Thales Magellan Maestro 4250 Automobile Navigator - 980-0019-001
Magellan Maestro 4250 Portable GPS System w/ Pre-loaded Maps & Voice Command

I had an older Magellan 360 that this unit was to replace and it was nice upgrading to a unit from the same manufacturer in that parts of the layout were already familiar and I could begin using the unit immediately without spending any real time relearning anything. The signal detection and reliability is great. Seems to get a signal about twice as fast as my previous unit. The large touchscreen is fantastic for driving and makes it much easier to follow more complicated turns in the city or multiple lane/exit interchanges. The voice command seems to work pretty well and spoken directions are very understandable. This unit speaks the street names (my previous unit did not) and I now see what a great help that feature is in heavy traffic. The only downside that I have seen is that this unit is a little slow at recalculating a route when you deviate from the current route. But certainly not a show stopper. Even if you do not get this particular model, I would highly recommend a unit that has a larger screen and speaks the actual street names as these features are now going to be must haves on my list.
 
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Love the hands free feature. Bluetooth phone feature is very handy. Great for long trips. Helps find traffic for short trips with optional AAA traffic info. I'm very happy with my choice.
 
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I am very impressed with delivery and it arrived before the promissed date. It is much cheaper than most retailers. Magellan GPS works fine sofar. I had to update the firmware to 4.60 as it was shipped with oler version which is not a big deal. It is easy to switch from one car to the other. I directly attach it to windshield. It is very easy to use with voice commands and my kids love it. Not all streets are recognized in Maps. I am not sure how to update the maps and POI database.
 
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The biggest thing I've noted is the speed of the device. To start the device, obtain signal, and find my location the device typically takes less than 30 seconds. Other devices I have seen (from iWay, TomTom, and other generic brands) may have you waiting 3-4 minutes before they fully start up, and then take even longer to calculate (and most frustratingly, recalculate routes). Magellan seems to offer regular updates via their website (which to me is a big selling point in a companies products. You don't want to have to buy a new unit just because some roads were moved around.) My Magellan 4250 works very well. I have not experienced the "lock-up" problem a lot of people are mentioning, but I did immediately update the firmware on the device when I got it. I also noted that the device mounts as an external hard drive when you plug it in via usb, and it runs embedded windows - so I see the potential to customize it. However, it doesn't have any sort of secondary video feature, which I would have liked to see. It has a nice clear screen, and I would love to be able to take advantage of that with say, an under the seat DVD player when I don't need directions to get somewhere. Battery life has lasted me more than 3 hours (on 2 seperate trips) but I didn't want to risk much more than that because of the risk of getting lost. Overall I am very satisfied. Magellan's 4250 has proven itself to be a more polished, more refined product from the other GPS navigation devices I have used.
 
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This is an awesome product. I used my brother in law's Garmin 650 I like this one better. Fast, voice is clear, bluetooth works with my Blackberry. Easy to use Worked great in Orlando and & Atlanta. Great product Great Price. I am going to get one for my wife also. Very accurate. Clear Voice, quick response. I love it! Buy.com @ $249.00 Best buy was $499.99 Buy.com as usual had it in 2 days
 
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Took it on a recent trip and it performed extremely well. The only issue I had was the arrival time it calculated for a fastest route was 10 minutes later than the same route selecting shortest distance. Used it in and around Atlanta and Orlando and was very impressed. I don't know how I got along without a GPS in the past.
 
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I ordered this at a super price on Buy.com website. I received it and the setup was unremarkable. I have had several Magellan's and this is the sharpest one by far. However, when I tried to use it, the aquisition of signal took a very long time. Due to my excellent luck with Magellans I thought it was a fluke, but it consistently took 20 minutes to find and acquire a lock. I was forced to send it back. Luckily the Buy.com return process was very straight forward and user friendly. Bought a vehicle with Nav system, so all worked out well for me. I thought the addition of the AAA interface very handy, I was looking forward to using it.
 
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The Magellan Maestro 4250 was a wonderful idea. A mix of high and low end features in a small slimline package and larger than normal viewing screen...All for a great price. After months of research, this, for me, was the holy grail of GPS units. Now I'm not a GPS afficionato, nor do I hike in the far off remote areas of even my own back yard, but the 4250 has a big, beautiful, flat screen, Bluetooth capabilities and multiple way-point functionality. It was all sounding too good to be true. AND, once I found the unit on Buy.com for $200 less than Circuit City (where I made my original purchase) I couldn't resist. I should have. In theory this unit is perfect for the newly relocated, semi-techno-geek like me, but it's been 3 weeks and I have yet to use the unit in my car! I purchased the unit with next day shipping since I'd be moving cross county in only a couple of days. 2,801 miles to be exact. I received the unit, turned it on and...wait a minute...maybe I should have read the directions...the bluetooth functionality isn't working. Should I have paired it first? Should I have registered it first? Nope. It just didn't work. Not mission critical, but a pain in the rump for something I was so excited to receive in the mail. So, I read the directions.....nothing. I surfed the interwebs for 3 hours solid.....nothing. Hmmmm, looks like a need to do a soft-reset, or even the drastic but sometimes necessary hard-reset. The reset didn't work.....I didn't expect it to though. Next comes the trusty hard reset. Hard resets always work, right? WRONG. You'd think I dropped this thing in the toilet like my iPhone or something. Loading....loading....loading...nothing. Wouldn't even get passed the boot screen. Normally, this is fine. It's to be expected sometimes. Out of the dozens of electronics products I have or have had very few have turned out to not work AT ALL. I was dissapointed, but not a lost cause. Next came the fun part. Magellan Customer Service: First off, everyone at Magellan's Support Center has been very nice. It's true that my 45 minute calls could have been handled in 10 if I didn't have to spell every word and sound out every letter only to have it repeated to me again twice as slowly. Ugghhh. BUT, when someone answers the phone, they're very nice. Short story long - It's been 3 weeks of CS hell and I still have the defective unit in my hands. I can't return it to Buy.com because the slow responses from Magellan made me miss the 2 week return cutoff and I can't get a Return Authorization Number from Magellan because every time I call they seem to be opening up a new ticket, sending me back to tech support to troubleshoot and after 20 minutes of "reset this, reset that, press this button etc" *promising* that they will send me a RAN this time - THEY HAVE NOW ASKED ME TO SEND THE UNIT BACK TO TEXAS VIA FEDEX AT (get this) *MY OWN EXPENSE*. Like I said, the unit is good in theory, but when you have a buggy OS plus a buggy Customer Support system it just doesn't make it worth it. I've bought another unit from a big box chain (UGGGHHHH) and once I get a working unit back in the mail (in 2 - 6 weeks!) I'll probably have to sell it on eBay for half what I bought it for or use it as a frisbee for my Golden Retriever. If you get a working unit....congrats....I'm sure it's a great value, but for me...it just hasn't been worth the time or expense.
 
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This moves on out from the 6000t model magellan with many features and compactness. I still can not get it to see my i880 though so I will call Magellan. They could have made it a learning AI voice controlled device though. The voice commands are very few. I used to get more hours of battery with my 6000t too. The one thing that really makes it restricted is that they still won't let us add our own address finds or corrections manually. Too bad even if they allowed a side program on the SD chip that could be an add-on for separate access when needed! Mainly because the Navteq POI collection doesn't seem to be allowing changes unless they get a bunch of money for the changes. Great buy overall though and AAA will be helpful too!
 
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I was lucky enough to find the Magellan 4250 on Buy.Com for $100 less than the next lowest price on the internet - lower than the price of the 4050 which made it a very good buy. I first used it while on a trip to Spokane, WA, and was delighted with its features. In fact it planned a route, using "Fastest route", on secondary streets which was much faster than our usual route through town from north to south and which was never suggested by my previous GPS unit. It was just as good in planning other routes to other destinations in the city and saved me more time and stress. With my previous unit, when I would stray off its planned route either by choice or mistake, I would be nagged over and over again that I was to return to the planned route. With the 4250 however, there was no complaining - it just quickly calculated a new route from where I was. Other reviewers are correct when they said there are not a lot of commands that you can use with the voice recognition feature however its ability to distinguish what you say is excellent. There is too much distance between the windshields of my two vehicles and the driver's position to allow me to use the windshield mount that came with the unit. I could see it and hear it fine but couldn't program it without leaning too far forwards. However, I found that mounting the windshield mount on the forward lower corner of the driver's side window worked out very good and suggest those of you who encounter the same difficulty to try that. I had some negative reviews about the unit "seizing" and having to be reset. The first half-dozen or so times I tried programming it in my office, it would take several commands and then hang for a while and then reset to the opening screen. I called the telephone number for Magellan Technical Service about it and quickly got a real, live tech rep who was very polite, courteous, and helpful. He said that the unit I received might be defective and that I could return it for a new one if I wanted. However apparently I had been pushing the command keys too rapidly because when took his advice and slowed down a little, it worked fine. The unit is very fast to respond if you work at a normal pace and calculates your route very quickly. I wonder if this is why those who complained about it seizing had difficulty. I considered a Tom Tom unit because its software can be updated through their web page and I couldn't find out if the Magellan units could also before I purchased this one. Magellan also has an updating service via the internet which is free if you have an AAA membership, as is a year extension of the warranty. Overall, I am very satisfied with the Magellan 4250
 
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Electronics > Magellan GPS