Customer Reviews

Magellan RoadMate 300 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I bought the Roadmate 300 to help navigate my drive from San Francsico to Las Vegas for the CES 2005 show. At first it took a long time to get a signal but after it got hold of our location, it worked great. The first time you use it it will take a while for a signal...about 15 minutes sometimes. Also if you turn it off and take it to another place far away and then turn it on, it will take a while to find you. If you leave it on everywhere you go then it finds you fast because it knows where it left off.

To solve this long signal delay problem I have experimented and found that if you go to Options and then specify your general current location to the device, the satellite will pick up the signal quite quickly. Basically if you turned the device off and moved to another place far away before turning it on again, it has a harder time finding you so you can help it by telling it where you are: I do this by hitting the Options button and going into the menu to set the general current location like a street intersection, etc. I believe it is labelled "SET GPS LOCATION" or something like that (have to double check). Then I type in the street intersection or an address I am close to and
it seems to pick up the satellite signal rather quickly afterwords. I guess it is because you have given it a general location for it to find you again after the long move or change of location while it was off.

It took me to Vegas with no problems and the points of interests listed Chinese restaurants in the area when my parents wanted to have some Chinese for dinner instead of Vegas buffet. :) Really cool.

There is room for improvement in this technology but for navigating and getting you there it is great!

The suction cup stays on the windshield and is very strong but the device is a bit tough to remove when you want to hide it when parking. The mounting plate is hard plastic with a tight fit grooved design so it requires two hands and a relatively forceful slide to get it off the gooseneck. This can be improved to be an easier release in the future (Hey Magellan, hire my company to design your next product casing, I'm an industrial designer ha-ha! www.metaformusa.com.

I took some wrong turns and it always recalculated and got me back on track. Sometimes it does take a round about way to get somewhere but in general you will never get totally lost again with this in your car.

Sometimes the touch screen will require you to press it twice as it doesn't register. Sometimes the device does not ask you to resume the trip if you stopped and turned the car off when getting gas or stopping for a rest (but I just use "Previous Destinations" button to select it again..a few times I had to re-enter my final destination. But that is a minor software glitch to me since the important thing is if it gets me to where I want to go safely and accurately.

I got a 256MB SD card to load the entire West Coast into the device but sometimes it is hard to quickly get the address I want as it begins to list a whole bunch of cities. I would take their advice next time and just load the cities I will be travelling to. I just got lazy and selected entire states...took a while to load all that data into the device from my PC but it is not something I have to do all the time so that's OK.

I would recommend this product to anyone who wants to do away with reading maps and stressing out on a trip to unfamiliar territory. So far I have been relatively satisfied with what it can do. As the technology evolves I am sure all the issues I mentioned will be resolved but for now it does its job quite well and I am able to find and drive to places without much headache or fear of getting lost.

March 2006 - Review Update: The updated software downloaded from the Magellan website seems to have improved the signal finding capabilities dramatically. I no longer experience the long waiting I used to in finding satellites. It is much better now.

I bought both the Delphi NA10000 and this so that I could run them back to back. The Delphi arrived partially defective, but the build quality was GORGEOUS and the PC software was VERY easy to use --especially when compared to the Magellan. Where the Magellan shines, however, is in actually getting you there. Hence 4 stars.

I am currently living in LA. I just moved here for b-school and get lost regularly trying to find chinese restaurants in Balwdin Park or good mexican food in south central. This little doo-hicky does a GREAT job of gettting me there and back. Far better than the Delphi.

Couple negative things worth noting:

1st. Depending on which route setting you choose, Shortest, Freeway, etc... sometimes it sends you on really strange routes. Nothing major, but there are often more turns than absolutly necessary.

2nd. The build quality is severly shoddy. Comparable to an early Compaq iPaq--all plastic in all the wrong places; buttons that feel mushy and unresponsive; the poorest mount I have seen in a while--it vibrates the whole unit over bumps such that you really must rest it on the dash; and a really cheap antanna.

3rd. It is only, really, compatable with SanDisk SD media. Lexar (even high speed) works OK, but slowly and after waiting for over an hour for tech support, the otherwise helpful rep finally confessed that really, it only works with SanDisk media.

4th. The PC software, at least compared with Delphi's, is TERRIBLE. It is slow, cumbersome, bewilderingly complex for such a simple task, and generally functions as if it were designed for Windows 98. We are talking old school Pentium 90 speed here.

So while everything about the product is crap, after you deal with the crap and get on the road, the things works really well. If the antenna does not fall off, it keeps a solid signal with the satellites above, it has a solid power connection, bright screen with good clear instructions, and is generally quite accurate. As a high-tech gadget the Delphi is superior, as a GPS system, buy the Magellan 300.

I initially was not happy with the Garmin C320 due to its screen..and still not crazy about it on sunny days... .Roadmates screen is better....but here are its downfalls. Cumbersome map loading...Not that you do it often..but cumbersome. I put both units side by side....both gave directions to the location but as I got closer...the Roadmate was telling me to turn left when I clearly needed to go right...The Garmin was dead on. Coming home the interstate was backed up..so I took known back roads. The Roadmate kept telling me to make a U-turn to get back on interstate...The Garmin instantly recalculated a new route...and the one I actually would have taken. I do not expect these units to know all the back road short cuts..but the Garmin did...Magellan was confused... Finally got to with in a block of my home.. The Garmin told me to go straight through the intersection to destination on right..which was one block. The Roadmate told me to turn right...had me go 6 blocks out of my way when my house was in sight a block ahead. The Roadmates buttons also felt very cheap...and did not always respond..nor did the touch screen. The roadmates mount held tight but shook a lot, making screen hard to see..but the Garmins mount does not hold suction too well all the time..and falls. The roadmate does have a more detailed screen..but for me I found this a distraction.. After comparing the two units...I am much more happy with the Garmin despite my problems seeing the screen on sunny days...It is legible..just hard to see.. The roadmates goofy directions was the clincher for me...Was not as easy to use as the Garmin...which is so easy you do not need the manual.

I bought Magellan's NAVTEQ-powered roadmate product and returned it 3 days after I got it, because it suffers from the same problem as several other Nav systems I've tried. (probably navteq powered, I guess) Their streetname database for Seattle SUCKS! Many streets, such as 48th ave NE, to pick just one, cannot be keyed in by address, despite the fact that the street has been there for 50+ years. In fact, their map's street name inventory only contains about 20% if the streets in this major US city. It's astounding.

The problem is that their "intelligent" address-entry limits one to the streetnames in the database, which lack the necessary prefixes and suffixes. So one can't enter the correct streatnames. Frustration incarnate!

Navteq has no concept of how we use directional suffixes and prefixes in Seattle. Seattle is divided into 9 quadrants, NW, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and downtown, which has no directional indicator. Each street outside of the core downtown financial center has a directional prefix (ie: "NE 85th St.") and the avenues have a suffix (ie: "49th ave NW"). These prefixes and suffixes instantly tell the seattle native wether the street is south of downtown, in west seattle, or in north seattle. It can take 1/2 an hour or more to get from 40th ave S to 40th ave NE, since the roads are not contiguous due to all the hills, lakes and bridges one has to deal with around here. Their maps confuse the issue terribly. The screen view gets the street names correct only about 70% of the time, and when trying to enter addresses directly, using the keypad, one simply cannot enter most of the street addresses, because in 80% of the addresses I tried, their database does not contain the prefix or suffix. It's maddening!

For the price of this unit, one should expect that a major city like Seattle would be well mapped.

Yahoo maps, mapquest, google and many others comprehend these subtleties perfectly. Why do their maps suck? There are 3,000+ real estate agents in this town, and all the ones I've talked to lament the fact that none of the nav systems "get" seattle. It's a standing joke. Please let us know when you figure this city out.

Lost in Seattle....

The product is quite adequate and functions well. Don't believe their suggestion to buy a 256MB SD card however, unless you are satisfied with 2 or 3 state coverage. I got the 1.0GB SD card and it gives me detail access to over 2/3 of the lower 48 states. I found a quirk while being instructed to enter a south bound highway from the east. It instructed me to go over the highway and make a "hard Left" (an illegal turn), rather than make the right onto the cloverleaf entrance. Be careful. --

The internal antenna works quite well but the placement, in my vehicle, required the use of an external antenna. DO NOT BUY the Magellan External Antenna. When the weather gets even slightly warm, the antenna sets off a continues false alarm on my Cobra Radar Detector. Technical Support has been absolutely useless. After 6 tries, I've given up and bought a Gilsson antenna that works much better, has no problems and costs less. Magellan (Thales Navigation) either does not understand English or chooses to deliberately misunderstand the problem. They will also not offer any refund on their antenna with the design problem. --

In general, I am quite satisfied with the RoadMate 300, but don't expect any intelligent Technical Support.

I just purchased one of these and was a little sceptical after reading some of the reviews that stated how difficult it was to load the information into the unit. I had no problem at all. In fact it was quite simple. I am truly amazed at how acurate and easy to use this unit is. For the price, you can't beat it.

After 2 months of owning the GPS and growing all but frustrated with LARGE delays associated with rerouting, Magellan surprised me! Several months after release, the company seems to still care about its products. Several days ago, I received an email from the company alerting me to an update to their software (v1.65) which took care of the major complaint I had with the unit. The unit is now faster to reroute me when I miss that precious turn in unknown territory, and appears to run solidly. I must say I am now enjoying the full potential of the unit and am happy with the purchase!

I bought this unit after much research. And I am glad I made this decision.

The size, both unit and the screen is perfect. I compared with Garmin's I3 and 2610. Unit handling is good and not bulky like the 2610. The screen size of this unit is ideal, with all the info that needs to be accomodated on the screen.

I found my unit quite responsive and had good satellite reception (even when I placed it in my cup holder!). Color coding of signal strength is a great plus. Unit has a ton of options on locating points of interests. I also checked the speedometer in the unit and it was accurate down to the last mile. I was really impressed.

The only thing I found unacceptable was the long upload time for the maps into the unit. But I have heard units from other manufacturers too have the same issue. But on the road performance is fantastic for the price that I paid at Sears.

The device is great. Advertising does not make clear, tho, that the maps themselves are not in the device, and a memory card has to be separately purchased to load maps. Would have liked to know this up front so device could have been operational much faster (would have bought the memory card at the time of initial purchase of the device). The advertising makes it sound like you can just turn on the GPS and go, and you can't!

Wasted over three hours trying to get it to work. Out of the box, it had no detailed maps for anything. I spent 2 hours 'uploading' maps onto an SD card which you have to 'authorize' first. How can anything take TWO HOURS to transfer to an SD card?!? The supplied software is remarkably bad. Anyway, after all that, the unit refused to initialize maps and would only beep obnoxiously anytime a button was pressed. 'Turn it on and go' is their slogan. Turn it on and go where? Back to the store to return it.