GPS Devices Life

Best thing since the printed map - Magellan RoadMate¿ 700 Car GPS Receiver Over the last two years I have rented Hertz cars because of the Never Lost system they offer. Magellan finally cam...

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By way of background, I’m an analyst in the Location industry that includes GPS units like this. I’ve personally owned about 9 now for the purposes of truly evaluating them in real life use. I have reviewed a few of the here at epinions, and am consistently happier with my Garmin units than with any others. TomTom was my worst experience.

As for the 760, it offered middle-of-the-pack performance for top-of-the-heap prices.

First thing, the processor was noticeably slow in some tasks like zooming in our out. Also, it was slow to redraw the map when panning across the map.

The touchscreen and buttons are okay for controlling the device, but you could not touch and drag the maps like on Garmins, but had to use a four way keypad. By and large, controls and screen are okay. I was satisfied with brightness.

I interacted with customer support a fair bit, since I needed to install European maps onto my US device, and it was not working. I found them to be competent, but not have the resources to actually do the fix. I had to take mine in to a shop to get the euro maps put in. Turns out it was because there was a Compact Flash card in the slot, the european maps would not load even though they were on the hard drive…go figure.

The European road and address data was OK, but was a $275 upgrade. Certainly made getting around Europe easier, but POI data was weak. One-way streets and the complicated downtowns of Europe did confuse the Magellan many times.

But the biggest beef I have with this Magellan 760 ties in to the processor speed and its ability to update the map and next turn display. When I was in downtown areas, sometimes the thing would “lock up” for a minute or less. That doesn’t sound like much, but picture the thing saying “Turn right in 800 yards”, but then not updating the display until after I’ve passed the turn. When you get confused, you try to use the buttons on the thing, but it doesn’t respond. Then, all of a sudden, it updates and does all the things you pressed buttons for. Not cool. Like my PC circa 1999.

I bought this unit thinking I would test it out, and probably replace an old Garmin Streetpilot 2610 I have in my truck (I have a Streetpilot 2820 in my car). Well, I thought the TomTom 700 I bought and sold last year was going to replace the 2610, too. Both the TomTom and the Magellan go to eBay, and the 3 year old 2610 stays. I’ll take old data over a bad User Interface or slow processor any day.

If you’re in the market for a device of this size, functionality, and price range, shop in the Garmin Streetpilot 28xx product line.

By the way, I have absolutely no ties to Garmin, don’t work for them, never have, don’t consult for the, and don’t even own their stock. I just bought a Nuvi 360, and so far it seems great (although less functional than the 28xx), maybe I’ll write a review for that later.

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