Figure 21: Choosing A City Name From the Results List

Figure 22: Entering the Street Name

Next we'll need to tell the Maestro what street our destination is on. Spelling the street name is identical to the process for spelling the city name: as you type, Magellan's QuickSpell feature only allows you to select letters that spell valid street names.

Again, this feature may not sound like a big deal, but it greatly speeds up the text entry process and you're much less likely to accidentally tap an adjacent letter by mistake.

Figure 23: Choosing the Street From the Results List

Once enough of the street name has been entered that the Maestro can product a short list of possible matches, the above screen is automatically displayed. Note that you can force the Magellan to show you all the matches at any time by tapping on the OK button (although this list will be quite long if you haven't spelled out enough of the street name).

I'm trying to route to an address of Central Park West in NY, so I'll tap on "Central Park W" and continue.

Figure 24: Entering the House / Building Number

Next we'll need to enter the house/building number of our destination address. Notice that the Maestro displays several pieces of useful information on this page: the street and city names are displayed in the blue box on the right side of the screen, and the valid range of house/building numbers are displayed in the upper-left corner of the screen. In this case, the valid range of house numbers along Central Park West in New York is 1-499.

This feature can be very useful if you don't know the exact house number of your destination but you know the street name. Knowing the valid range of house numbers allows you to pick an address on the street, even if you're unsure exactly which house number you're looking for.

Unlike the city and street address entry pages, you must press "Done" after entering the house number. I suppose this makes sense, since the Maestro might not know if you're entering #1, #10, or #100

Figure 25: Choosing A Routing Method

With the city, street name, and house number successfully entered, Maestro asks how we would like it to calculate the "best" route. Like previous Magellan GPS units, there are four options for route calculation:

• Fastest Time - On previous Magellan GPS devices, this option was called "Shortest Time", and is the default selected method. I almost always use "Fastest Time", which chooses the route that will be fastest, even if it's not actually the shortest distance. For example, a winding series of back roads with lots of stop signs and traffic lights might be the shortest distance for a given journey, but definitely not the fastest way to go. Selecting Fastest Time in this case would take you a slightly longer distance (i.e. on a highway instead of the back roads), but would be a shorter drive time.
• Shortest Distance - forces the Maestro to calculate the shortest physical route, even if it's not the quickest way to go.
• Least Use of Freeways - forces the Maestro to avoid highways as much as possible
• Most Use of Freeways - forces the Maestro to choose highways over surface streets whenever possible

Additionally, there's an option to check the "Avoid Toll Roads" if you want to avoid tolls (note that this can add considerable drive time to the journey).

Once you've selected the desired routing preference, tap on the large red circle and the Maestro starts navigating you to your destination address.

While I love the fact that Magellan presents four different choices for calculating the route, I really wish the estimated drive time was displayed next to each of the four options. Without the estimated travel time displayed, it's virtually impossible to know how much longer/shorter a route each of the four options will produce.

Figure 26: Calculating Route

After selecting a routing preference and pressing the red "go" button, Maestro calculates the route and starts navigating. Route calculation on the Maestro 3100 is speedy: in my testing the average route calculation time was about 5 seconds.

Using the Maestro 3100 is slightly slower than the more expensive Maetsro 4040, though the difference is barely noticeable.

9. Maestro's Updated Map Screen

Figure 27: Magellan Maestro's New Map Screen