8. Entering An Address

Figure 25: Entering an address on the Magellan is fairly straight forward: whenever you need to enter text into the MRM 6000T, the Magellan Quick Spell enabled keyboard appears. As you type out a destination name, only valid possible letters can be pressed (as in the photo above).

This works well and is pretty straight forward, although there are a few things worth noting:

1. When entering a street name that has a N. or North prefix (such as North Main Street), you don't type the North, just the Main Street.
2. Don't type out St., Ave., or Rd., as the Magellan will not be able to search for those terms.
3. If a street name is more than one word long, you must enter the firs word to find the street. For example, if the street is called Washington Heights, just entering "Heights" will not yield any results. You have to enter Washington first.

Figure 26: Once the list of possible street names has been reduced enough, the 6000T displays a list of valid street names to choose from.

Overall I like Magellan's user interface, although whenever you have to scroll down a list, it only scrolls one line at a time. It would be more useful if the scroll button moved a page at a time instead, and save your fingers some needless tapping (and the potential of accidentally hitting an incorrect street).

9. Navigating to a Destination

Figure 27: Once an address is entered, you choose how you would like the 6000T to route you.

I pretty much always use "Shortest Time", although "Least Use of Freeways" can be useful in certain circumstances (such as during rush hour). Avoid Toll Roads is another option here, and although I never use it, I suppose it could be useful for fleet vehicles and/or delivery trucks. I would like to see Magellan add an option to set a standard routing preference (like on the TomTom). If you always want to go via the "Shortest Time" route, it's slightly annoying to have to select that each time you route to a destination.

Figure 28: The Map View on the Magellan RoadMate 6000T

There are three views presented to you when navigating to a destination: Map, Maneuver List, and TrueView. The Map view, shown above shows the surrounding area along with the planned route. I found the 3D aspect ratio slightly too steep, making it difficult to visually process the map. Turns appear further away than they actually are. I also found the default color scheme distracting, and the highlighted route not always easy to discern from the rest of the map. I would prefer a less severe 3D rendering of the map, and a toned-down default color scheme.

Figure 29: Magellan's Map View gets a lot of information into a small screen (in a good way)

I liked the fact that the Map view shows the GPS signal strength in the top right corner (something the Garmin c550 does not), and I liked the inclusion of a 3D/2D toggle button (the yellow arrow in the blue box in the lower right-hand corner). I frequently found the 2D rendering easier to look at, but I know many can't get enough 3D goodness.

I also like that the Magellan Map view shows you the estimated time to arrival (in the bottom bar), but it would be nice if you could choose to display the actual arrival time (i.e. 7:05 PM, instead of 1:35 minutes remaining) as well as the time remaining, or instead of the time remaining. The TomTom GO 910 and Garmin C550 allow you to do this, and I find it handy to know what time you'll arrive instead of constantly having to do the math of adding the remaining travel time to the current time to figure out what time you'll arrive.

Overall the Map View is quite good; Magellan has been making in-car GPS devices for a long time, and it shows in details like the information included in the Map View.

Figure 30: Magellan's TrueView

Above you see the TrueView screen. Once a route has been calculated, this screen displays the next maneuver as a 3D graphic, and also shows you the 2D map display of the same maneuver. By default the TrueView screen is shown shortly before each turn (although you can turn it off if you prefer). You can also force the 6000T to show you the TrueView display of the next maneuver at any time by pressing the View key. I liked the TrueView feature, as it makes clear what the next turn will be.

Figure 31: The Maneuvering List Screen.

I loved having this feature available. There are many times when viewing the list of turns is extremely useful. For example, if you loose GPS signal, you can still view the instructions and know where to turn. You also might want to review the route the MRM 6000T has chosen, and verify that you are going to be taking the most efficient route.

From the Maneuver List, you can also highlight a given individual maneuver and force the 6000T to recalculate, this time excluding the stretch of road you want to avoid. So, for example, if you know that a given highway is always backed up during the morning commute, you could highlight the maneuver that says to drive on that highway, and have the 6000T exclude that road from the route. The MRM 6000T will then re-route you, this time not using that highway.

Figure 32: Another nice Magellan feature is that it is very easy to cancel a route, or force the unit to re-route you. If you press Escape when driving to a destination, the above screen appears. From here, you can easily choose to re-route (Route), or cancel the current destination (Yes). Forcing a re-route is handy in circumstances where you know you've missed a turn before the GPS does, and you have to make a quick decision what to do next. Many GPS units wait too long to re-calculate, so it's nice to have a manual option to re-route.

10. Magellan's Locate Feature

Figure 33: Magellan's Locate Screen.

Magellan has a nice feature called "Locate". Pressing the Locate button the RoadMate brings up this screen, which shows your current speed, elevation, direction of travel, and the closest cross-street. This is very useful information if you find yourself needing to to call AAA or a roadside assistance vehicle.

11. Points of Interest

Figure 34: Using the POI database

Like most modern automotive GPS units, the RoadMate 6000T has an extensive POI database -- around 6 million points of interest based on NAVTEQ's mapping data. Using the built-in POI database, you can easily find restaurants, gas stations, ATM machines, grocery stores, hotels, parking garages, hospitals, and many more POIs. You can also configure triggers, or alarms, to sound on the 6000T if you are within a defined prominently of a certain type of POI. For Example, you might configure the 6000T to alert you if you are within 1 mile of a railroad station (or any POI category type you want).

When I first started using GPS, I thought I wouldn't really use the POI database, since I usually knew the street address of my destination. However, over the years it's proved an invaluable feature. I've taken many long road trips without having to do any pre-planning thanks to NAVTEQ's POI database; it's an essential feature and Magellan's implementation is intuitive and relatively easy to use.

12. Multi-Destination Routing (Trip Planner)

Figure 35: The Trip Planner.

The RoadMate 6000T allows you to enter a destination either as a street address, cross street, or zip code. Moreover, you can build a multi-destination "Trip", and save that trip in your address book. After you've built a multi-destination trip with the MRM 6000T, depending on your needs, you might want to "optimize" the route -- sort the destinations in your trip from closest to farthest. To do so, edit the trip using the Trip Planner, and click "Optimize".

13. Announcing Street Names (Text-To-Speech)

Text-to-speech on the Magellan RoadMate 6000T works considerably better than previous RoadMate generations (i.e. 700, 760, 800), but still lags behind the competition (Garmin, TomTom). TomTom has the best text-to-speech quality, followed by Garmin, and Magellan is last place among the big three manufacturers.

14. Setting System Options

Figure 36: From the options configuration page, you can change settings such as:

• Which POIs are displayed on the map
• Configure an alarm if you approach a custom POI (alarms can only be set for custom POIs that you save)
• Miles or Kilometers preferences
• Enable or disable Magellan's TrueView map view
• Enable or disable auto night-view (switches between night and day view based on sunrise and sunset times for your local area)
• Choose 1 of 9 available map color schemes
• Set routing preferences (shortest time, shortest distance, auto-reroute, etc.)
• Configure automatic detour (automatically re-routes you if you are on a highway traveling at speeds below 15 MPH)
• Configure tone options (beep, tone, chime)
• Automatic Volume (increases volume at 45 MPH to compensate for road noise
• Backup and restore your saved address book and configuration to a SD memory card
• Brightness
• Power management
• Set a password
• Language (English, French, Spanish)