Magellan RoadMate 1220 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator
- Personalize OneTouch search icons with your favorite places
- Announces street obloquy and directions at apiece turn Text To Speech
- Features a portable 3.5-Inch color touch screen
- QuickSpell with Smart City search narrows your address and city entries
- Permits multi-destination routing
The newly redesigned navigator RoadMate 1220 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, spoken street names, multi-destination routing, and pre-loaded maps of the contiguous United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. The OneTouch m
List Price: $ 159.99
Price:
Good navigator, but buggy voice instructions and zooming bug make it unsafe,
Competition is good and I am happy to see another respectful contender in the GPS navigation arena. But competition is competition, so for the purpose of this review I have borrowed my wife’s Garmin Nuvi and ignoring other drivers raced eyebrows, drove around for several weeks with two GPS navigators.
First, what I really like about RoadMate:
- it is small and slick and fits into my shirt pocket
- it has three hours of battery life
- it has fast and very well organized user interface
- its address input feature is just great; in general I am able to enter a destination address in RoadMate two times faster than in Garmin.
- RoadMate shows exit services and has lot of useful location-sensitive information only a touch away
- it has a pretty loud speaker
- it finds satellites faster than Garmin and loses them less frequently
- when building the route, it allows you to select several travel options for that route (fastest, shortest, most highways)
- it understand multiple intermediate points and optimize the route among them
Now, things I am not particularly fond of:
- the screen is two times dimmer than Garmin’s screen, but still perfectly usable
- it takes RoadMate 35 seconds to start up (Garmin’s startup time is 20 secs)
- it never bother informing the driver when it lost satellite reception, conveniently freezing the display with no further directions
- it never informs the driver about missing a turn, recalculating the route in silence (now I appreciate Garmin’s “recalculating” message)
- the map has bugs and is not yet upgradeable (I hope this is temporary)
- no maps for countries other than USA and Mexico are available (I hope this is temporary too)
- the so called 3D map is hardly 3D and has limited zoom capabilities
- the text to speech system suffers from chronic tonsillitis and is sometimes difficult to understand
Now for real problems:
It is sad when an almost perfect design is nearly destroyed by two drawbacks. Each problem may be relatively minor, but their combined effect is disastrous.
The first small, annoying bug: when the unit zooms into the map at an intersection, it never returns back to the original zoom. This means that after the first turn you get maximum zoom and unless you adjust it manually while driving, you have no clue as to what lies ahead.
This problem alone could be OK if not for numerous bugs in voice prompts. This is the part where improvements are overdue.
RoadMate voice guidelines software is way behind the competition. It may tell you to “stay on the current road” several times and then suddenly tell you to take exit. It may bother you with multiple advices to “stay on the current road” without any visible reason. At the fork it may or may not tell you whether to keep left or right. It may prompt you to take a “slight turn” just because road bends but sometimes it really means a turn. Even worse – if right exit happens to bend to the left, the unit sometimes tells you to take a “slight left turn”.
To be frank, voice prompts are usually correct, but bugs mentioned above are too often. In the end I just want to see the next turn at the unit’s screen.
It all boils down to the simple question – would you turn your attention to the road and rely on buggy instructions or start adjusting zoom level at 3.5 inch GPS screen?
In comparison, Garmin unfailingly starts prompting you for any turn enough in advance to let you make any necessary changes, and keeps reminding you of the turn. It almost never makes mistakes in voice instructions. It always tells you whether to keep left or right. Also, Garmin always zooms out to show the next turn (unless the next turn is a few hundred miles away).
Well, RoadMate is not a terrible GPS system, but in light of other choices, I would not necessarily recommend this one.
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|Perfect for the techno-challenged!,
I HATE my husband’s GPS (different brand). It’s complicated; the last couple of times I’ve invited Suzy (that’s her name) along for the ride, she was still insisting I make a U-turn as I was pulling into my destination–and she still thinks we live on the opposite side of the street. To be honest, Suzy is rather high maintenance and not very smart but my husband is inexplicably infatuated. So enamored is he in fact that I caved in to pressure and grudgingly agreed that yeah, I probably needed a GPS of my own, though my private resolution was to never turn it on.
Then Lola came into my life and I’m thrilled to bits with her! It took her a few minutes to figure out where she was, but after that she was good to go. The packaging says to allow four minutes, but it was more like eight or nine. Since I have no intention of permanently attaching her to my car, the size is just perfect for purse popping. I was afraid the screen would be too small but it’s perfect. The colors and definition are vivid enough to be seen even in sunlight.
THE BEST PARTS: Lola not only knows exactly where I live, she knows everything about the miniscule community in which I live and everything about everywhere else I go that’s not so miniscule. In a nanosecond, she recommends restaurants, movies and live entertainment. The really cool thing was when I’d steeled myself to the tedious task of programming in addresses of places I go (and usually get lost enroute) and discovered they were already there. Lola warns of turns with the most melodious chimes and there are some great options on the menu–like fastest or shortest route, most or least freeway and detours. There’s also the option of getting directions in the form of a list of the turns required, which is great for those of us who get dizzy looking at the maps. And Lola has never, ever urged a U-turn, which is usually illegal in my state.
The touchscreen navigation is awesome. No kidding. You have to tell Suzy exactly where you’re going, but with one touch, Lola KNOWS! Maybe I’m easily impressed, but I think that’s pure genius.
For techno-idiots like me, who still can’t operate a digital camera, this little Magellan is perfect. I have no idea what the specs are and pray I’ll never need tech support because I don’t speak tech. All I care about is that Lola will keep me from getting lost and that she does, in spades. User friendly, compact and brainy, Lola is the most pleasant surprise I’ve had lately, and I think it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
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|Great bang for the buck,
I was a loyal Garmin user for years. Unfortunately the
Nuvi’s are a step back from the old reliable Street Pilots.
They have less features and they are way too quiet to hear
over highway noise.
What I really liked:
- Compact, fits in a shirt pocket
- Loud speaker, I can hear it well over the highway
and radio noise.
- Much faster and responsive than earlier Magellans.
- Very sensitive receiver ! I tried one out in a Best Buy
and indoors the GPS was getting a strong signal ! I haven’t
tried this in the city yet, but I gave up on the Nuvi because it
was constantly losing its signal. The Street Pilot never did that.
- Some people have said recalculate and mapping time is very slow.
I did not find this the case.
What I didn’t like:
- No way to add your own POI’s from a file. You
can’t download additional POI’s and install them.
- USB power connector. For some reason they designed the
unit with a right angle plug. To get the GPS in and out of
its holster you must first unplug the power connector.
- Manual not terribly great. A lot of features are really
under documented.
Other thoughts:
The one touch menu is very convenient, I wish they made the
access button for it a little bigger, my big fingers sometimes
have trouble bringing it up with that little icon in the corner
of the screen.
Some people have complained about the text to speech. There are a
few glitches, and it’s not as fluid as Garmins, however I don’t think
it’s too big a deal. I don’t have any trouble understanding it.
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