294 of 301 people found the following review helpful:
A Good Navigational Tool
With an occupation that keeps me on the road, a working navigational tool is a must have. Having gone through my fair share of slow and inconsistent GPS products ranging from Garmin, TomTom and yes even Magellan through the years, one must really do their homework. After researching several systems this model kept popping up on my radar screen.
181 of 200 people found the following review helpful:
Love hate relationship
This 4700 is my 4th Magellan. The first was a 750 which was the same as the Hertz 'Never Lost'. Worked great but when the 860T hit the market I had to have it. One year ago I bought a 3250 for another car, a little "funky" but it gets me where I need to go.
Last week my old reliable 860 was unfortunately stolen from my car. So since I have had good luck with...
This review is from: Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
With an occupation that keeps me on the road, a working navigational tool is a must have. Having gone through my fair share of slow and inconsistent GPS products ranging from Garmin, TomTom and yes even Magellan through the years, one must really do their homework. After researching several systems this model kept popping up on my radar screen.
Coming out of the box, this unit worked perfectly without the usual hiccups of other systems that I have owned. Installation is simple. Downloading updates via the included USB cable was quick and without issues. Powering up is a breeze. Total time for entering starting point to destination is about 45 seconds. The One Touch screen is on the money. The menu allows for editing for one's own personal choices. I really have come to like the Predictive Traffic feature. In short, it creates alternate routes for known traffic tie ups.
Even though this system is primed for Bluetooth, not all mobile devices are compatible. The Maestro 4700 paired at times with two out of three of our cell phones. When it did pair, connections were dropped a bit more often then expected and clarity was an issue. As usual, my personal phone did not pair up at all with this system. Maybe its a great working feature with the right phone. Even if it did pair up with my go to phone, I don't see myself giving up my wireless ear piece anytime soon. This feature rates 3 stars at best.
Like every GPS system before it, Voice Command on this unit is simply a wasted feature that works when it wants to. This add on alone receives a failing grade from me. On the other hand, Spoken Street Name Guide with text to speech is clear and precise. The 3D Landmarks add on is a nice touch. I have yet to use the Find My Car feature. The free, no membership required AAA Guide is loaded with great up to date information.
The Maestro 4700 measures in at over 5" wide x 3.5" height and weighs about 6 ounces. The biggest draw for me personally is the large 4.7" color touch screen, predictive traffic, and the lane guide arrow features. The user friendly one touch interface is definitely a winner. On the downside, the Maestro 4700's screen is not viewable in all lighting conditions. Granted its not as bad as my previous model, but there is still some glare to contend with.
Quick Spell automatically fills in the blanks and makes locating a destination easy. One of the sweetest features is the lane guide arrows (Highway Lane Assist) program that sounds a bell when my next turn is coming up. It quickly guides me into the correct lane without the usual "Oops, how did I miss that exit?"
The Maestro 4700 comes preloaded with maps of the USA, Canada and Puerto Rico. Additional maps can be stored on board via SD Card. Included accessories are a windshield mount, storage pouch, dash mounting disk, car power adapter, handbook, USB cable, and an informative CD. I recommend buying a good protective case. Magellan loses major style points for not including an AC power supply plug. Unplugged, the battery provided me a little over 2 hours of power.
As with most electronics, this system includes the standard 1 year warranty. If it is returned within the applicable warranty period, Magellan will replace the defective unit. Most likely the buyer will receive a reconditioned unit of the same model or at the company's discretion another model of lesser value. I know this from personal experience. Both Magellan and Garman share this replacement policy.
Even though Magellan has made marked improvements on its GPS products the last couple of years, its customer support has always lagged behind. After my latest chats with off shore customer support, all I can say it still needs improvement. At best, it ranks three stars.
The glitches I found with both Voice Command and Bluetooth pairing undoubtedly keeps the Maestro 4700 from garnering more then a four star rating. Even with those issues this product still delivers on the basics. For me that is more then enough. Its still an above average NAVAIDS tool.
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UPDATE:10.31.09
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I've owned this system for a few months now. I've driven cross country and back and also made my monthly run up the coast. The only issue that I have had is the age old problem with NAVTEQ maps. On more then one occasion the maps placed me in the opposite direction of my destination. I don't see the folks at NAVTEQ fixing this problem any time soon because it has existed for so long. NAVTEQ mapping was an issue on my other GPS products as well. I probably have a better chance of winning the lottery rather then waiting for the folks at NAVTEQ to fix their maps. Other then that, my Magellan 4700 GPS is still on the job and doing what it does best.
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This review is from: Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
I have had this unit just over 2 weeks now, got it the first day it was released. I replaced my old Magellan 1412. Over all, I have been pleased with the functionality for price ratio.
It worked right out of the box, finding the satellite signal within a minute. I immediately liked the large screen yet a reasonably thin design. I took it to the car, and found mounting it to the windshield was a snap. So far so good.
I used immediately used it on a trip to go from Washington DC to Winston-Salem NC. It worked perfectly in terms of directions heading both up and back. Here are the things I really liked:
- The lane directions were very helpful when navigating highway interchanges. The lane directions popped up well in advance to find the right lane
- The spelling fill in function is also helpful.
- I really liked the "closest gas" button on the map screen when you are driving. I used this to locate gas (and restrooms) and it worked flawlessly. I also liked using the one-touch menu to find rest stops, resturants, etc. The nice thing is that after arriving at the interim destination, the gps then asks you if you want to continue to your final destination. I also like that you can set up your own custom one touch destinations.
- AAA points of interest are seemingly limitless.
- I found the distances and directions to be very accurate. This is a big step up from the Roadmate 1412, which often put destinations on the wrong side of the road, or would deliver weird ways to get there.
-The maps are very well laid out and easy to read. Very simple to zoom in and out on a map, and switch to 3D or 2D maps.
- Volume seemed about right to me, even with road noise at 65+ miles per hour
- The Bluetooth synced with my iPhone relatively easily. It didn't work the first time, but I rebooted the gps, and it worked right away. I was easily able to import my phone book from my iPhone, which is nice to be able to leave the phone in my pocket. If you have addresses in your phone book, you can also easily load them and map to them quickly. Volume on the phone function is ok. It could be a little louder in my opinion
- I also like that it would offer multiple detours through the Predictive Traffic function. I was able to use this on I-95 twice and it really helped to detour off a side road for a while.
Things that need Improvement:
- The Voice Command is spotty at best. I can get it to "go home", but pretty much any other command doesn't work, or the GPS gets confused on how to confirm the command. Not helpful.
- Some of the set up functions are hard to follow. For example, it's not intuitive how to navigate around in all the menus. I'm sure I'll get used to it over time, but I felt Magellan could have done a better job here.
Over all, very pleased as it's a nice upgrade over my last unit. For all the features, I feel it's very well priced.
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This review is from: Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
This 4700 is my 4th Magellan. The first was a 750 which was the same as the Hertz 'Never Lost'. Worked great but when the 860T hit the market I had to have it. One year ago I bought a 3250 for another car, a little "funky" but it gets me where I need to go.
Last week my old reliable 860 was unfortunately stolen from my car. So since I have had good luck with Magellan I started to look for a new GPS. First I purchased a RoadMate 1340 which looked good in the box but had a display that was unreadable in daylight; any daylight. Returned the 1340 and then purchased a Maestro 4700... then the fun began.
Positives: Nice display... AAA Tour Book... Clear and loud voice... mostly (not always accurate)... Ability to do multi-location routing... Basic voice commands... Bluetooth & Traffic neither of which I have used.
NEGATIVES: Constant RESTARTS: When certain locations are requested. The display reads "YOUR DEVICE NEEDS TO BE RESTARTED TO INCREASE PERFORMANCE, PLEASE WAIT WHILE YOUR DATA IS SAVED. And then the unit turns off and restarts. I have spoken with Magellan support several times in the past week and, at first, they claimed that they have had no problems before. Today they said that I should return the unit for repair. For example: I live in Connecticut and often drive to Florida, when I put in ANY address in Florida the unit restarts. This is also true for many cities in Georgia and South Carolina. If you need to go to Mobile, Alabama however no problem.
The in-putting of locations is done by Town or City not by State; so if you want to go to San Francisco and type that in you get to choose from every town in Mexico that has San Francisco in the name.
For the most part it works locally BUT, from Connecticut, you CAN NOT go to ANY city or town in Florida, as well as many cities in Georgia and South Carolina. The same error message: YOUR DEVICE NEEDS etc. appears and you can't navigate to your destination! Therefore this GPS is useless for me the way it works today.
HOPEFULLY THINGS WILL GET BETTER Added August 16, 2009
And now for some history:
The checkered history of the Magellan corporation, as we know it today, may have contributed to some of the issues that have been illuminated in this and other forums. Since my first experience with Magellan labeled products was positive, I tried to stay with a known entity. In the early 1980's I bought a Magellan Loran C for marine use. It ALWAYS worked providing me with accurate TD's and, with the Loran C overprinted charts got me to my waypoints and destinations. BTW Loran was developed by the Military as Loran A during WW II.
While GPS was not developed until the late 1970's and early 1980's it was not available for commercial use until the mid 1980's. All through this period Magellan, or as it was previously known as Navistar, was in the forefront of navigation product development. Later, a number of Silicon Valley companies were involved with or owned Magellan. In 2001 Thales, a French based Fortune 500 communications and defense company acquired Magellan and tried/did change Magellan's name to Thales Navigation; not a household name.
Five years later, in 2006, Thales sold Thales Navigation to an Investment group named Shah Capital Partners which changed the name back to Magellan. Recently, in January of this year, Magellan was acquired by MiTAC, a Taiwan based company that is, along with other products, in the GPS business. MiTAC owns Mio and NAVMAN and now Magellan. To me, it looks like MiTAC is committed to the GPS marketplace.
From the foregoing, one might see that while Magellan had some less than satisfying marriages in recent times, its beginnings were superb.
Now we have an industry (popular priced GPS devices) that brings out new products every few months just to keep up with the competition. Often these products are released; "not ready for prime time". Virtually all of the companies in this arena (Magellan included), have to recall or upgrade or `ship' updated firmware or hardware. Even the industry leader (by units shipped) Garmin/Nuvi have had their share of problems. What is critical to the success of these companies, in my opinion, is the manner in which Customer Service is addressed. Starting with the contracted, offshore-based telephone and e-mail support, without an escalation plan to the refusal to acknowledge that a problem is not a one off.
I, for one, am encouraged that Magellan is now owned by MiTAC. I like my new Maestro 4700, warts and all, and in time hope to love it when it works as well as my stolen 860t did. For now I will do `workarounds'.
That's my opinion, I could be wrong.
UPDATE: 4/29/10 Finally, after 2 updates from Magellan, everything works as it should! There are no problems, all locations can be entered and no error messages or restarts appear.
I can now say works like a Swiss watch and, in my opinion, the Magellan Maestro 7400 is the best implementation of a GPS for the price. Five stars!
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This review is from: Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
In addition to this Magellan, I also own a Garmin Nuvi (200W series). The Magellan simply is better in every category I can think of. Much more customizable map display options, better speaker, bigger screen, "one touch" programmable buttons, much faster satellite aquisition, and more. I just came back from a 1500 mile round trip that had a destination of a remote lake house outside of Atlanta. My wife's built in Toyota GPS didn't even recognize the address. This unit brought us to the driveway! This is a very advanced unit at a rediculous low price. The lane assist was great on a trip like this, as was the highway exit information button. I've had a number of GPS units and this one is by far the best so far. Highly recommended.
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This review is from: Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
We purchased this after returning a Garmin 755T (which I also reviewed) because we had terrible routing issues with that unit.
We then took the same test trip with the Magellan that we took with the Garmin to Myrtle Beach. The Magellan had perfect routing on every trip we took whether it was for hundreds of miles or just ten miles. The route was consistent and took us the fastest way each time. The Magellan routing was so consistent that I would be willing to throw my map away if it could only overcome its two main problems (you can't hear it or see it). The Magellan wins hands down over the Garmin on routing.
Terrible voice
There are not a lot of voice choices (2), and they are very hard to understand. I am pretty sure the woman must be stuffing her face with a giant sandwich as she's talking because she sounds like she's talking with her mouth completely full making it almost impossible to understand. She's loud, just not clear. To make matters worse, she puts in a lot of info that you don't really need and in the wrong order so its hard to pick out what you do need. For example - Instead of saying exit at exit 252 at I-40 W, she says exit at Rocky Point, West I-40 West, Ashton, 252. This may sound picky, but when you already can't understand her because she's apparently eating a giant sub, and you have no idea where Rocky point or Ashton are, it makes it harder to understand. If they want to put the town names in, fine, group it together, so you don't have to try to extract the info from the middle of her garbled sentence. The Garmin 755t had no problem with the voice or arrangement of the information.
Hard to see screen.
The graphics are easy to read and fine, BUT you have to be looking squarely at the screen - very difficult to achieve in a car situation. If you are looking at this screen in any direction except directly center, the glare is so bad that you can not see anything on the screen. Two people can not see this GPS and it is difficult to get it in just the right angle for one to see. And the driver has to be able to see the screen since you will almost always have to read the directions since you can't understand her voice. The Garmin 755t could be seen from any angle and by everyone in the car with no glare problems.
Lane Assist
The lane assist popped up several times and worked wonderfully. We took the Garmin 755t on this same trip and the lane assist never popped up once.
Avoid route
The Magellan has an avoid route feature which makes it so easy to change your route should you know about an issue with the route (like construction). This makes life so much easier and is the best feature the Magellan has. The Garmin 755t has no such feature and instead you have to listen to her "recalculating" until she finally decides to change the route to the way you want to go making it much harder to plan in advance.
Points of interest
Both the Magellan and the Garmin 755t are average here. Neither does a good job outside a mega cities and you may or may not find what you're looking for. The Magellan has the AAA tourbook for looking up touristy things but that is a separate button and search from the standard POIs & I'm not sure its more comprehensive than the standard POIs.
Summary
This Magellan has superior routing, fine graphics, a terrible voice and an impossible to see screen due to heavy glare.
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This review is from: Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
I got the Magellan Maestro 4700 from BestBuy before Amazon had it in stock. Immediately opened the box to use it for my trip back home. It rings a bell in advance before your next maneuver, allowing ample time for you to make a lane change.
The Bluetooth had a few kinks while connecting to my LG Shine, it took two tries after it froze the first time, but worked perfectly afterward. The sound quality is fine, the person on the other end said it sounded too soft, so one might need to speak a little louder than usual.
Voice recognition was very bad. It takes too long to understand what you are saying and it is useless, I turn it off permanently. A list of voice commands can be found in Magellan's online manual. However, it does not explain how to use the "Find your car" feature, so I am in the dark to how to use it.
Lane guidance is pretty useful, but there was one incident when exiting, there was two signs to I-90 E, and I-90 W, with three arrows pointing up, confusing to know whether the middle arrow leads to E or W. Overall, guidance is very good as text-to-speech helps to let the driver know which street to turn on.
The unit can be very slow at times while searching for a route or starting up. It takes about a minute from start to set your destination. The AAA guidebook and Magellan's POIs are great. Predictive traffic was quite useless as well, having not encountered any incidents which let the feature prove itself worthy. The windshield mount works badly with the charger, you have to mount the unit on the car, and then plug it into the port at the bottom of the unit, right next to the base supporting the unit. Quite a hassle as you cannot see the port and you have to guess on the location. Should have just put it by the bottom right corner? By the way, the battery lasts for less than two hours.
Overall, a reliable unit from Magellan... now I won't lose my way again! A tip: if anyone as a USB wall charger, that will work to charge the unit so you do not have to get the AC charger or sit in the car and wait for it to charge - you cannot plug it into the computer to charge for some reason... the screen stays on.
UPDATE
I have contacted Magellan on how to use the Find your car feature with pedestrian mode over two days ago but no reply! Nothing on the manual about pedestrian mode either.
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This review is from: Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
After a few weeks of researching a GPS unit for my wife, it was a toss-up between the Garmin 855 and the Magellan 4700. Voice Recognition (VR) was a must for my wife to use it. I wanted her hands on the wheel.
The 4700 became our final choice based on screen size, intuitive ease of data entry, the addition of Bluetooth, and no cost traffic alerts (when we finally buy the FM receiver wire).
I originally ordered from Amazon but their delivery outlook was not good, and I went with BB. It saved me $7 but cost me NJ tax. Net additional expense was $5.
Since then:
. Loaded the 2.06 Software update without incident in about 10 minutes. It was easy.
. Satellite acquisition has been fast .... +/- 20 seconds.
. Routing is reasonably quick. Alternate routes take a bit longer.
. The map system found our Delaware home address (in a remote new community)
that other GPS's have failed to locate.
. We have not traveled extensively with it yet, but from what we see the 4700
routing process sometimes uses less than optimal routing.
. TTS voice prompts are somewhat garbled but definitely discernible.
. The POI's are very extensive and pretty useful.
. Speaker volume is excellent.
. Voice recognition is usable but requires a bit of refinement. It sometimes takes a few
attempts to register voice commands. It does however aid in hands free driving.
. Configured three family phones for Bluetooth very quickly. Phone reception on both
ends is quite good.
. One phone took three tries to connect to Bluetooth but finally did.
. Imported all phone addresses without incident. Over 225 entries.
. Calls from the address book could be initiated by the GPS easily.
. We set all 9 Speed dial entries. All worked fine.
. Address entry is easy, but we are experiencing the issue of voice acknowledgment
of letters that do not register on the screen during entry.
. Note: Garmin 855 is hands down a better VR unit in this regard but lacks some of the
4700 features and larger screen size.
. I find the touch screen a bit unresponsive at times but other family members do not.
We suspect the next Software update (2.20 ?) will refine this unit to the point where it will be a five star device. Contrary to other 4700 owners we found the unit quite stable & remarkably sophisticated for a unit that costs under $175. A few years ago this would have cost $1000.
RECOMMENDED without hesitation.
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This review is from: Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
This unit by far has the best features and usefulness for the price! The problem is that there have some serious technical problems with the routing function (what we buy the unit for) and mapping a route function. You can see the various discussions yourself on[...] and the GPSPassions forum in the Magellan 4700 section. Many of us have had our units reboot themselves when plotting trips in several areas of the country, making the unit essentially useless for those users. Magellan is supposedly trying to fix the issue, but there is no news on their website, only comments from users that they are or are not working on the fix and when it might be ready. Meanwhile the unit continues to be sold on line and in retail stores, despite the serious problem. If this unit is updated to work properly, I will keep it and highly recommend it for its many useful (if it works!) functions. If Magellan fails to provide a fix to the problem, for me the unit is totally useless!
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This review is from: Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
This GPS gives intelligent routing and is very easy to use. I compared it in road tests with a Garmin 765T. I'm returning the Garmin.
I am not intending to try to disparage Garmin here. I'm hoping to let you know with what I am comparing this GPS when I say it is excellent. After all, only these two GPS'es comprise my hands-on experience with such units.
The benefit I want most from a GPS is accurate navigation assistance. Magellan delivers on this and the Garmin does not. That's about it and that's my main point. The Magellan excelled at keeping me on the best roads and getting me to my destinations with minimal stress and frustration. The Garmin 765T often told me to turn one way while the arrow pointed the other way and seems to prefer looping FAR around cities regardless of the chosen routing options and traffic conditions. The Garmin even took me off interstates for no reason and then put me back on the same road 20 miles later to continue the trip.
Garmin support told me to set "via" points to stop this problem but I prefer to just send it back and stick with the 4700 that requires less fiddling.
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This review is from: Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator (Electronics)
Overall Rating: 4.5 stars
I love this unit! I had a Magellan Maestro 3100 for 3 years and I really loved it. When I broke it last week I almost cried. I could have bought a new one for $70 on Amazon, but I saw this one and thought it looked nice and seemed to have great features. I was not disappointed. It is quick to aquire a signal (less than 30 seconds if outdoors, under 2 minutes indoors) and let's you know when it doesn't have one yet (my old 3100 would still think it was wherever I had last turned it off and took forever to reset). With the exception of the internal mic, all features work perfectly and I am in love.
Pros:
-Quick signal
-AAA Guidebook- A really neat feature I never would have thought I'd want, but possibly cannot live without now.
-"Nearest" feature- I can click "nearest gas" instead of going through the whole POI menu, genius!
-Size of unit and screen
-Excellent routing and rerouting
Cons:
-Microphone- The bluetooth works well with my LG EnV2 when I call people I can hear them perfectly, but they can't hear me. Voice recognition is shoddy at best.
Tips:
-Can't find a case? Even though it doesn't mention it, mine came with a case. But, it's exposed on one end so I don't want to put it in my purse that way. However, portable hard drive cases are the perfect size. The ones by case logic and builtny both work great.
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