Magellan RoadMate 300 user reviews

Pros nice screen, large buttons, remembers last few locations

Cons slow gps acquire, map loading is painfully slow, some portions of maps are incomplete, no map updates, quickest routes not always quick

Summary This is a good basic nav system if you have basic familiarity with the area where you are going. There is difficulty in finding roads within a city if the naming is not exactly as the map creator named it. It is slower than a NavMan iCN510 to acquire your position and driving during signal acquisition makes it worse. The maps are painfully large and slow to upload. It cannot handle overlapping maps, so you have to be very careful how you create them. Why you have to go through the map creation process is a mystery. It also does not route you the quickest possible way (given a state route vs an interstate it favors the interstate even if you save 30 minutes using the state route). I have yet to run into a nav system with a complete up-to-date mapset, and this one is no exception. On the good side, it has great readability in all lighting including bright sunlight with sunglasses on. The buttons are large and basic to what you need at the time. It comes with a long mounting neck that allows you to position the unit in a convenient location to closer to you. If you pass a needed turn, it is quick to get you back on track before you go too far.
Needed items: Buttons to quickly adjust volume and brightness at a moments notice. It would be nice to have an on-board battery so a cord wasn't always necessary for operation. I gave it a 5 for the map content and map creation beast.

Pros Looks nice. Fairly accurate touch screen. Suction mount works well.

Cons Street first lookup. Tracking is intermittent. Map missing streets

Summary I have had a hell of a time trying to this thing working right for my girlfriend.
It does not pickup the signal well. Even with the $80 external antenna, it does not pick up well.
I am ready to take this piece of junk back and get one that actually works.
Also it takes forever to get customer support.

Pros Easy to use touch screen, many options and settings, clear voice output, usually gets the job done.

Cons Sometimes gives long roundabout instead of shortest directions. Has a problem recognizing small sub-towns & hamlets. Has problems recognizing street names if the street is actually a numbered route.

Summary Plain & simple. This GPS is good 90% of the time. The good is just good.
The bad. . . . If you want to get to a specific small town or hamlet (a small town within a large town), the gps will not recognize it. For example, I live in a decent sized town of Mahopac, but the GPS doesn't recognize Mahopac. I have to put it the parent town of Carmel. This can be a problem for people out of the area that don't know the parent town's name, thus leaving you stranded. The only way around this is to drive to the general area, and press the locate button. The GPS gives you info of your location, at which point shows you how the name of the town is actually registering in the system. Then you can type in the directions with that town name info.
Secondly, the same happens with street names. If I want to go to Harrison Ave in Harrison NY, it wont register. You have to have known that the popular known Harrison Ave is actually Rt 117 which is is not popularly referred to.
Lastly the maps are dated by this point. I clicked Avoid Toll Roads, and 5 minutes later on I-95 I arrived at a toll booth.
Overall this is great for short area trips where someone has a general knowledge of the area. If you plan on heavy traveling, good luck. Im sure you'll eventually get there but I assure you of a few hangups with instances like I mentioned, and there is nothing worse than trying to get somewhere and feeling stranded because your GPS is too technical for its own good.
By the way... this GPS comes empty with no maps and requires you to purchase map cards or download maps which is time consuming.
This system is worth about $60 or less in my opinion.

Pros With optional external antenna good S/N ratio

Cons Unit didn't work right out of the box, 6 weeks for warranty return. Supplied antenna useless, semi-metallic finish flaking off control buttons, Maps obsolete/outdated on purchase with no updates.

Summary Reasonably good unit for the price, but "let the buyer beware," because the maps have never been updated. Now that the unit is discontinued, they call it a "Legacy Product," and apologetically inform you no updates are planned. They advertised that you could get updates for it; this is not the case. The unit is barely one year old but there will be no updates and you won't find anything more recent than early 2005 in the maps. If you have a newer computer you're in trouble because the map manager will not work with Vista. "Magellan only runs on Windows 2000 and XP." Even though the unit works (for now) I will never buy Magellan again. They do nothing to encourage either brand loyalty or return business; quite the opposite.