AT&T Tech Support 360
The POI catalog includes all the major categories and more specialized entries. As with systems today, you can search for restaurants by cuisine type and tapping on any POI icon will bring up the address and phone number if listed. The database is comprehensive, but we checked a number of businesses around San Francisco and found some out-of-date entries. There's also an Exit POI feature that will alert you to popular points of interest (e.g., restaurants, gas stations) along freeway exits, though this tool was hit or miss--mostly miss. We often got the message, "Exit POIS are not available for this road."
The RoadMate 1200 can calculate routes based on fastest time, shortest distance, least or most use of freeways, and without toll roads. As we mentioned earlier though, we're disappointed at the lack of a pedestrian or bicycle mode. There's a route simulator to give you a running demo of the trip, as well as a detour option if you want to avoid a certain portion of the route. If you happen to get off course along the way, you can rest easy, as the Maestro does automatic route recalculation. In addition, by pressing on the tow truck icon, you can get the coordinates of your current location, heading, and nearest cross streets.
Maps are available in 2D (north up or tracking up) or 3D modes with night or day color. In addition to that, you can get just a list of maneuvers or a split-screen view that shows both your 3D map and your next maneuver. To supplement the visual aids, the RoadMate 1200 provides text- and voice-guided turn-by-turn directions as well. Unfortunately, unlike the Mio C230, it doesn't support Magellan's SayWhere text-to-speech feature, which gives the Mio C230 an advantage in that department.
Performance
General performance on the Magellan RoadMate 1200 was slow. There was a bit of lag from the time we tapped an icon to the time a command was registered or we got the appropriate menu. Let's just say we spent a lot of time looking at the hourglass icon turn. For our road tests, we took to the streets of San Francisco and from a cold start, it took the unit about 3 minutes to get a fix our on position under clear skies. Subsequent starts took just a few seconds and the receiver did a good job of keeping its lock when driving throughout the city.
We also entered our standard trip from the Marina District to CNET's downtown headquarters. The RoadMate 1200 took its time returning with directions compared with other systems we've tested. However, the prescribe route was accurate. Once on the road, the voice-guided directions were loud and clear, and it punctuates its upcoming turn announcements with a chime (you can change the sound or turn this off under User Options). Unfortunately, road performance also suffered some setbacks because of the slow speeds. On a couple of occasions, the RoadMate 1200 would alert us to a turn right as we were passing the street, but it was worse with route recalculations, which got to be very frustrating.
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