Magellan RoadMate 1210 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator

by Magellan

Product Details

User's Guide [9.40mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 7 x 3.7 x 3.1 inches ; 13.6 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0021L9BZG
• Item model number: Roadmate 1210
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #235 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

  #22 in	Electronics > Car Electronics > Vehicle GPS > Portable Vehicle GPS
  #43 in	Electronics > GPS & Navigation

• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 6, 2009

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The Magellan RoadMate 1210 device boasts the acclaimed OneTouch menu, a 3.5-inch color touch screen, and a pocket-size design. Preloaded maps and points of interest for the contiguous 48 United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico make the RoadMate 1210 ideal for around town and vacations. Easy-to-use features give you confidence on the road and deliver a rewarding navigation experience. Turn it on and go!

Turn it on and go! Click to enlarge.

OneTouch favorites menu affords instant access to your personalized bookmarks of favorite places and searches anywhere you travel. Click to enlarge.

Multi-destination routing with route optimization lets you plan your trip with multiple stops in the order you want or optimize a trip for the most efficient route, helping you save time and money. Click to enlarge.

QuickSpell with SmartCity search narrows your address and city searches, making destination entry easy. Click to enlarge.

Preloaded maps give you information and directions as you travel the contiguous United States, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

The Magellan RoadMate 1210 includes many premier features, starting with Magellan's exclusive OneTouch favorites menu, QuickSpell with SmartCity search, and highway exit point of interest (POI) search, to name a few. Magellan's attention to detail delivers a superior user experience.

Intuitive and robust navigation
The RoadMate 1210 lets you bookmark your favorite destinations and searches with the OneTouch favorites menu so you can access them anywhere you travel. With a single touch, find your favorite cafe or restaurant when you're traveling within any city.

QuickSpell with Smart City search help you quickly enter addresses and narrow your address and city searches, making destination entry easy.

Multi-destination routing with route optimization lets you plan your trip with multiple stops in the order you want or optimize a trip for the most efficient route, helping you save time and money.

Ready to roll
You're ready to travel with preloaded maps and points of interest for the United States and Puerto Rico that make the Magellan RoadMate 1210 ideal for both business trips and vacations.

With millions of points of interest at your command you can easily locate gas stations, restaurants, ATMs, coffee shops, and much more.

When you're traveling down the Interstate and need to find gas, food, or lodging in a hurry, touch the highway exit POI icon to see which upcoming highway exits have the services you need.

Do you often find yourself tied up in traffic? The RoadMate 1210 is Traffic Link compatible, offering live onscreen traffic-incident reports. (The Traffic Link accessory is sold separately).

Turn it on and go!
The Magellan RoadMate 1210 is loaded with premier features you'll need to get you where you want to go.

Magellan RoadMate 1210 Features

• OneTouch favorites menu affords instant access to your personalized bookmarks of favorite places and searches anywhere you travel. With a single touch, find your favorite cafe or restaurant when you're traveling within any city.
• 3.5-inch color touch screen provides powerful navigation that's easy to view and use.
• QuickSpell with SmartCity search narrows your address and city searches, making destination entry easy.
• Multi-destination routing with route optimization lets you plan your trip with multiple stops in the order you want or optimize a trip for the most efficient route, saving you time and money.
• Preloaded maps give you information and directions as you travel the United States and Puerto Rico.
• Millions of points of interest (POIs) help you easily find gas stations, restaurants, ATMs, coffee shops, and much more.
• Highway exit POIs search shows you gas stations, restaurants, hotels, and more near upcoming highway exits.
• Branded POIs display your favorite coffee shops, restaurants, and more by their respective logos.
• Traffic Link provides live, onscreen traffic notification updates. (This accessory is sold separately).
• Customizable route method lets you select the shortest distance, fastest time, most use of freeways, or least use of freeways to customize your route.
• Address book enables you to create and store contact information.
• Auto night view adjusts your screen's color and contrast for easy night viewing.
• Automatic re-route lets you quickly get back on track in case you missed a turn.
• Plan route on map by simply touching a destination on the map screen and then directly routing to it.
• Rechargeable battery gives you the freedom to drive wireless or plan your trip when your vehicle's engine is turned off.

What's in the Box
RoadMate 1210 GPS receiver, Pre-loaded maps of the contiguous United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, Windshield mount, Adhesive disc for dash mounting, Vehicle power adapter, User handbook

Product Description

The newly redesigned Magellan RoadMate 1210 GPS device boasts a 3.5-Inch color touch screen and ultra-thin design, delivering powerful navigation in a compact package. This easy-to-use device gives you confidence while on the road with premium features including: the exclusive OneTouch menu, QuickSpell with SmartCity search, millions of points of interest, multi-destination routing, and pre-loaded maps of the contiguous United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. The OneTouch menu with personalized search icons lets you easily bookmark favorite destinations so you can access them anywhere you travel. Find your favorite café or restaurant in any city with a single touch. The RoadMate 1210 navigation device delivers your favorites at your fingertips.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, Low Cost Portable GPS Unit, July 19, 2009

By	Gregg Eldred (Avon Lake, OH USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Magellan RoadMate 1210 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)

(What's this?)

I was provided an evaluation unit of the Magellen Roadmate 1210 Portable GPS Navigator. This is not my first experience with a portable GPS unit, I have been using a TomTom One for a couple of years.

Upon opening the box, you will find the GPS (pre-loaded with maps of the United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico), vehicle power adapter, windshield mount, adhesive mount for your dashboard, and a small instruction booklet. It comes charged, so that you can immediately begin using it. Once you have entered your home address, you are basically ready to go. I don't think that you can get a simpler setup.

This is a fairly thin unit and the screen, at 3.5", should be good enough for a lot of people. The windshield mount is excellent; once attached to the windshield, it is impossible to move the mount. And the GPS remains in place, benefiting from a very good attachment to the mount, yet the unit can be adjusted quickly and easily. You will not need to worry about the GPS moving during normal driving, either from the mount or the attachment. Entering destinations is very fast. As you begin to type a city, the Magellen begins to guess your destination. You do not have to change states, like on other units. If you want to go to, say, "Dearborn, Michigan," start by typing "dearb" it will fill out the rest, showing you "Dearborn, MI." It tries to auto complete the street, as well. Another feature of this unit is that as you type a destination, it removes letters from the keyboard, which makes entering the remaining data easy. It is also a little unnerving as it auto completes the names (as in, "how does it do that?"). For the mounts and the software alone, this is an extremely good unit. The default maps are much more up-to-date than I expected. Recent road additions (within the last year or so) in my area are reflected in this unit.

It is not without its issues, however. If you want to take advantage of map upgrades, or to add new maps and Points of Interest (POI), you will have to purchase a special USB cable ($15 list). If you want to get live traffic, that is also an additional cost for the vehicle adapter ($80 list). However, you do receive traffic updates for "life." While traveling, you will notice that the map "jumps." It may be to poor signal strength or a peculiarity in the software, but if you are really watching the travel indicator, you will see that it leaps ahead at times. Also, I noticed that street names pop in and out of the map as I was driving. The keyboard drives me crazy. I looked through all of the settings and could not discover how to change it from "ABCDEF" to "QWERTY." For a person that lives on a computer, it is very frustrating to have to type on an unfamiliar keyboard. Not having a way to change it to the way I want to type makes entering destinations "challenging." Finally, this unit takes a while to boot up. I think that it takes somewhere between 30-40 seconds to start up. And once it does boot up, you will want to wait for it to find a signal. Many is the time where I entered my destination, started on the trip, and waited for the GPS to get a signal and catch up to me.

For the price point, this is a very good portable GPS. Just be prepared to purchase additional cables to get the full features of this unit.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great No-Frills Starter GPS, September 12, 2009

By	M. Pickering (MI, USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Magellan RoadMate 1210 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)

(What's this?)

Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation devices were expensive luxury items only a few years ago. But with advancements in technology, these devices have become far more powerful and much less expensive these days. Because of these factors, GPS sales are on the rise, and the major GPS manufacturers are scurrying to cover all the bases and offer all of the desired features at attractive price points. While some of these devices also act as MP3 music players, show picture slideshows, and even offer Bluetooth connectivity with your cell phone, not all of us desire these frills or want to pay for things we really don't need. For those of us that just want a simple GPS navigation aid, to help us get to our intended destinations, and don't want to overwhelm our bank account to acquire such an item, Magellan offers the low cost RoadMate 1210; a no-frills pocket-size navigation device with a 3.5-inch color touch screen.

The Magellan RoadMate 1210 comes preloaded with maps and points of interest for the contiguous 48 United States, as well as Hawaii and Puerto Rico. It offers a OneTouch favorites menu, providing instant access to your favorite places and searches, and makes it easy to search for your favorite points of interest, such as a restaurant, hotel, store, etc. Entering your destination is easy with the touch screen keyboard, although it is NOT a standard QWERTY style keyboard like most of the higher end GPS devices offer. With Magellan's "QuickSpell with SmartCity search" feature, the device will simplify your address entry by auto-completing your address and city searches based on matches in its built-in database.

The 1210's accuracy is rated at 10-16 feet (3 to 5 meters), and the built-in rechargeable Li-ion battery will last from 2 to 3 hours, based on brightness setting of the display. The unit measures roughly 3.1" H x 3.7" W x 0.7" D, and weighs merely 4.9 oz. Of course the outer case is made of "high-impact" plastic, which is pretty common among most GPS devices manufactured today. The box contains the following: RoadMate 1210 GPS receiver, windshield mount, adhesive disc for dash mounting, vehicle power adapter, and a very basic user handbook. The handbook is more of a quick start guide, so if you want detailed information and instructions for this device you will need to download the full operator's manual from the Magellan website.

After using this device for a couple of weeks I had some real mixed feelings. I have tested and used several different GPS devices over the past few years, from many different manufacturers, so I have experienced everything from the most basic to some very feature rich models. The RoadMate 1210 is closer to the bottom of the barrel when it comes to included features. No bells and whistles here folks. The 1210 will get you there but it does so in modest style. Powering up the device and waiting for it to acquire satellites typically takes between 30 to 60 seconds, which can seem like an eternity when you are in a hurry. Entering addresses into the 1210 was a bit tedious, as I am so used to using a QWERTY style computer keyboard every day. Still, the auto-complete address feature worked nicely, usually requiring me to just start typing a few letters and it would discover the correct street name and/or city for me. Navigating with the 1210 was just as easy. The somewhat smallish 3.5" display is bright, colorful and easy to read. The voice commands are clear and easy to understand, with simple "turn left" or "turn right" type audible navigational direction. Since the 1210 does not include Text-to-Speech technology, this device will not read off street names. As with any GPS, this device will not always take you to your destination in the way you feel is most practical. But in the 12 test trips I made with the RoadMate 1210, it always got me to the correct location.

For the price I feel that the Magellan RoadMate 1210 is a pretty good buy. Although you can't expect the feature set normally found on higher priced models, Magellan still should have at least included the specific USB cable that is needed to hook the device up to your computer. This cable is needed for performing software and map updates, as well as adding more points of interest. When a cable is required to perform necessary updates to keep the item current, I think that cable should be included with the product. There is just no excuse for this exclusion. If you wish to take advantage of live traffic updates then Magellan makes you buy a special adapter, which lists for roughly eighty bucks. Ouch, that adapter costs nearly as much as the GPS device itself! Overall I think this particular model is aimed at those looking for their first GPS. While I prefer a larger LCD display, the 3.5" display of the RoadMate 1210 is adequate, provided you have it mounted fairly close to you. However, the lack of text-to-speech is a big issue for me. I don't like to have to take my eyes off the road to look for street names, and the majority of GPS navigation devices today include the text-to-speech feature, which announces the street names for you. This device will simply tell you things like "Turn left in 100 feet." Well what if you experience multiple cross streets in a busy city; which one are you supposed to turn left onto? Well for a few bucks more you can get a GPS that speaks the name of streets for you, and I would highly recommend that upgrade to everyone. For instance, the Magellan RoadMate 1220 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator is the next model up from the 1210, and it includes text-to-speech street name announcing for just a few extra dollars. While not a perfect 5 star product, the Magellan RoadMate 1210 is a decent performer and will help guide you to your destinations reliably.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Value GPS, but go for the 1220, July 13, 2009

By	E. Byers (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Magellan RoadMate 1210 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)

(What's this?)

This is a great value GPS that is almost identical to the Magellan 1220, which has TTS (Text To Speech), which reads off the road names for you. It's only a few dollars more, and it is well worth it.

That said this GPS is a great value/budget GPS. It is nearly the same as the Garmin 350 I purchased a few years ago.

-- Size/Mounting.
It's actually thinner/smaller than most of the GPS units out there. The downside is that you only get a relatively small screen, but for the majority of people out there, it's going to be good enough. It mounts on the windshield or on an adhesive pad you can apply to the dash. They work really well, although it would be nice if Magellan would have an option for a bean bag dash mount or something similiar.

-- Functionality
As far as mapping, routing, etc it works pretty well. A few times it would decide to send us in the wrong direction at the start of the route, after pushing past the initial wrong directions, it corrected itself. This may be a symptom of poor GPS signal and not waiting enough to let it acquire. If you completely don't know where you're going, this could be an issue for you.
The one annoying thing I found is the map on the screen is delayed slightly, like the GPS can't keep up. The notifications (sound/voice) are correct, so not sure what's going on.

-- Software
Magellan has some slick software. When you start putting in a town/city/etc, it will automatically remove the letters that aren't available, and will try to guess it for you, makes entering much easier. The one downside of this unit, is I couldn't easily find a way to see all the restaurants in the area, and filter. For instance I wanted to find an A&W, however i would just have to wait till it came into closeness, instead of being able to filter it and see the nearest one. There may be an obscure way to do this, I just haven't found it yet.

-- Upgrades
I only have mac's, and Magellan doesn't support them as of yet. Either way it doesn't appear as there are any updates available for this device currently, so it's not a big deal. You can access the POI's you add, and a few other things, as the GPS mounts when you add it.

Overall for the price this works very well, it essentially gives you the functionality for about half the price it would have cost you two years ago, in a tidier package, worth it (but pay a few more bucks for the TTS 1220).