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Magellan RoadMate 300 GPS Portable NavigatorUser Review: - Great value for the priceI have been using the Roadmate 300 for about one month now and really like it. I was interested in the Garmin C series but purchased the RM300 because of some added functionality, the abilty to clearly see labeled cross streets, the bright screen, the price, the shape/portability of the unit (I fly to cities and then drive -this unit fits nicely in my briefcase.) Overall I am happy with the RM300. It generally chooses the same routes I would although occasionally chooses a round-about route. I find myself looking at the map more than I thought I would so good thing it is fairly large, bright, easy to read, and doesn't get too washed out by the sun. I also like the fact the unit shows the current street and next turn street while navigating. There are some areas I would recommend for improvement. I would like a way to add vias or a POI stops in the middle of a route while traveling. For example, on a long trip while navigating, it would be nice to be able to look up gas stations or restaurants without exiting the existing route. You can see the POI while routing in certain map views but this isn't too effective. The maps seems to be at least 2 years or older in some cases. Also, the POI database is not very robust. Many common and long term restaurants and gas stations are missing and there are few retail stores included. Finally, the map software takes some getting used to and could be simplified, but most PC literate folks should not have a problem. Also, the unit only follows your PC created trip route if you use it as a series of shorter routes. For example, I created a route to travel on roads that the unit would not route me on by adding trip points along the way. These trips points are listed in the trip route. If you route to the final destination, the unit will try to select the route the way it is programmed to go instead on following the trip route you created. I added a 1GB SD card and have loaded over half the states with lots of room to spare. One major concern I have read about is the time the unit takes to acquire satellites. If moving around with the unit off (like flying to another city), it is important to enter the current location as this greatly speeds up the satellite acquisition. I have not had significant problems acquiring satellites. All in all this unit works well especially for the price. User Review:  - Impressive unitJust received the unit this past week and put it through it's paces over the weekend. No problem with initial satellite lock, took maybe 2 minutes. I followed the advice in earlier reviews here and entered my initial location. Also have an external antenna to make things easier. Items to consider: The unit does suggest some roundabout routes in my area, where I know of shortcuts to access the interstates. No problem, it just recalculated the route within 10-15 seconds ever time I ignored its directions. On the other hand it found a much more efficient route to a location that I hadn't discovered before. Great advance turn voice prompts. Mapping is impressive overall, although there are some quirkly things on the maps (such as a town hall for a town severals towns away shows up in the middle of my town. The German Biergarten in Disney's Epcot is shown on the entry driveway to Epcot. That's being a bit picky perhaps. The Points of Interest database is impressive. Maps are excellent. Takes a short while to learn all the features, but easy to program once you've spent some time with the unit and the software. Did a full install of the software and started to load files on my 1G SD card. Well worth the price here, especially after the $50 rebate and the free preloaded 256K SD map card. User Review: - This is a great little GPS reciever!This is a great little GPS reciever! The last four summers I have traveled with the youth group from my church, to large cities. This year we headed for San Francisco. It is hard to find your way around a new place let alone having a van full of teenagers. Sometimes they can help with the map and sometimes they can't. I bought the Magellan 300 four hours before our flight left. I came home installed the software on my laptop. Then I used the mapping software to load up San Francisco and the surrounding area. I found it amazing how much data you can load up. It worked great and I am really happy that I took it with me. Since I wasn't used to using the Magellan I did turn to early a couple of times. No problem just keep going and she will let you know how to get there another way. The last day, as we were heading into the city for a day of site seeing. We got caught in a freeway traffic jam. I took an exit off and we took take a leisurely drive through the city. Going anywhere we wanted knowing that it didn't matter because we always had a route to get us where we were going. It can take a few minutes to locate when you turn it on. One time it took ten minutes but I think the antenna had come out a little. Most times it was less than a minute. For the last week I have been using at work and I just love it! No more time wasted straining to read a map at the stoplights. User Review: - Magellan RoadMate 300 generally works well, would recommend.I was up an running within the hour after opening the box. The steps I followed were as follows: 1) Install the software which comes in 2 CDROMs. I chose the "full install" option to transfer all the map data to my PC 2) Created one region with Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio since this is the general area where I will be using this unit. This region was just under the built-in memory's free space! 3) Downlaoded the map file created above to the Unit 4) Installed the window mount bracket with the Magellan Roadmate 300 on the bracket. Connected to the cigarette lighter power source. Turned unit on and I was up and running. The first time I turned on the unit it took about 5 minutes for the unit to acquire a Satellite signal. After that the signal acquisition tended to be pretty quick. I tested by driving around town and routing to known locations. It works just fine for the most part. Sometimes it does give a strange route but if you follow the route you will get to your intended destination. I would recommend this unit to someone who has a serious need to frequently computing routes in a highly congested city like Boston. One peeve I have is the low memory (256 mb) that this unit comes with. With flash memory so cheap why not put in at least 1 Gig? I am sure the price point of this unit ($500) can easily support more memory. Other than this I am quite happy with the purchase. If you purchase before July 2 you can get a $50 rebate from Magellan (www.magellangps.com) and if you register your unit they will send you a free 256 mb SD card. User Review: - excellent software support and free preload SD mapI've purchased my Roadmate 300 for my upcoming trip to Maine this weekend. Like many users, the Roadmate takes a long time to acquire satellite signals. However, after reading several reviews from Roadmate users, I've tried to acquire satellite signals by manually setting the GPS LOCATION by entering my street name..... and to my amazement, the gps was up and running in less than 2-3 minutes. I've also took the advise of other GPS owners to download current firmware. If you are still using the original firmware, you should download the newest v1.65. Once you've upload the firmware, the touch screen will increase its response time, and fix several bugs. https://www.magellangps.com/en/support/products/MRM300NA_update165.asp My only complaint is the amount of time it took me to fiddle with the software. I'm no rocket scientist, but I had to download the manual (pdf) from Magellan website to understand the sequence of loading detailed maps to the Roadmate 300. I thought about buying a SD card to load the Northeastern map into the Roadmate 300, but Magellan offered me free preload Northeastern SD card during product registration. My overall experience with the Roadmate 300 so far is very good especially for the price ($390) and the excellent (software) support by Magellan. |
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