Accessories

I upgraded, and regret it, read this!
I had the lower model Maestro 3250 and Loved it. I gave it to my daughter as she will be moving out soon, and I upgraded to the 4250 for the bluetooth capability as well as the voice recognition which would be great. Well, it's NOT!

The bluetooth volume is so low you cannot hear the caller. The volume is set all the way up and it is completely unusable! Worthless bluetooth!

The voice command is also very bothersome! You cannot insert an address by voice which is the most cumbersome thing you have to do with the GPS. Plus it often asks for a voice command while I am talking to a passenger. There are no voice command instructions in the manual so you have to try about a thousand words to try to access the voice command mode. Once you learn that the access word is "Magellan" it is more usable, however while carrying on a conversation with other people in the car, the dang GPS recognizes some word as "Magellan"! and asks for a voice command! Very Irritating!!!!!!!

It does have many more points of interest than the 3250 had and it also announces the street name of your next turn which is very helpful versus simply turn left.

I would recommend another model with many points of interest, but avoid the bluetooth and voice commands.

PLEASED WITH MY MAESTRO GPS
Based on somewhat limited use to date, I am pleased with my new Magellan Maestro 4250 GPS. I look forward to a long trip pending later this month. I did note one strange result, however: It initially showed the fastest route from Claremont, CA to Chico, Ca as 1381 miles via Barstow and Reno, etc. The correct route is exactly 500 miles. Had I not made the drive a number of time in the past, I might have followed the incorrect route. (I did report this to Tech Support.) Meanwhile, I do like the large screen and the clear and understandable voice.

I was also disappointed that the only manual is the one on the cd, requiring me to print out the 82 pages to keep in my car for reference.

Ok, but not great...
I have been using GPS devices for a few years. I used Mapopolis on my Dell Axim, I own two hand helds for hiking, both by Magellan. My first real automotive GPS was a small Garmin I3, and then I upgraded to a Garmin Nuvi 350.

Recently my Garmin Nuvi stopped acquiring satellites after only 13 months of use, so I decided to switch brands and tried the Maestro 4250.

After using the Maestro for only one week I have decided to return it. The Garmins are just far superior to Magellan in the way the maps look, and more importantly the routing engine in Garmin picks better routes based on my experience of driving routes I am very familiar with.

Luckily I called Garmin and they are going to replace my unit with a refurbished one, even though it is a month outside the warranty.

Two times this week using the Maestro it had locked up on me and I had to reset the unit with a paperclip in a small hole in the unit. Now I don't always carry paperclips around with me, and I would have been screwed had I been on a road trip. Also I did upgrade to the most recent firmware on the Maestro before I began using it.

The Bluetooth function on the Maestro was not very good, I was able to sync with two LG phones. The voice quality wasn't that great, but it was useable. My address book did not sync with the unit, only the phone numbers showed up.

The voice recognition works only if your windows are rolled up and the stereo is off, and there is not a lot of road noise, and even then its functionality is very limited and not ready for prime time.

Traffic updates from what I have noticed are not that accurate and not that useful. Better off turning to a local traffic radio station.

The Magellan does boot up faster than the Garmin, and it also acquires satellites and locks on faster than the Garmin and the build quality even appears to be better on the Magellan, but none of that makes any difference if it doesn't do it's main function... Navigating.

With the Magellan I went on a road trip up to Bear Mt. in NY state.. A few times a came upon roundabouts on Seven Lakes Drive, which can be very confusing on which exit to take. While I was driving around the roundabout the cursor was lagging behind the map screen so you really couldn't tell which exit to get off. Ok, so I had my stereo on and didn't hear the unit telling me where to get off, the map screen did me no good. The Garmin again performs much better in that respect.

I won't say that I'll never try Magellan units again, but for now I will stick with Garmin because I trust them and am more experienced with them.

No matter what unit you decide to buy, always bring maps, or printouts of your route with you. You never know when your unit will lock up or stop working.

Worth Buying it!
Worth buying it - after checking all the reviews and comments on the web. I finally give it a shot. All the reviews on Amazom.com are pretty accurate and they are $50 cheaper at Amazon.com than Costco.

I am a mid-age chick who has no sense of directions. The POI and re-routing functions really helps me a lot. Especially when I go for sales trips and could not locate the destinations. With this little devil, I don't need to go to mapqeust.com anymore and can smoothly arrive my destination without reading the paper map.

I believe this is a marriage/relationship saver - it help me to shout up my finance's endless unwanted advice and his detour tips. Oh boy... if I could have this GPS years ago - it can really diminsh all the unnecessary fights on the road!

A good starter GPS
After doing the research I purchased the Magellan 4250. It didn't have all the features I would have liked but has some that other more expensive units did not & despite some of the complaints I read I decided that if AAA recommended it then it couldn't be all bad.

Here's what I discovered:
1. A GPS is not for areas you already are fully familiar with. It will not usually route you the way you would normally go. But it will get you there in a reasonable manner. If I am in an area I don't know, I have full confidence that the Magellan will do a good job getting me where I want to go.
2. I was concerned about the screen freezing I had read about & my screen has frozen once. I had a problem getting it to reset until I realized I had a SD card inserted, once I took the card out and did a reset it came back just fine.
3. Haven't used the bluetooth while driving, but it will pair with my Razr V3. It would be nice if it had a way to connect an external microphone and if you could transfer your cells phonebook to it.
4. My area doesn't have FM Traffic so can't speak on that.
5. Maps are always going to be a problem since things change so much. I figure it is just something you have to deal with it regardless of which GPS one gets.
6. The voice recognition works reasonabbly well in my Corolla and the Text to Speech is understandable. I would have liked to be able to connect it to my radio with the USB or an Aux out but it doesn't have that ability.
A high end Garmin GPS would have had nearly all the features I would have liked to have but at more than twice the price I wasn't willing to "experiment" with GPS at that level.
Finally, IMO, I think that the Magellan 4250 is a great beginners GPS unit. It gives you a lot of features and flexibility at a reasonable price. I bought mine here at Amazon for $260 and am very happy with it.