5. NEW FEATURES

1. SayWhere text-to-speech:

   One of biggest new features on the Roadmate is something Magellan is calling SayWhere, a feature that uses text-to-speech technology to announce the street name as well as distance to the turn.
                 
   I was surprised to see that my Magellan Roadmate 760 shipped with most of the new features disabled. I had to drill through the options to enable both the SayWhere function as well as the auto power off feature (a feature that shuts the unit down if it is unused for 20 minutes).  I quickly discovered why Magellan ships the 760 with SayWhere disabled: unlike the soothing clear voice of the regular Magellan prompts, when SayWhere kicks in to pronounce a street name it is jarring and frequently unintelligible. First, the volume is not matched to the rest of the turn instructions. Second, the text-to-speech simply doesn’t work well, resulting in a sudden, loud, mispronunciation of your pending turn. For example, a typical prompt of “approaching right turn in .5 miles onto El Camino Real” may sound something like this instead: “(soft) approaching right turn in .5 miles, (loud) El Kamin-Ray All” You’ll quickly want to turn this “feature” back to its default setting of disabled.

2. Automatic Volume Leveling:

   Although this sounds like a useful feature, you’ll likely also want to disable this feature. In our testing we frequently found that the volume suddenly became very loud, even when the car was barely exceeding 30 MPH.

3. Auto Power Off:

   This is a useful safeguard against leaving your car parked and forgetting to turn off the GPS (only to return to a dead car battery). However, I often like to turn the unit on just to have a map available to check as I drive. When the auto power off feature is enabled, the unit will ask you if you want to keep using it since no button has been pressed in 20 minutes. This can be annoying on longer commutes, so I had to disable the auto power feature. I’m no electrical engineer, but I have to think there must be a more elegant solution to this. What you really want is for the unit to automatically turn off when the car is turned off. I don’t love the idea of the GPS sitting in my parked car for 20 minutes, advertising itself to would-be thieves.

6. SCREEN RESOLUTION & QUALITY

I test drove the 760 in both night and day conditions, and found that the screen can be difficult to see in very bright sunlight. Still, in all but the most bright, direct sunlight, the screen is bright and sharp.

7. MAP ACCURACY

One of the advantages Magellan has over competitors like TomTom is the NavTeq mapping data. The Roadmate 760 has a whopping 7 million point of interest (POI’s) on it’s internal hard drive, as well as all of North America’s roads (or Europe, depending which model you buy). The mapping data is outstanding. In my testing even the most obscure back country roads were located on the Magellan (NavTeq) map. The mapping data was occasionally confusing, however. For example, the map did not have New York City, but rather required you to enter the city as “Manhattan {town of}”.

One area that could use improvement is the categorization of the Points of Interest; almost 25% of all POI’s I checked were miscatagorized. For example, a restaurant will be displayed as a business, or a hospital as a theme park, etc. Another strange default setting is that the unit ships set to display all business Points of Interest on the map with an icon. Driving in a dense urban area with hundreds of POI icons cluttering the screen made the map almost unreadable. I had to turn off the POI’s in the map configuration.

To test routing efficiency, I selected a destination around 250 miles away from me. Before I set out, I printed out directions from Google Maps and Yahoo Maps. Turn for turn, the Magellan 760 mirrored the directions Yahoo Maps gave me. A good sign!

These days 3-d map view is all the rage. I’m not a big fan of the 3d map view, as it can make it difficult to accurately gauge distance.  Still, many people are big fans of this feature, and Magellan should add a 3d map view sooner rather than later (Garmin and TomTom already have this feature).

8. SPEAKER QUALITY

Maybe I was spoiled by the huge, clear speaker used on the Magellan 750NAV I used to own, but the Roadmate speaker fell a little short of expectations. It’s not so much that the speaker isn’t loud enough (it is), it’s more that the sampled voice prompts have a high level of static noise in the background. This was also a problem on the Roadmate 700, and remains an issue with the 760. Let’s hope it is corrected on the upcoming Roadmate 800 version. If I had to guess what the problem is, I’d say the static is being caused by interference from the motherboard with the embedded sound card, but who knows.

9. ROADTEST

The roadtest with the Magellan confirmed our belief that Magellan quite simply has developed the easiest to use GPS unit, and upheld a usability standard to which all other manufacturers should be held to. Magellan advertises the Roadmate’s usability by saying “turn it on and go”, and that’s an accurate statement of how quickly you can master this GPS.

Still, there were several areas that could be improved:

At highway interchanges, sometimes the voice prompts can be confusing. For example, occasionally the unit will say “keep to the left”, when a more accurate description of the maneuver would be “continue on i-80 East”.

Another issue I had was that sometimes long highway names don’t fit on the screen, so the unit truncates name, making it difficult to see which exit you are supposed to take. Further, the maneuvering list view shows exit numbers on highways, yet the main view does not. It would be extremely helpful to list the exit number I’m supposed to take on the main screen, without requiring me to cycle through the various views.

10. PROS

• Best user interface of all consumer GPS units made. This is a GPS your parents can use without even reading the instruction manual.
• Improved antenna reception and map tracking performance over previous Magellan Roadmate’s.
• Huge map database contains even the most remote roads.
• Massive Points of Interest database contains millions of shops, restaurants, banks, gas stations, tourist attractions, parking garages, etc.
• Quick-release mounting bracket makes it easy to stow the GPS without having to dismantle the windshield mount or power cord.

11. Cons

• Default settings leave most new features disabled (street name announce, auto power off, auto volume leveling).
• Default shipped setting shows all business POI’s, making the map confusing
• Automatic volume leveling doesn’t work well (volume seems to jump in large volume increments rather than subtle leveling adjustments)
• Sometimes long highway names don’t fit on the screen, and the unit truncates the words, making it difficult to identify the correct exit you should take.
• Screen can be hard to read on bright sunny days
• Horrible windscreen mount unit jiggles around when you drive
• Poor speaker quality (slight background static when voice prompts are announced)
• Text entry can be sluggish (unit does not respond fast enough when trying to select options on the screen, or spell destinations, or cancel a current route).
• Many POI’s are mis-catagorized.
• At highway interchanges, sometimes voice prompts are confusing. For example, “keep to the left”, when it really should say “continue on i-80”
• Occasional mapping oddities: For example, if you want to drive to a location in Manhattan, you must be careful not to select “New York” as the city, but rather “New York {town of}”

12. SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

• In my car, the cigarette lighter adapter is barely long enough to reach the windshield. Unit would benefit from a longer power cord.
• Although the maneuvering list view displays exit numbers, the main view does not.  Exit numbers are more useful than the exit name, yet the main display does not usually show the exit number.
• Would be nice if it showed the posted speed limit (particularly useful on long trips).
• A mute button would be a welcome addition. Frequently you want to momentarily silence the Roadmate (during a cell phone call, or during conversation with another passenger in the car).
• I would really like to see Magellan manufacture a high performance external antenna. In my testing, there was virtually no difference between the included internal antenna and the optional external antenna.
• The addition of dead-reckoning would be very helpful for driving in dense urban environments.
• A “remember this route” feature would be nice for storing a specific way to get somewhere. This is particularly useful when someone wants to show you a “shortcut”.

13. CONCLUSIONS

Magellan has been making automotive navigation systems for years, and their experience shows. The Roadmate enjoys the same mature user interface that made the NeverLost system so successful in the Hertz rental fleet. With the Roadmate 760, Magellan strikes the right balance between feature set and ease of use. In our testing, the Roadmate 760 performed very well, beating out competitors Garmin and TomTom. With a few minor improvements, the Roadmate could be a hands-down winner in the increasingly competitive market space of personal GPS devices.

13. OVERALL GRADE: B+

TECHNICAL SPECS

• GPS Receiver: 12 channel
• GPS PC Connection: USB
• System features: Touchscreen
• Dimensions: 3.3 in H x 6.5 in W x 1 cm D
  
• Water resistant: Yes
• Weight: 13 oz.
• SBAS: WAAS, EGNOS