Customer Reviews

Magellan RoadMate 500 3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

A few weeks ago my wife and I started thinking about buying our first gps unit for in-car navigation. We needed something that's easily transportable between our two cars and also something that's easy to use. After doing some research I ended up buying the RoadMate 500 at a great deal. I've been using it around town just to get a feel on how it works, even though I have yet to use it on a long road trip. Below are my observations:

The unit includes a 128 MB compact flash card for which you'll be able to upload, only via USB, 100 MB worth of data. I uploaded northern California and Nevada with little room left. To load all of USA and Canada you'll need 2 GB. If you want to use another compact flash card you'll need to get an authorization code online and "authorize" the card through Magellan's software. The first authorization code is free but any subsequent ones will set you back $49.99 per authorization code.

The user interface is both user-friendly and intuitive. It's intuitive enough that you don't really need to read the manual to figure out how to use it. It's just the basic select your destination and go. Calculating routes takes about 3-5 seconds on average. If you stray away from your intended route, re-routing kicks in more or less around 50 feet and also very fast. On a negative note, there's no easy way to mark your current location, no return to start feature, no post office category in the POI database, and there's no way to sort the address book entries by name or by distance, big oversight.

The unit is very well designed. The buttons are all very well placed and are lighted when the unit is turned on. The touch screen is bright and sensitive, although after a while, fingerprints will become noticeable. Buying a good quality screen protector is a good idea to hide the smudges and protect the screen without sacrificing screen sensitivity. The vent mounting bracket is convenient but a pain to remove/mount properly. The speaker behind the unit, even though loud and clear, has a little bit of white noise or static sound every time a key is pressed or a direction is spoken. This is only noticeable in a quiet environment and also the sound level of the white noise stays constant throughout.

Overall I'm sure glad I bought this unit and will gladly buy it again despite of the negatives.

I am delighted with this system, and would recommend it highly to those who are tired of being constantly lost. Magellan also makes a more expensive system with a hard disk that holds maps for the entire U.S. In the case of this model(the Roadmate 500) you have to download the maps you want from a CD. Unless you travel constantly all over the country, the model 700 is a waste of money because all the other features are the same. The unit could not be easier to use, and the screen is bright and easily visible. I only have two gripes: first, the documentation accompanying the unit needs to be clearer and more detailed. Secondly, the mickey-mouse mounting bracket that comes with the unit is totally useless. It is designed to slide into an A/C vent. Magellan can surely do better than this! Other that those two observations, I would recommend the Roadmate 500 highly.

The 500 is an excellent product. I just spent the past weekend returning two Magellan 700's and one Streetpilot 2610. Here's why... since the Magellan 700 has a hard drive, it's very sluggish and freezes, and has no AC power (beyond cigarette lighter power), no USB cord and didn't like the flexibility of no firmware updates and map customization. The 700 has a CF slot but since it doesn not come with an AC power cord/USB cable, it makes me think they're going to sell an upgrade pack in the future for an already very expensive product. I was so disappointed with the Magellan 700 experience that I went ahead and bought the Streetpilot 2610 based on all of the positive reviews. And, yes, the 2610 is an excellent product but not for me: the screen was too small, hard to read, the navigation was more difficult to program and, honestly, didn't really need all of those features (waypoints, viapoints, blah blah... just get me to my destination...). After returning the 2610, I decided to give the Magellan 500 a try and, so far, I'm pleased with it. I get the beautiful screen from the 700, it comes with a power cord, USB cable and since it runs off a CF card, there is the ability to upgrade the firmware and customize the maps on the unit. The software installation is simple enough - I chose the "Complete" option. Authorizing CF cards might be a little tricky for a "non-technical" person but not impossible. Also, it doesn't come with a case and since the vent mount is a little clunky (but seems to fit fine on my X5) I would get an extended warranty plan from any store you purchase it from (just in case...) Good luck.

The roadmate 500 (and it's larger brother the 700) are the cream of the crop when it comes to economical auto navigation systems. Make not mistake about it, this is NOT a general purpose GPS. The roadmate does one thing and one thing only -- it helps you navigate your auto. To start up, you download the area of interest into the device. It comes with a 128mb compact flash card and you can buy additional cards if you so desire. Areas are typically things like an entire state or for large states like California, "Norther California". From there, you just tell it where you want to go with it's excellent on screen keyboard or select a location by name from it's points of interest database. The POI database contains restaurants, malls, hotels, and other things of interest to travellers, but you won't find the nearest chair store -- it's not a complete yellowpages. You can specify an exact street address or a street and cross street. From there, you just follow the directions. The screen is large and bright, but there's no need to look at it while driving. The voice prompts are excellent. You are warned when you are approaching a turn or freeway entrance/exit and you are told if it's left or right. When I drive to my home, the it tells me "approaching destination on your left" and then "you have arrived". If I were to stop the car exactly when it told me, I'd literally be staring out the window at my front door. It's locations are precise. This precision speaks to the quality of the built-in database. Another lovable thing about the voice prompts is when it knows you have a complex maneuver coming up and warns you "approaching right turn followed by a freeway entrance on your left". The voice navigation is almost as good as a real human copilot. Overall, a great product that excels at it's intended usage. If you've used general purpose GPS's hooked to laptops for auto-navigation, this is a whole new experience in terms of quality and sophistication.

I bought the Magellan RoadMate 500 a couple of days ago and have been enjoying it so far.

INTERFACE:
First of all, this GPS has a great interface and touchscreen. It's very easy to navigate through the screens, and for the most part it's very intuitive. The on screen tutorial is a nice touch.

HOW DOES IT PERFORM?
The mapping program is nicely done. I was impressed at the accuracy of the directions while travelling. I was in San Francisco and missed a parking lot we wanted to stay at. I quickly was able to use the points of interest lookup and found another nearby parking lot. The Roadmate re-calculated (and quickly I might add) the route and I was given the audible voice direction to my next turn. It's amazing how fast it can re-route this information based on all the variables that are being thrown at it.

I will say that at times it can be tough to pick up a signal while there is heavy cloud cover. In these cases, the GPS will change back to the turn-by-turn directions so that you can continue to drive on without GPS assistance.
Most of the time, this GPS picks up signals without problems in under 5 mins (usually less).

VOICE:
There are two choices on voice. Male or Female. Both are done with equal quality. I was surprised at all the extra dialogue that you need during driving that is included on the device.
For example. If you were travelling on a highway that splits into two directions. The device will say someting like, "Keep to the right in two miles", "Keep to the right in .5 miles".

If you were driving and had to do some pretty tight turns one after another, the device would say, "Right turn followed by a Right turn". It's very easy to tell how close you are to a turn because it has a readout of the distance in .5, .4, .3, .2, .1 as well as a yellow bar that goes from "full" to "empty" showing how close you are to a turn. An audible "bing bing" sounds as you are right at the turn.
From what I've seen so far, the device is dead on most of the time. I can appreciate the calculations that are going on in the unit since it needs to figure out if you are fast approaching an exit at 65mph or just making a slow right at 25mph in a school zone.

OTHER:
The mounting hardware that comes with it can be a little frustrating at first. After practice, you learn to make the bendable metal mount plate into a "hook" that goes into your vent.

One of the downsides for the model 500 vs the 700 is amount of storage space on the Compact Flash. It's only 100mb although the CF can handle up to 128MB. Another reviewer is correct, it's a SanDisk brand CF with a sticker over it.

STORAGE:
Living in California, we've got a lot of land and a lot of points of interest. Unfortunately, all of California would take 127.1 MB (North and South). The CF is formatted to only handle 100MB. I will definitely look into the 700 or possibly just add another Magellan certified CF.

EVERYDAY USE:
The device is light and of course pretty darn expensive. I'm definitely going to buy a carrying case for it when it becomes available.

OVERALL:
My wife is still a bit skeptical about it's cost vs. useage. I'm still trying to convince her that this is a really useful tool. I thing that a few more trips of not getting lost or using the points of interest will convince her.

I give this 5 of 5 stars and have yet to try anything (other than built in navigation system in the new cars) that can match it.

There are some good opinions already here, so I will focus on the biggest weakness of this unit. The biggest drawback for this unit is the authorization required for the compact flash. There is absolutely no need to make this a requirement since they also offer one free authorization. A corrupt compact flash may render this unit useless. A power failure, operating system crash, usb cable being accidentally pulled during data transfer, card reformatted in a camera or other device, dropped card, or any other problem may cause this unit to become useless until you are able to buy another authorization card or use your one free authorization. If you're on a cross-country trip and uploading data via a laptop along the way and encounter this problem, you have no solutions to remedy this problem. Will the unit itself outlive the compact flash or is Magellan banking on that you will be forced to buy a compact flash sometime through the life of product? I can understand and respect companies trying to make money through product related items, but that's what accessories are for! When companies introduce failure point that may render the product useless for the sake of making money, it's just trying to put one over the users. It is one of the better portable GPS for automotive uses out there, but this one thing should not be overlooked.
Ok, the guy below questions if I even bought the unit. Yes, I bought it, and yes my flash card became corrupt that rendered the unit useless. There is a menu option on the software to recover the flash card, but it didn't do it for me. I had to call tech support and get a new card.

We bought the Roadmate 500 primarly because it was on sale and we needed a second GPS unit. I currently own the iQue 3600 (bought from Amazon), which is similar in function to the Garmin 2600 series GPS units. The Roadmate has nice build quality. Screen is clear, bright and easy to read. Buttons are well place and easy to use. The GPS receiver is quick. However...

There are two glaring differences between the Magellan Roadmate series and the Garmin units. These are the selection of Points of Interests (POIs) and information displayed while in "Map" mode. There are no subcategories in POIs in the Roadmate units. For example, if I want to find a particular type of restaurant, Italian for example, near my current location, there is no way to do this in the Roadmate. The Roadmate just presents a list of restaurants without types. You must guess on your own (probably based on tbe name) what kind of restaurant is listed. In the Garmin units, you can select restaurants, then you can further select the type of restaurants.

In addition when in "map" mode (not navigation or following a route), the Roadmate only shows the name of street you are currenly on. In the Garmin units, the number and the street name, as well as the name of the upcoming street intersection are displayed and constantly updated. With the Garmin unit you know exactly where you are. It's helpful if you're not in a "navigation or route" mode and looking for a particular address and can't see the numbers on the buildings.

Another feature that is lacking in the Roadmate series is automatic color scheme selection at night. Even though there is automatic brightness and contrast settings for the Roadmate units, you must manually select night colors on the Roadmate. You can make it easier to switch to night colors by assigning one of the "user" buttons as a nighttime mode setting. In the Garmin units, the color scheme automatically changes to nighttime mode after sunset. You don't have to fiddle with any user setting.

All in all, we are happy with the Roadmate series. It's just that the Garmin units are constructed more thoughtfully.