Garmin GPS Receiver

Competition is good and I am happy to see another respectful contender in the GPS navigation arena. But competition is competition, so for the purpose of this review I have borrowed my wife’s Garmin Nuvi and ignoring other drivers raced eyebrows, drove around for several weeks with two GPS navigators.

First, what I really like about RoadMate:
- it is small and slick and fits into my shirt pocket
- it has three hours of battery life
- it has fast and very well organized user interface
- its address input feature is just great; in general I am able to enter a destination address in RoadMate two times faster than in Garmin.
- RoadMate shows exit services and has lot of useful location-sensitive information only a touch away
- it has a pretty loud speaker
- it finds satellites faster than Garmin and loses them less frequently
- when building the route, it allows you to select several travel options for that route (fastest, shortest, most highways)
- it understand multiple intermediate points and optimize the route among them

Now, things I am not particularly fond of:
- the screen is two times dimmer than Garmin’s screen, but still perfectly usable
- it takes RoadMate 35 seconds to start up (Garmin’s startup time is 20 secs)
- it never bother informing the driver when it lost satellite reception, conveniently freezing the display with no further directions
- it never informs the driver about missing a turn, recalculating the route in silence (now I appreciate Garmin’s “recalculating” message)
- the map has bugs and is not yet upgradeable (I hope this is temporary)
- no maps for countries other than USA and Mexico are available (I hope this is temporary too)
- the so called 3D map is hardly 3D and has limited zoom capabilities
- the text to speech system suffers from chronic tonsillitis and is sometimes difficult to understand

Now for real problems:
It is sad when an almost perfect design is nearly destroyed by two drawbacks. Each problem may be relatively minor, but their combined effect is disastrous.
The first small, annoying bug: when the unit zooms into the map at an intersection, it never returns back to the original zoom. This means that after the first turn you get maximum zoom and unless you adjust it manually while driving, you have no clue as to what lies ahead.
This problem alone could be OK if not for numerous bugs in voice prompts. This is the part where improvements are overdue.
RoadMate voice guidelines software is way behind the competition. It may tell you to “stay on the current road” several times and then suddenly tell you to take exit. It may bother you with multiple advices to “stay on the current road” without any visible reason. At the fork it may or may not tell you whether to keep left or right. It may prompt you to take a “slight turn” just because road bends but sometimes it really means a turn. Even worse – if right exit happens to bend to the left, the unit sometimes tells you to take a “slight left turn”.
To be frank, voice prompts are usually correct, but bugs mentioned above are too often. In the end I just want to see the next turn at the unit’s screen.
It all boils down to the simple question – would you turn your attention to the road and rely on buggy instructions or start adjusting zoom level at 3.5 inch GPS screen?

In comparison, Garmin unfailingly starts prompting you for any turn enough in advance to let you make any necessary changes, and keeps reminding you of the turn. It almost never makes mistakes in voice instructions. It always tells you whether to keep left or right. Also, Garmin always zooms out to show the next turn (unless the next turn is a few hundred miles away).

Well, RoadMate is not a terrible GPS system, but in light of other choices, I would not necessarily recommend this one.

I HATE my husband’s GPS (different brand). It’s complicated; the last couple of times I’ve invited Suzy (that’s her name) along for the ride, she was still insisting I make a U-turn as I was pulling into my destination–and she still thinks we live on the opposite side of the street. To be honest, Suzy is rather high maintenance and not very smart but my husband is inexplicably infatuated. So enamored is he in fact that I caved in to pressure and grudgingly agreed that yeah, I probably needed a GPS of my own, though my private resolution was to never turn it on.

Then Lola came into my life and I’m thrilled to bits with her! It took her a few minutes to figure out where she was, but after that she was good to go. The packaging says to allow four minutes, but it was more like eight or nine. Since I have no intention of permanently attaching her to my car, the size is just perfect for purse popping. I was afraid the screen would be too small but it’s perfect. The colors and definition are vivid enough to be seen even in sunlight.

THE BEST PARTS: Lola not only knows exactly where I live, she knows everything about the miniscule community in which I live and everything about everywhere else I go that’s not so miniscule. In a nanosecond, she recommends restaurants, movies and live entertainment. The really cool thing was when I’d steeled myself to the tedious task of programming in addresses of places I go (and usually get lost enroute) and discovered they were already there. Lola warns of turns with the most melodious chimes and there are some great options on the menu–like fastest or shortest route, most or least freeway and detours. There’s also the option of getting directions in the form of a list of the turns required, which is great for those of us who get dizzy looking at the maps. And Lola has never, ever urged a U-turn, which is usually illegal in my state.

The touchscreen navigation is awesome. No kidding. You have to tell Suzy exactly where you’re going, but with one touch, Lola KNOWS! Maybe I’m easily impressed, but I think that’s pure genius.

For techno-idiots like me, who still can’t operate a digital camera, this little Magellan is perfect. I have no idea what the specs are and pray I’ll never need tech support because I don’t speak tech. All I care about is that Lola will keep me from getting lost and that she does, in spades. User friendly, compact and brainy, Lola is the most pleasant surprise I’ve had lately, and I think it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I was a loyal Garmin user for years. Unfortunately the
Nuvi’s are a step back from the old reliable Street Pilots.
They have less features and they are way too quiet to hear
over highway noise.

What I really liked:

- Compact, fits in a shirt pocket

- Loud speaker, I can hear it well over the highway
and radio noise.

- Much faster and responsive than earlier Magellans.

- Very sensitive receiver ! I tried one out in a Best Buy
and indoors the GPS was getting a strong signal ! I haven’t
tried this in the city yet, but I gave up on the Nuvi because it
was constantly losing its signal. The Street Pilot never did that.

- Some people have said recalculate and mapping time is very slow.
I did not find this the case.

What I didn’t like:

- No way to add your own POI’s from a file. You
can’t download additional POI’s and install them.

- USB power connector. For some reason they designed the
unit with a right angle plug. To get the GPS in and out of
its holster you must first unplug the power connector.

- Manual not terribly great. A lot of features are really
under documented.

Other thoughts:

The one touch menu is very convenient, I wish they made the
access button for it a little bigger, my big fingers sometimes
have trouble bringing it up with that little icon in the corner
of the screen.

Some people have complained about the text to speech. There are a
few glitches, and it’s not as fluid as Garmins, however I don’t think
it’s too big a deal. I don’t have any trouble understanding it.

Summary first: For such a low price, this is a great deal on a GPS unit. Has many features of the bigger units, and best of all, it has subscription-free Traffic Link live traffic updates.

The Details: I’m writing this review as a techno-geek who just never happened to get a GPS unit. So while I’m new to a dedicated GPS, I’m pretty familiar with the user interfaces of today’s gadgetry. If you’re new to GPS units and are searching out choices, this review should provide the point of view that a techno-geek would expect out of one of these. I do have GPS on my iPhone (although it doesn’t do turn-by-turn), so we’ll see how the touchscreen and the UI compare.

The Roadmate 1220 feels well-built. The touchscreen is nicely responsive and the icons are big enough to not miss your “target” (I have pretty big hands). For a smaller 3.5″ unit, the screen is laid out well, and it’s bright enough (that’s a big one for me).

The unit takes about 5 minutes to initially aquire a signal, which is stated in the manual. This may be normal for GPS devices so I won’t deduct points there. Once it’s connected it springs to life tracking you. You can look at it 2D (bird’s eye view) or 3D (slightly angled out to see upcoming roads, as in the product picture).

Feature-wise, I was VERY impressed. I used to think, “why do people use these things in the town they live, don’t they know where they’re going?”. I got my answer once I turned it on. The live traffic updates are worth the price alone (I live near a major city). But I also didn’t realize that these units show you other things nearby such as ATMs, gas stations, coffee shops and a variety of other places. I found things in my hometown I didn’t know existed! This Roadmate also provides MPH, altitude above sea level, time, etc. Not necessary but interesting.

Interface-wise, this unit is quite easy to use. I was wondering how the navigation would be on such a complex unit with no buttons, just all touchscreen. But like the iPhone, the “where do I go next” was very apparent. There were only a couple of times where at first I wasn’t sure where to tap, but my first guess of hitting Menu got me back to where I needed to be on the screen. I like this unit more than I expected.

As far as turn-by-turn functionality, it works very well. I took back roads to try and trick it, but the Roadmate picked right up and recalculated my route. That impressed me big time. Setup is easy too… once you enter your home address and any other you want to store, you’re only a couple of screen taps away from starting your trip. You can have it start at your current location WHEREVER you’re sitting/driving and tell it to get you home, and it does. There’s a soft chime and a woman’s voice telling you when the next turn is approaching. Doesn’t get much easier than that!

There are many GPS units out there, but I’ll be surprised if there many that have this much to offer for this low of a price.

This is a nice entry level GPS. Here is what I found in testing it:

In the car:
It has a smaller screen than some of the other models, which can be a good thing sometimes, given you have more flexibility to mount it in different places. It even works well from the cupholder if you’re not allowed to mount devices on your car’s windshield in your state, or want to prevent theft. The slim design is really nice and does not take up space and easy to hide out of sight when you leave the car (if you don’t have it mounted permanently.) The screen is very bright and reads well in the afternoon sun.

Routing:
Overall, this GPS worked well in Minnesota where I tried it. I used it in tandem with a Garmin Nuvi 760 and found that Magellan alerts you earlier if you have to make a turn or have to exit. Magellan alerts you 0.3 miles before the turn unlike Garmin at 0.2 miles. This is really great for the highways, where you’re driving really fast. It also tells you beforehand that you need to take a right/left after you’ve exited so that you can get into the right lane when exiting. The tone then sounds right at the point where you should be making the turn. In Garmin, this feature is turned off by default but you can turn it on if you want.

I really like the fact that this GPS calls out the road names you have to turn on so that you don’t need to look at the device at all. I often put it on the passenger seat and focus my whole attention on the road as the voice guides are good for most routes. The route plotting was the same for Magellan vs. Garmin in my 2 weeks of usage. However, overall I prefer Garmin routing a little more to Magellan as long as you have updated MAPS. If you take a wrong turn, this GPS is quick to recognize that and just goes on seamlessly to tell you a new route. Garmin says “Recalculating…..” before it tells you the new route, and the female voice on Garmin can be a little annoying! However, with Magellan you don’t even realize that you’ve taken a wrong turn…so both have their benefits. I must admit that a larger screen (my Garmin is 4.3 inch) is easier to read and having used a larger screen GPS it’s hard to go back to the smaller screen of this device.

Menus:
Magellan has a slightly different user interface than Garmin (or Tom Tom), and you may have familiarity with one if you’ve used one of these in the past. Magellan grays out certain keys as you type in your address and sometimes that can get annoying if you don’t have your address formatted quite right for the GPS. The other menus are also a little different, and I found Garmin to be more intuitive here, but it could be because I am more used to Garmin.

Overall this is a nice entry level GPS.

Not all GPS devices are made equal. The Magellan RoadMate 1220 packs a decent punch for the price. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it does the basic job of getting you from point A to point B with minimal difficulties.
This is our second GPS unit. My husband received a GPS unit made by another manufacturor for his birthday and it was more expensive with some special features. It has had a few hiccups nevertheless. I wanted a GPS for my vehicle and decided to give this one a try.
It is very easy to use. The brightness level doesn’t always seem to go quite bright enough in the bright sunshine on my dash. The display while driving sometimes appears jumpy and bumpy. But this unit’s speaker is louder than my husbands and hasn’t frozen up like his either. The pros outweigh the cons without a doubt.
If you are looking for a basic GPS unit and do not want to pay for all the bells and whistles, I would highly recommend giving this one a try.

This GPS is a great value/budget GPS. It is nearly the same as the Garmin 350 I purchased a few years ago.

– Size/Mounting.
It’s actually thinner/smaller than most of the GPS units out there. The downside is that you only get a relatively small screen, but for the majority of people out there, it’s going to be good enough. It mounts on the windshield or on an adhesive pad you can apply to the dash. They work really well, although it would be nice if Magellan would have an option for a bean bag dash mount or something similiar.

– Functionality
As far as mapping, routing, etc it works pretty well. A few times it would decide to send us in the wrong direction at the start of the route, after pushing past the initial wrong directions, it corrected itself. This may be a symptom of poor GPS signal and not waiting enough to let it acquire. If you completely don’t know where you’re going, this could be an issue for you.
The one annoying thing I found is the map on the screen is delayed slightly, like the GPS can’t keep up. The notifications (sound/voice) are correct, so not sure what’s going on.

– Software
Magellan has some slick software. When you start putting in a town/city/etc, it will automatically remove the letters that aren’t available, and will try to guess it for you, makes entering much easier. The one downside of this unit, is I couldn’t easily find a way to see all the restaurants in the area, and filter. For instance I wanted to find an A&W, however i would just have to wait till it came into closeness, instead of being able to filter it and see the nearest one. There may be an obscure way to do this, I just haven’t found it yet. Text to Speech, which is normally found only in higher end models, is on this one, and it’s great.

– Upgrades
I only have mac’s, and Magellan doesn’t support them as of yet. Either way it doesn’t appear as there are any updates available for this device currently, so it’s not a big deal. You can access the POI’s you add, and a few other things, as the GPS mounts when you add it.

Overall for the price this works very well, it essentially gives you the functionality for about half the price it would have cost you two years ago, in a tidier package, worth it.

I previously had a tom tom which stopped working, and picked this up because it had text to speech, was from a fairly reputable company and wasn’t too expensive. Its not quite as easy to read (I think the text and map details on the tom tom were a bit larger) and the screen doesn’t seem as bright under harsh daylight with the brightness turned up all the way (again I can’t compare these side by side since my tom tom doesn’t turn on anymore), but its a pretty nice unit. I would look at a couple of units side by side in the store if this is a concern (keep in mind you’ll probably be an arms length away from it and often under harsh daylight).

One thing which I noticed, all the small roads within the gates of my university that appeared as “unnamed road” on tom tom were properly named in the magellan. I’m not sure if this was because of more up to date maps, or because tom tom didn’t care to name them (the physical roads were on tom tom’s map database, just without names and corresponding addresses. Still, a welcome improvement.

The first place I went with this was the local target. Oddly, it suggested “Target optical” and not the actual target (the nearest “target store” was listed as a different location a bit out of the way). Not a huge inconvenience, I’m guessing the database they use has one business per address (target optical is within target), and another reviewer mentioned they had a problem with this. Again, not a huge inconvenience. The directions also initially had me make a “right turn followed by a u-turn” when I pulled out of the parking lot when I could have just turned left. I later found out this u turn thing can be turned off in the “navigation preferences” option under settings (also where you can find an option to dodge toll roads). This probably shouldn’t have been a default setting.

Besides that, the overall navigation experience is pretty up to par. The directions are loud and clear and I like how it reads the actual names. Anticipating turns is a piece of cake, and there is a notification when the turn is coming up. As you approach a turn it makes a noise and then reads you a direction. This is nice, because it gives you a second to stop the conversation you were having before the GPS gives you directions. Sometimes I’ve found myself going into a turning lane before it could finish saying the directions out loud, but it does a good job of telling me what I need to do ahead of time.

I really like how easy it is to find and enter in an address. While you are entering in cities that begin with the letter M, for example, it knows all of the cities and towns that begin with M have a second letter of A,c,e,i,o,t,u, and y so these are your only choices (all of the other letters are grayed out). This greatly reduces the odds of mistyping an address, since you can only physically type in actual addresses. You can hit a “list” button to see all of the matches, even if you’ve only typed in part of a town. The keyboard layout is alphabetical rather than a querty layout (with no choice to change that I know of) so at least I need to get used to it, but again that’s a minor inconvenience. You can also select a destination by looking at the map and clicking on the name, which is pretty nice if you just want to go to a general area and don’t really care to look up or type in an actual address.

Finally, compared to Tom tom, the “avoid freeways” rout is actually usable. Tom tom would still demand I take the parkway when I selected “avoid freeways” and even “bicycle mode” and roads with a “maximum speed of 20 mph” which was absolute rubbish when I wanted to drive 12 miles away during rush hour. While magellan lacks such fancy rubbish like the nonfunctional bicycle mode, when I tell it to avoid freeways it actually gives me a route that doesn’t touch the freeway.

The mounting system is pretty nice and easy to use. With Tom tom I had to struggle to click it into the mounting system and insert the charging plug (and I’m a 24 year old who plays piano so I’ve got pretty agile hands), almost rendering it useless for my father when he borrowed it. The magellan’s mounting system is great. You just slide it in and it easily clicks in place. You have to put the plug in after its been mounted due to the dopey shape of the plug, but thats easy enough.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the purchase. It’s not perfect due to the clarity of the map during daylight

I bought a Garmin Nuvi 350 a while back (paid around $800 when it first came out), and since this old time favorite I’ve had high expectations from the little GPS units for the car.. especially after experiencing some other low quality products that they stick in the rental cars. So when I got the Magellan RoadMate 1220 I wasn’t sure what to expect at such a low price. But I love it! My favorite feature is the way that it completes what you’re about to type. After each letter, you see only the next possible letters on the keyboard. This is how it’s done on the high end ($1,000+) Alpine in-dash navigation units that I started with and had grown to enjoy. It also combines this selective keyboard with an auto-complete, similar to how the Internet Explorer 8 web browser shows a dimmed choice for the address it thinks you’re trying to type. I also put one of these in my mom’s car, and even though she’s the type who likes to write down notes about where the power button is (newbie to any sort of technology) – she was able to operate this thing without any instructions. This GPS gets the job done especially at the price.

When I went shopping for a new GPS, I initially expected to buy a Garmin, and after researching the models online I was about ready to order one. But, I decided to stop into Best Buy to fiddle with some units on display before spending any money. I’m glad I did, for two main reasons.

The first thing I noticed is that when tinkering with the Garmin models, there was a slight lag from touching the screen to the command being carried out. Not enough to notice, except when you’re trying to zoom in/out repeatedly – then you notice it, as subsequent presses of the screen do not register. With Magellan, as soon as I pressed the screen on any of their models, the command was carried out. No hesitation. Over the life of this unit, I expect the culmination of these absent milliseconds of frustration to add up quite favorably.

The second reason I’m glad I went with Magellan is that when entering a street name, as soon as a letter is entered, the software automatically grays out any letters on the screen that are no longer applicable. For example, if I want to go to Manchester, and say there are no towns in that state that begin with the letters My, Mx, Mc, et cetera, y, x and c are all grayed out from the screen (with no delay or interruption in typing). This of course narrows further with subsequent letters. I continue to type Ma, and more letters are eliminated. Once the possibilities are narrowed down, generally after only a few keystrokes, the unit provides a list of destinations that fit the criteria and you can simply press it on the screen (how many towns are there in any given state that begin with the same two or three letters?). This makes it a lot faster to enter destinations. The software works the same way when entering street names, too. Garmin doesn’t do this.

When researching the units, I wasn’t interested in the spoken street name feature, and was planning to buy one without it. I didn’t think it would work well. Now that I’ve used it with the Magellan, I’m glad I have it. The unit speaks clearly enough that I generally don’t have to look at it while driving (which I’m sure they say not to do anyway, but you all know you do it).

One complaint I have heard about Magellan is that the software does not return to the zoom level you’ve set after it zooms in to make a turn. That’s true, but I’ve found it to be entirely a non-issue, as you can disable the zoom on turn in the menu options.

One thing I wish a GPS manufacturer would do – since these things are all touch screen anyway – is make it possible for the user to choose whether to display an alphabetical keyboard layout or a QWERTY layout. I’m sure it’s easier for people who don’t know how to keyboard to find letters in alphabetical order, but for the Internet generation, I have to look for a letter on this screen whereas I don’t in QWERTY configuration. Probably the reason this isn’t common is that the buttons would need to be small to fit in three rows. But, it could be an option…

A second wish: These things all have useless features on them that I don’t use. Media center? Really? Why not include a small application for keeping track of vehicle maintenance, since it is an automotive instrument? The user could enter how many gallons of fuel he pumps every time he fills up, and the unit could keep track of his average gas mileage over each tank of gas. This sort of application would take up essentially zero space on the unit, and would appeal to more utilitarian consumers.