Reviews for Magellan Roadmate 300 GPS Vehicle Navigation System w/ Voice Prompting

Magellan Roadmate 300 GPS Vehicle Navigation System...

Strengths: Very easy to read and hear directions.

Weakness: I wish the windshield mount could be separated from the GPS easier with one hand (when you want to hide the unit when parking)

Very easy to read and hear directions. Receives location within seconds - extremely fast. Very easy to operate. I believe the maps are very new since my street is only 1 year old and it found it. Windshield mount attaches very strongly to windshield. Very similar (but better) than the Never lost system in Hertz cars

90% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

damon1974

Strengths: The unit is very compact and lightweight. I carry it in my laptop bag. Price was great from PriceGrabber.Keeps getting cheaper. Unit uses a standard headphone jack. Voice prompts can be heard easily.

Weakness: Screen Glare. Software in the Unit and for the Desktop. SD Card setup for the first time. Relying on firmware upgrades to fix unit flaws. Mapping software release schedule. Directional Pad navigation.

The product was a good start for Magellan. They just didn't do the follow thru. The software in the unit is O.K. It is a very picky animal. On both the unit and the desktop you have to get the address just right for it to find it. (Boulevard = blvd) Any other format bombs. The SD card setup was confusing for some. You have to go to the website and get the card authorized.(Control Freaks, retarded) Firmware upgrades effect the performance of the unit. I upgraded one firmware and it was like putting a faster CPU in the unit. Everything just worked quicker and more responsive. The voice prompts are great volume wise. I can hear them easily via headphones on the motorcycle or in a rental car with windows down. The windshield mount requires 2 hands to remove, but it's better than it falling off. For a company that makes only GPS units and the like, their desktop software sucks horribly. Talk about minimal coding on their part. Even the software on the unit is real outdated. You can't just search for McDonalds, you have to go thru (Points of Interest, Restraunts, Fast Food, Close By, ...Then type in the name.) There is no point to make it so complicated. Luckily all this can be fixed via Firmware updates and new Desktop software. I am still waiting. To the units testament, when I travel now I feel confident going out to eat in new areas as I know I can make it back safely. Even though half the time the businesses are now closed, due to outdated software for the unit. (They release the Desktop Software that contains updated Maps, at Magellans decision.) Overall it is a good unit, but lacking if you use it everyday like I do. It will get you to where you need to go, with minimal effort on your part.

89% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

By member: yikes - Jan 11, 2005

Magellan Roadmate 300 GPS Vehicle Navigation System...

Strengths: Relatively thin compare to 500/700 or Garmin 2610/2620, easy to learn interface, good voice notification, and big bright screen.

Weakness: No anti-glare for screen, very diffcult to set up the SD card, subpar performance compare to Magellan 500 or Garmin 2610, slow, cheap and poor windshield mount.

My brother has the Magellan 500 for over 1 year now. I just bought both Garmin 2610 and this to compare. Boy, do I regret buying this. It is no competition compare to my Garmin, nor my brother's 500.

During the initial setup, everything was fine until I decided to use my SanDisk 256MB SD card to load the maps. First, I had trouble getting the SD card to code with the 300. So I had to call customer support and it seemed to work out. But once I started to load maps, it took forever (210mb). So I cancelled and just loaded a small portion onto it (90mb). Now once I loaded the SD card and choosed the map on the card, I got the error message: "This map is not authorized." WTF??!!! So I had to call customer support again. It took over 15 mins and all we did was to load map to unit itself(it has about 86mb of internal memory storage) and then load to SD card. It did not make sense, but it worked at the time. But now I am back to the same error message. It seems to only work when loading straight into the internal memory of the unit. I tested the SD card and it worked fine on the PC, so it is not the fault of the card.

Finally, I took it onto the road for a short trip. I was not impressed. They seemed to have cut many corners to lower the price of this thing, as it was told by my brother, who had used his Magellan 500 for a year now. And it shows.

Maybe I am biased due to the difficulties I encountered. But I am fairly certain that for the $$$ I paid, it is not worth it.

I highly recommend Garmin 2610. It blows Magellan series away by both its features, and speed of its satellite aquisitions. And this is from 1st hand experience.

84% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Worth to money.

Strengths: Easy to use. Bright screen.

Weakness: Sometimes instructs you to make illegal turns. Always picks main roads over shortest route.

The product is quite adequate and functions well. Don't believe their suggestion to buy a 256MB SD card however, unless you are satisfied with 2 or 3 state coverage. I got the 1.0GB SD card and it gives me detail access to over 2/3 of the lower 48 states. I found quirk while being instructed to enter a south bound highway from the east. It instructed me to go over the highway and make a "hard Left" (an illegal turn), rather than make the right onto the cloverleaf entrance. Be careful. --

The internal antenna works quite well but the placement, in my vehicle, required the use of an external antenna. DO NOT BUY the Magellan External Antenna. When the weather gets even slightly warm, the antenna sets off a continues false alarm on my Cobra Radar Detector. Technical Support has been absolutely useless. After 6 tries, I've given up and bought a Gilsson antenna that works much better, has no problems and costs less. Magellan Thales Navigation) either does not understand English or chooses to deliberately misunderstand the problem. They will also not offer any refund on their antenna with the design problem. --

In general, I am quite satisfied with the RoadMate 300, but don't expect any intelligent Technical Support.

67% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Magellan Roadmate 300 GPS Vehicle Navigation System...

Strengths: It gets you there. Voice prompts are effective. Maps are up to date.

Weakness: It is definitely NOT a "plug and play" type of device.

Once you get the device ready to go, it's wonderful! I had to call tech support twice (they were very helpful) to get it all set up. It can be confusing as to what map to get downloaded onto the unit, and then after I bought the SD card, I had to call for help to get even more maps downloaded onto the card. Once that is accomplished, it's smooth running.

64% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

It looks good, but it is useless

Strengths: NONE

Weakness: All. Totally impractical

It was time to move up from my trusty Garmin eMap GPS. I used the new Magellan GPS on the way home from the store where I bought it but turned back to the store after 100 km to return it. I am sure that an owner of this GPS without exposure to anything else would be impressed with it. It looks good and talks good, but I found it to be almost useless:
The detail map is perfect when zoomed in to 1.5 km or less, so you just see intersection and perhaps 2 blocks. Every zoom-out click removes more and more details until there is nothing left on the screen. This is like to zoom on picture to see person eye, which is perfect. You zoom out to see nose -> face -> head -> whole head and neck -> then head disappears -> neck disappears…
You cannot see the surrounding villages, businesses, landmarks, your own points of interest (waypoints).
You cannot save your own waypoint to show on the map. You just save addresses, but you will not see that you are let say 5 km away from your friend’s address, because there is no icon to show this location. It will navigate you to it if you ask to do so, but it will not show that you are driving close to campground which you visited and marked previously. Basically you have no idea how far you are in relation to other things. It is totally impractical.
My first test was to navigate from the store to home 445 km away. The generated route was highlighted yellow. I wanted to see whole rote, so I zoomed out. After 20 km resolution I could see just yellow line with nothing else on the screen. No names of villages, towns, roads, lakes. Really weird.
This map concept might be good enough in the city for some delivery company, but totally impractical to take it for holiday.
I plugged in my 6 years old eMap GPS and drove home. While driving I realized how my old Garmin was advanced in comparison to this retarded Magellan system. Do not waste your money!

43% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Best Maps Magellan GPS Device

Navigation is Average according to 6 GPS Device experts. -- "outstanding performance"-reviews.cnet.com -- "terrific GPS navigation system"-products.howstuffworks.com -- "The Magellan RoadMate 300 is a wonderful navigation system that is ready to guide users to exciting new places."-products.howstuffworks.com Read more to find expert opinions on more features like Display, Maps, Usability, etc.

Read Full Review

Magellan Roadmate 300 - EXCLUSIVE

A confused system that falls behind the competition

Read Full Review