Magellan Maestro 4370 review

While the Navigon 7200T offers Zagat ratings and reviews, the Maestro 4370 has AAA. In addition to the branded POI, the Maestro 4370 carries on the tradition of the Maestro 4250 and continues to offer TourBook listings for AAA Diamond-rated lodging and restaurants, complete with information such as hotel amenities, restaurant description, and hours of operation, admission prices for certain attractions, and so forth. AAA members get a bit more benefit out of this feature since you can view listings for establishments that offer discounts to AAA members, and AAA-approved auto repair facilities. In addition, in case of an emergency, the unit will display the AAA member toll-free help number and your exact location, so you can give the operator all your information.

You can view maps in 2D or 3D mode, and you now get 3D building renderings, much like those on the HP iPaq 310 Travel Companion. You won't get 3D models for all buildings, but the feature is still helpful in getting your bearings in unfamiliar areas since it gives you a visual reference point. You can also turn this capability off if you don't want it. While you're driving, the map screen will show the current street, distance to, and street name of your next turn, estimated time of arrival, and more. In addition, the Maestro 4370 offers land guidance for highway driving, so the system will zoom in and overlay directional arrows on the street to show you which lane you should be in for your upcoming exit.

The system provides guidance by way of text- and voice-guided turn-by-turn directions, plus text-to-speech functionality, which Magellan calls SayWhere, so the system will speak actual street names. There is a simulator mode, so you can get a running demo of your route before actually heading out the road. The Maestro 4370 offers automatic route recalculation, so it can get you back on track if you happen to get off course.

The Maestro 4370 has integrated Bluetooth, so you can pair your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone or smartphone and use the GPS as a hands-free speaker system. For a list of compatible handsets, you can check Magellan's Web site. With it, you can place and accept calls, view your call history, search the device's address book, redial, and even receive and send text messages. You can also directly dial any number associated with a POI. Unfortunately, your phone's address book and call history list do not automatically synchronize with the PND.

Last but not least, the Magellan Maestro 4370 features a multimedia player and image viewer. The media player supports AAC, MP3, WMA, MPEG2, and MPEG4 music and video formats, and supports playlist creation, shuffle, and repeat mode. The system also has a built-in FM modulator so you can pipe the PND's voice guided instructions and other sounds through your car radio.

Performance
As we noted in the Design section, general performance on the Magellan Maestro 4370 could be a little sluggish. The delays occurred mostly when we were navigating through the menus or entering trip information, and fortunately didn't affect performance while providing real-time route guidance.

For our road tests, we took the GPS out on the streets of San Francisco, and from a cold start, it took about 5 minutes for the unit get a fix on our position, while subsequent starts were nearly instantaneous. The system did a good job of accurately tracking our movement as we drove throughout the city, and maintained its lock on satellites as we drove through the Financial District where tall buildings often prevent a clear view of the sky.

We planned two trips with the Maestro 4370. The first was from the Marina District to San Francisco International Airport and the second was from the Marina District to CNET's downtown headquarters. The PND was quick to create routes in both instances, and checking out the turn-by-turn maneuver list, we found that it provided accurate routes. If you have the Smart Zoom feature turned on in the Map Screen Settings, the GPS will automatically zoom in and out of maps depending on where you are at on your trip. For example, if the course requires that you travel on one road or interstate for a long period of time, it will provide more of an overview map but as you get closer to a turn or maneuver, the Maestro 4370 will zoom in on the specified section of the map.

The pronunciation of text-to-speech instructions was pretty good, though it had problems with longer street names. Also, we noticed that the voice prompts occasionally hiccupped mid-sentence. We also missed several turns along the way to test the route recalculation rate. While the audible notifications came a bit late, the Maestro 4370 was still able to get us back on track in a timely manner and with efficient routing.

We also paired the Maestro 4370 with the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8310, and had no problems making or receiving calls. We also tried sending a text message from the GPS, but after we hit send, it got stuck on a "Sending SMS" message and after waiting for about 15 minutes, we gave up. And though we don't necessarily find multimedia capabilities on a GPS useful, music playback on the Maestro 4370 was quite good with full sound and a nice balance between treble and bass. Viewing pictures was also pleasant, thanks to the sharp screen. The unit has a rated battery life of 3 hours.