Magellan RoadMate 700 - 3.8 in. Car GPS Receiver
- Form Factor: Fixed
- Map capabilities: Internal, Download maps
- Receiver Type: 12 Channels
- Enhanced accuracy: WAAS enabled, EGNOS enabled
- Screen Size: 3.8 in.
- GPS Type: Automobile
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How can it help me, when I'm in N.J. and it thinks I'm in California?
Pros
When the unit finally works, it is accurate and very clear with directions!
Cons
Will not consistently set correctly, takes a while to acquire satellite signals!
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
This unit does work, but there are some tricks you have to know! Once you get the knack, it should perform fine!
Well, I have written my review of the Tom Tom GPS unit, which I felt was easy to operate and offered a very clear screen! Now, I move on to the Magellan 700 to compare it to the Tom Tom, and what a shock! I had nothing but trouble with the 700!
We all know that the GPS units, or Global Positioning System units operate by pinpointing your location using multiple satellites. The time it takes for these portable units to acquire the signal is important. The Tom Tom took about 2 minutes to lock in. The Magellan took about 10 minutes, and kept losing the signal after that, and I didn't even drive into a tunnel or under a bridge!
The only reason I keep comparing it to the Tom Tom, is I thought the unit was maybe too simple and a little small! Now that I have used the 700, I can see that is not true.
The Magellan does come with a dashboard mounting kit and a vent mounting kit. Neither of which I was crazy about. I felt they were not stable enough to hold the unit sturdily enough in my SUV. As a matter of fact, the 700 fell down a couple of times after it was mounted with the dashboard kit. I found that part of the problem was the cigarette lighter adapter cord. It is one of those coiled cords that is under so much tension when you plug it in, that it is constantly pulling at the 700 unit, or the cord itself just keeps popping out of the plug it goes into on the back of the 700. See, too much tension is no good for people or electronic equipment!
The Magellan folks claim you can set it up and go.Well, I set it up but the problem was it was planning a route through the middle of San Francisco, and I was in New Jersey! No matter what I did, I could not get it to read properly. Finally, I reached a Magellan technical service engineer. He told me the units are all calibrated in California, and that is why most of them think you are still in that state! We had to go through a whole series of reprogramming steps to get the unit to realize that I was in the Garden State and not the home of "Arnold". It is also interesting to note that it took about 10-13 minutes until the unit did realize where I was, which as you travel, means a great deal!
The Magellan 700 does indeed have a nice big color touch screen. You set the unit up by scrolling down through the set menus, and touching the one you want. For instance, you scroll through voices, and can choose a male or female voice. You can also choose map colors, set volume, set any alert sounds or set route destinations. You see, this unit works by inputting a destination. It is then supposed to figure out the best way to reach that destination, by shortest distance, shortest time, scenic route, less tolls, etc. Setting your destination is easy enough. Just touch the screen for the state, city, zip code street and address. It will then give you some selections to choose from. There may be a Wayne Indiana, Wayne New Jersey or a Wayne Texas. You have to choose the correct one and then the Magellan will configure a route to that destination.
Maybe I expected too much of this unit, but I expected it to find the route and show me on the map where I was! Nope, didn't happen. It just stayed on a map that I had from my last trip. I was in the middle of Manhattan, and the map still showed my last trip home to New Jersey! Now we all know that as drivers, we have our hands full with watching the road and worrying about that car in front of us stopping short. The last thing we want to do is to first have to "diddle" with a navigation unit on the dashboard! The navigation system should be very easy to use with a minimum of programming. I found this was not the case with the Magellan. Now I see that some reviewers found the Magellan easy to use! Well, maybe they had nothing to compare it to. The TomTom was about $400 cheaper, worked much faster, and was easier to use!
When it did work, I found it was pretty dam accurate. It gave me nice clear voice directions like, "Make right turn in half a mile!" It also made a preset alert sound like ringing a bell, when I got very close to making the turn. "Get ready to make turn to the right in 1/4 of a mile." Finally. "Make right turn now." I must admit that it was smart enough to tell me to stay in the right lane after making the right turn, which was absolutely correct. When it worked, it was accurate and was dead on with directions and map headings, but getting it work most of the time was a real chore!
I am about to call Magellan and give it one last try. I will update the review once I talk to them again. At least Magellan gives you an AC adapter, so you can plug the unit in at home, and change settings at home, prior to getting into your car. This is also helpful for configuring the unit, as far as voice, sounds, etc, before you even bring the 700 into your car!
So stay tuned as I make a final leap of faith and try to see if it is me, or the unit having all this difficulty. I'll update everything once I FIND OUT! After all, that is the purpose of these reviews, to prevent other folks from having the troubles I am!
UPDATE------UPDATE------UPDATE------UPDATE------UPDATE------
Well, here it is, April, 2006, and I have still been attempting to use this unit! Has it been any better or easier to use? NO! I have found a major flaw in the unit. It seems that if you turn it off after a trip, and turn it back on at the start of another trip, it will NOT compute your new location. It will think you are in the same place you departed from during your last trip! What a pain in the body part! There is no way to just press a button to clear it either. You must call customer service, and they will run you through a series of steps to HOPEFULLY bring the unit back to where it should be. I say hopefully, because I ran through these steps with customer service on my cell phone in the car, and it still did not work! To me this is a major inconvenience! It seems logical that if it is a GPS unit, it should be able to locate where you are and update the screen/display for you without all the complicated programming, but it does not. To me this is a major flaw, and until Magellan straightens this out, I will never purchase a unit by this manufacturer again. Stay tuned. If I find a unit that does automatically update and it easier to operate, be assured I will post it immediately! Thanks for reading!
UPDATE------April 30, 2006-------UPDATE------UPDATE------UPDATE-
You know, I reread my review, and the more I read it, the more I found it impossible to believe that this unit could not find where it was! It was like putting an experienced tracker in an area that he knew and asking him where he was, and the tracker responding: "Gee, is this Coney Island?" I though it absurd that you had to go through all the steps that the technical service guy took me through just to tell the unit where you were. I mean after all, it was a GPS unit, and it should obtain its position from the satellites in the sky after all!
So I took it upon myself, with my wife driving, to straighten this thing out. I went though the menu and hit the REINITIALIZE GPS button! It warned me that it might take 5 minutes or more, so I tried it! After all, the display said I was in Staten Island New York, and I was really on Route 4 in New Jersey anyway!
So i got brave and tried it! Well, 23 minutes later, up pops my actual location on Route 4 in New Jersey! Hooray, the GPS tracking system worked all by itself, and I did not have to input any data, as I suspected! Now that's the way a GPS navigation system is supposed to work, automatically!
So now, I must say that this unit does actually find out where you are. You just have to hit the right combination on menu choices and have patience while it gets data from the satellites! Magellan told me the whole trick to this unit is to never unplug it until you reach the point it shows on the screen, and then you are safe turning it off. You then have to start again from that same starting point. If you don't, you have to go through what I did, so the 700 can find out exactly where it is, and then perform from that point. Once you have that position, it should work fine!
We all know that the GPS units, or Global Positioning System units operate by pinpointing your location using multiple satellites. The time it takes for these portable units to acquire the signal is important. The Tom Tom took about 2 minutes to lock in. The Magellan took about 10 minutes, and kept losing the signal after that, and I didn't even drive into a tunnel or under a bridge!
The only reason I keep comparing it to the Tom Tom, is I thought the unit was maybe too simple and a little small! Now that I have used the 700, I can see that is not true.
The Magellan does come with a dashboard mounting kit and a vent mounting kit. Neither of which I was crazy about. I felt they were not stable enough to hold the unit sturdily enough in my SUV. As a matter of fact, the 700 fell down a couple of times after it was mounted with the dashboard kit. I found that part of the problem was the cigarette lighter adapter cord. It is one of those coiled cords that is under so much tension when you plug it in, that it is constantly pulling at the 700 unit, or the cord itself just keeps popping out of the plug it goes into on the back of the 700. See, too much tension is no good for people or electronic equipment!
The Magellan folks claim you can set it up and go.Well, I set it up but the problem was it was planning a route through the middle of San Francisco, and I was in New Jersey! No matter what I did, I could not get it to read properly. Finally, I reached a Magellan technical service engineer. He told me the units are all calibrated in California, and that is why most of them think you are still in that state! We had to go through a whole series of reprogramming steps to get the unit to realize that I was in the Garden State and not the home of "Arnold". It is also interesting to note that it took about 10-13 minutes until the unit did realize where I was, which as you travel, means a great deal!
The Magellan 700 does indeed have a nice big color touch screen. You set the unit up by scrolling down through the set menus, and touching the one you want. For instance, you scroll through voices, and can choose a male or female voice. You can also choose map colors, set volume, set any alert sounds or set route destinations. You see, this unit works by inputting a destination. It is then supposed to figure out the best way to reach that destination, by shortest distance, shortest time, scenic route, less tolls, etc. Setting your destination is easy enough. Just touch the screen for the state, city, zip code street and address. It will then give you some selections to choose from. There may be a Wayne Indiana, Wayne New Jersey or a Wayne Texas. You have to choose the correct one and then the Magellan will configure a route to that destination.
Maybe I expected too much of this unit, but I expected it to find the route and show me on the map where I was! Nope, didn't happen. It just stayed on a map that I had from my last trip. I was in the middle of Manhattan, and the map still showed my last trip home to New Jersey! Now we all know that as drivers, we have our hands full with watching the road and worrying about that car in front of us stopping short. The last thing we want to do is to first have to "diddle" with a navigation unit on the dashboard! The navigation system should be very easy to use with a minimum of programming. I found this was not the case with the Magellan. Now I see that some reviewers found the Magellan easy to use! Well, maybe they had nothing to compare it to. The TomTom was about $400 cheaper, worked much faster, and was easier to use!
When it did work, I found it was pretty dam accurate. It gave me nice clear voice directions like, "Make right turn in half a mile!" It also made a preset alert sound like ringing a bell, when I got very close to making the turn. "Get ready to make turn to the right in 1/4 of a mile." Finally. "Make right turn now." I must admit that it was smart enough to tell me to stay in the right lane after making the right turn, which was absolutely correct. When it worked, it was accurate and was dead on with directions and map headings, but getting it work most of the time was a real chore!
I am about to call Magellan and give it one last try. I will update the review once I talk to them again. At least Magellan gives you an AC adapter, so you can plug the unit in at home, and change settings at home, prior to getting into your car. This is also helpful for configuring the unit, as far as voice, sounds, etc, before you even bring the 700 into your car!
So stay tuned as I make a final leap of faith and try to see if it is me, or the unit having all this difficulty. I'll update everything once I FIND OUT! After all, that is the purpose of these reviews, to prevent other folks from having the troubles I am!
UPDATE------UPDATE------UPDATE------UPDATE------UPDATE------
Well, here it is, April, 2006, and I have still been attempting to use this unit! Has it been any better or easier to use? NO! I have found a major flaw in the unit. It seems that if you turn it off after a trip, and turn it back on at the start of another trip, it will NOT compute your new location. It will think you are in the same place you departed from during your last trip! What a pain in the body part! There is no way to just press a button to clear it either. You must call customer service, and they will run you through a series of steps to HOPEFULLY bring the unit back to where it should be. I say hopefully, because I ran through these steps with customer service on my cell phone in the car, and it still did not work! To me this is a major inconvenience! It seems logical that if it is a GPS unit, it should be able to locate where you are and update the screen/display for you without all the complicated programming, but it does not. To me this is a major flaw, and until Magellan straightens this out, I will never purchase a unit by this manufacturer again. Stay tuned. If I find a unit that does automatically update and it easier to operate, be assured I will post it immediately! Thanks for reading!
UPDATE------April 30, 2006-------UPDATE------UPDATE------UPDATE-
You know, I reread my review, and the more I read it, the more I found it impossible to believe that this unit could not find where it was! It was like putting an experienced tracker in an area that he knew and asking him where he was, and the tracker responding: "Gee, is this Coney Island?" I though it absurd that you had to go through all the steps that the technical service guy took me through just to tell the unit where you were. I mean after all, it was a GPS unit, and it should obtain its position from the satellites in the sky after all!
So I took it upon myself, with my wife driving, to straighten this thing out. I went though the menu and hit the REINITIALIZE GPS button! It warned me that it might take 5 minutes or more, so I tried it! After all, the display said I was in Staten Island New York, and I was really on Route 4 in New Jersey anyway!
So i got brave and tried it! Well, 23 minutes later, up pops my actual location on Route 4 in New Jersey! Hooray, the GPS tracking system worked all by itself, and I did not have to input any data, as I suspected! Now that's the way a GPS navigation system is supposed to work, automatically!
So now, I must say that this unit does actually find out where you are. You just have to hit the right combination on menu choices and have patience while it gets data from the satellites! Magellan told me the whole trick to this unit is to never unplug it until you reach the point it shows on the screen, and then you are safe turning it off. You then have to start again from that same starting point. If you don't, you have to go through what I did, so the 700 can find out exactly where it is, and then perform from that point. Once you have that position, it should work fine!
