by the shortest distance traveled), by the least use of freeways (calculates your route through city and side streets, letting you stay off highways when possible), or by most use of freeways (provides directions over freeways, highways, and interstates). You get three guidance screens: True View (shows a detailed view of actual road layout), Map View (a bright, high-resolution display with bold, easy-to read icons and text; choose your favorite from nine different color combinations), and Maneuver List (which details when and where to expect turns along your route). Want to avoid a certain road or maneuver? Simply press a "route exclusion" button, the Magellan RoadMate 500 will find another route. It also automatically calculates a new route when you decide to take a detour because of heavy traffic or a closed road. QuickSpell intelligently sorts, searches, and checks spelling for rapid address entry with minimal keystrokes, accelerating your data entry by matching letters to available destinations. Store up to 100 personal or business destinations per user for a total of 300 addresses. Each user can even personally select their top three destinations to keep them handy. Instant Locate provides information about your present location so you can easily direct emergency services and roadside assistance. Best of all, the unit turns on when you start your car. Just turn it on and go.

What's in the Box
RoadMate GPS, 4 CD-ROM map discs, a 128 MB Magellan-authorized CompactFlash memory card, a vent mount, a 110V AC power adapter, a DC vehicle power adapter, and a user's manual.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New King of the Hill !!, November 10, 2003

By 

dbeofam "dbeofam" (Owings, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magellan RoadMate 500 3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)

The Magellan Roadmate, quite simply, is currently the best auto gps available. I own the 700 (not yet available on this site, but available at Best Buy, along with the 500). Difference between the 500 and 700 is the 500 stores maps on compact flash cards (a 128 mb included w/ the 500) and the 700 has all of US and Canada built in on an internal 10 gig hard drive. Amazon currently advertises the 700 as having a 5 gig drive. They're wrong). Units are identical beyond that. The mapping is incredibly accurate, user friendly and intuitive. Voice prompts are clear and pleasant to listen to (male, female, or no voice user selectable). Screen (4") is clear, high resolution, and readable in all conditions, including bright sunlight. Like most recent units, the Roadmate will automatically re-calculate your route if you stray. Unlike other units, however, the Roadmate does it with amazing speed and accuracy. Because this is a WAAS enabled unit, it's accurate to within 12 feet of your position on the earth. I live in a spread-out, country part of Maryland, and this unit shows the detail of my dead end cul-de-sac!!

I could go on and on about the unique features of this product, but I'll save some bandwidth and just say it's well worth the price. It's world's beyond the competition from Garmin (except for their new 2610, which is a very nice unit, but is not WAAS enabled and some say the mapping database is not as good) and the other major players.

BTW, I'm a private pilot and I understand and have lots of experience with GPS.

Edit 12/5/03: I am still thrilled with this unit after daily usage. Amazing how accurate it is, even in congested and confusing Washington DC during rush hour. I'm convinced that the WAAS feature on GPS auto units is real important in the inner cities.

My first complaint: While the vent mount that comes with the unit is OK, Magellan should supply every conceivable other type of mount with a unit in this price range. I obtained, free of charge, their "gooseneck" suction cup windshield mount, and it is excellent. Should buyers have to pay extra for this? I don't think so. Their "beenbag" mount is also due out shortly. These can be handy when switching cars a lot. Garmin ships with multiple mounts. So should Magellan. I've forwarded my opinion to Magellan's marketing dept. That being said, my 5 star rating remains, as this product is really superb.

47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Impressions......great so far., December 1, 2003

By 

R. Robles "racheysdad" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Magellan RoadMate 500 3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)

I just received my Roadmate 500 on Saturday night and so far it's been great. This is my first GPS and it was a toss up between this and the Streetpilot 2610. Features wise, they both were about the same, 12channel, color touchscreen, voice prompts, etc. But the Roadmate had a slightly larger screen and is WAAS enabled. I took it for a spin over the weekend and so far it's been wonderful. I love the voice prompts, for ex. in addition to saying "left turn", when appropriate it will say "left turn onto freeway onramp". I used it so far for short local routes and it chose the same routes I would have. On purpose I made a right turn instead of the correct left turn and within about half a city block it said "calculating" and seconds later said "when possible make a legal U-turn". The true-view screens look nice, it's a 3/4 top down view that looks like what a pilot might see during a landing approach.

I took it for a drive up in the hills about 10 miles from my house and it lost signal for about 3 miles, because I noticed it didn't prompt me when I reached the freeway exit. But if I hit the view button, it still correctly indicated that I should turn right at the "Maclay Exit". It just didn't know I was already at the exit..lol Less than a quarter mile after the exit, it reaccquired the signal and worked perfectly again. It shows, colors for signal strength, red, yellow, green, then finally blue (WAAS signal) The best I could get around my house near the hills was green, but I was able to get blue near my relatives house closer to the city. As far as I can tell, green is just fine, though a WAAS signal supposedly insures accuracy within 3 meters.

The included 128mb Flash Card can store 1 large state or a few small states, except of course with my luck...lol..not my state, California. I could only load either Northern Cal. or Southern, but not both. What's annoying is that Magellan's software will only upload map data to an "authorized" data card. You need to have one of their "pre-authorized" cards, or pay for an "authorization code" so the software will load data on an "other brand" card. Authorization costs $49.99 for each card, but at least you get 1 "authorization code" with registration. So I brought home a 256mb flash card...,registered on their website, and received my "authorization code". I then ran the "authorize new card" function in the software, entered my code, and it "authorized" my card for map data. The 256mb holds all of California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and Western Texas. Which is plenty for me, I'll just load other states as needed, and I still have the 128mb card it came with as well. Unless you regularly drive around Canada and the U.S., the Roadmate 500 will do just fine. No need really to spend the extra $...for the Roadmate 700 since the 500 has the same exact features.

The Points of Interest screens are nice too, we visited family on Sunday and I wanted to pick up Pizza on the way. I simply touched the POI area, chose restaraunts, chose city, entered letter "P", and the 2 local Pizza Huts came up. It guided me to a Pizza Hut 1.2 miles away from my realtive's house perfectly. Half a block away it said "Destination coming up on the right side". If I didn't enter letter "P" it gave me all the nearest restaraunts in the chosen area.

Again this is my first GPS and my wife gasped when I told her I spent nearly $..., but even she is starting to realize how useful this sucker will be when we travel up to San Francisco and then Lake Tahoe for Christmas.

Last note, the air vent mount works fairly well. The included mount is contructed well, nice thick bendable metal covered with rubber sleeves. With very little effort I mounted it on my center vent, but I can see it coming loose if I hit big pothole or something. I'll be ordering the bean bag mount when it's available, since they also give you a $...discount off your first order after registration. The bean bag mount is $...so only $...after discount.

71 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I think we have a winner!, November 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Magellan RoadMate 500 3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)

This afternoon I was at my local electronic megastore and to my surprise (and delight) they've got a Magellan Roadmate 500 on display. I've been thinking about getting a portable in-car GPS navigation and I've been doing research on the net. The other unit that I was also looking at is the Garmin 2610. However I already own a Magellan Meridian handheld GPS and from my past experience I like Magellan's design and user interface better than Garmin's. So I waited eagerly for the Roadmate.

The Roadmate 500 on display didn't have the power cable, so I asked the salesperson if they could find one for me so I could power on the unit. Fortunately they had the cable and a 12V DC plug so I was able to play with it.

The first thing I noticed was the screen was very sharp and bright. It was very good. Size wise, the Roadmate screen looks more like 4:3 aspect whereas the 2610 looks more like 16:9 (widescreen) aspect.

The Roadmate 500 came standard with a 128 MB compact flash (it was Sandisk but was covered with a Magellan sticker). As expected, the compact flash didn't have any map data in it. You have to install the software on the PC and download the map data to the compact flash. Consequently the unit was pretty much useless without the map data.

However I was able to play with the touch screen, the configurations, and there's also a built in "tutorial" that gave me a good sense of the unit's capability. IMHO the user interface was well done and it was very easy to use (especially with the touch screen). There are always 2 ways you can make selections: by touching the screen directly, or moving the selection "cursor" using the rocker button and pressing Enter.

On the configuration menu, you can change the color of the maps, the overall appearance color, the voice guidance (male/female), route preferences, etc. It also has auto brightness that will adjust the screen brightness based on the environment. When you power on the unit, you can choose among 3 different users. Each user can save his/her own configurations (which I believe also include address book, address history, etc) so the unit can be conveniently shared among 3 different users.

While I was playing with the Roadmate 500, the salesperson told me that the Roadmate 700 had a built-in hard drive and it already contained all the map data (for the whole USA) out of the box. I knew about the hard drive but I wasn't aware that the hard drive already contained map data. So I asked him if I could try one out.

Then I played with the 700. With the map data present, the unit was fully functioning (except it couldn't lock to the GPS signal because I was inside the store). Somehow the initial location on the map was showing downtown San Francisco. The unit came out of a sealed box, so I guess that's the default initial location.

I tried zooming in/out and moving the maps around. The screen redraw was not as fast as I would have liked it, but it was acceptable. You can scroll the map by "touch and drag" on the screen or use the 8 way rocker button.

Then I tried the routing function. I tried a few routes that I'm familiar with (I actually live in the Bay Area and I'm pretty familiar with downtown San Francisco). The generated routes were accurate and surprisingly they match the route I'd take myself. It was pretty fast to calculate a route. I think it was about 2-3 seconds each time.

When a route is active, you can cycle through 3 different views: the map, the turn by turn list, and the 3D view of the next turn you'd make. This last view is really cool and useful. When you approach an interchange, you can see exacly where you have to go. I tried an intersection in downtown SF where the streets are not perpendicular to each other. The 3D view correctly depicted the turn as if you were looking at the intersection. I was impressed.

Then I played with the POI database. You can search by name or category (restaurant, ATM, gas station, airport, etc). Entering the address/name is very easy using the touch screen. When you touch a letter, the unit will gray out the letters that are not part of the possible matches. This really speeds up the entry. Also if you use the touch screen, the unit speaks the letter that you press.

One thing that I noticed was that the restaurant database did not seems to have the "cuisine" info. Therefore you cannot search restaurant by cuisine (e.g. Chinese, Italian, etc). You can search only by name or nearest to your current location. This may pose a problem if you travel to an unfamiliar area and you want to find the nearest Italian restaurant from your current location. You cannot do that.

Also since the Roadmate 700 contains map data for the *entire* USA, searching for a restaurant by name will produce results from the entire USA. I think the Roadmate 500 will probably be better in a sense that we can limit the map data only to the area applicable to our usage (because you select the area to be downloaded into the compact flash).

The speaker was very good and loud. The volume control is conveniently located on top of the unit so it's very easy to adjust the volume.

Overall I was very impressed with the unit. IMHO this is the ultimate in portable in-car navigation.

Disclaimer: I tried the unit inside a store which meant that I didn't get a GPS signal and I wasn't driving. I really like the unit and I will buy one.