A Look at the Magellan Maestro GPS Family

A Look at the Magellan Maestro GPS Family
Page content

Introduction

Magellan Maestro GPS devices are one of four lines of GPS products offered by the company. These include the “RoadMate” series, the “eXplorist” series, the “Maestro” series and the “Triton” series. The Roadmate and the Maestro are the in-car navigation products, the Explorist is really a cross over series. It can work as a road driving tool as well as an outdoor navigation device. The Triton series constitutes of handheld devices mainly meant for outdoor activities. While the Roadmate series is a set of premium devices the Maestro series are the workhorses of the car navigation devices.

This article takes a look at the Maestro family and helps you choose which one would best suit your needs. The family has 13 devices as of now and includes the following models - 5310, 4700, 4370, 4350, 4250, 4220, 4210, 4200, 3250, 3225, 3220, 3210 and the 3200.

Magellan 4700

Magellan 4350

Magellan 3250

The Family Traits

The major differences between the Magellan Maestro GPS models are in the display sizes. All the devices have a color touch screen that acts as the interactive interface, but the 5100 device has a 5-inch screen, the 4700 model has a 4.7-inch screen, while the 4370, 4350, 4250, 4220, 4210 and 4200 devices all have 4.3-inch screens. The 3250, 3225, 3220, 3210 and 3200 only have 3.5 inch screens, but the 3200 is often considered one of the top three affordable GPS systems.

All devices in the family use the SiRFstar III integrated chipset and this provides the fastest GPS acquisition on power up, as well as when coming out of GPS black spots. There are several modes available for route selection such as fastest time, shortest distance, least or most use of freeways, and avoid toll roads modes, but these are common to all GPS models. While the number of POI in the map database may vary depending on the model, the POI icons are interactive. Upon choosing them you get to see the name, address and the phone number of the services stations, restaurant or hotel/motel, and a route to the same point. The smart detour feature allows automatic detour suggestions if faced with sudden slow traffic.

“Say Where” is a useful feature on some Magellan Maestro GPS models, and it allows the devices to speak out the street name on each turn. While the Quick Spell feature lets you enter destination names with very few touch inputs. Look at this article to see what can be expected with the best touch screen devices.

Other Issues

There are differences from model to model of course, but some major items that differ are the real time traffic update, POI database, voice commands and the differences in the screen size. Traffic updates are free for life with the top of the line models, while the others have to pay a subscription if the model is traffic ready. While some models have 1.3 million POI points, others have 6 million POI data. Some models allow hands free calling, others don’t. An MP3 player, FM receiver and photo viewer also appear in some models. Basically, the more you pay, the more features you get, but again this is true of more GPS systems.