Magellan Maestro 3140 Review (GPSmagazine.com)

Figure 19: Entering A Street Address

Most of the time you'll likely be using a street address as the destination address, so let's test that process by trying to route to an address in New York City (135 Central Park West, NY, NY).

The first step in entering a street address is tapping on "Enter Address" from the Main Menu, as shown above in figure 19

Telling Magellan's Maestro how you want to enter an address
Figure 20: Entering A Street Address, Step 2

Maestro 3140 provides a nice range of options for entering a destination street address:

Enter City - This is probably the method you'll most often use. Tapping this option brings up a virtual keyboard that lets you spell the city name.
Enter Zip Code - allows you to use a U.S. Postal code to set the destination city.
Previous City - allows you to view a list of recently used cities
my addresses - allows you to pick an address from the address book (saved addresses)
intersection - allows you to enter two cross streets and route to that intersection (rather than a particular house / building number)

Magellan does a nice job offering a broad range of address entry options while still maintaining an easy-to-use interface.

Tapping on "Enter City" brings up the virtual keyboard, shown below.

Figure 21: Magellan's QuickSpell Text Input Feature

I've always been a fan of Magellan's "QuickSpell" technology, and I'm happy to report the Maestro 3140 maintains Magellan's excellent text entry system; as you type out the city name (or street name), Maestro uses information in its map database to only permit letters that would spell a valid city name, graying out the invalid letters so they cannot be pressed.

This is a great time-saving feature when entering city or street names, and also reduces the likelihood of accidentally tapping an adjacent letter with your finger. When entering a city/street name, you can press the OK button at any time to view all the cities that match the letters you have entered so far. If you continue spelling out the city/street name, Maestro will automatically produce a results list of possible matches once it has enough letters of the name that only a handful of matches exist.

Figure 22: Choosing A City Name From the Results List

Once enough letters have been entered that only a few possible cities match the letters that have been entered, Maestro automatically produces a list of matching cities to choose from.

Figure 23: 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 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 24: Choosing the Street From the Results List

Once enough of the street name has been entered that the Maestro can produce a short list of possible matches, the results screen is automatically displayed. Note that you can force the Magellan to show you all the results 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).

My only complaint about this screen is that the scroll arrows only scroll one line at a time. Scrolling a page at a time instead of one line per tap would make more sense, and be more helpful for viewing longer lists.

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 25: Entering the House / Building Number

Next we'll need to enter the house/building number of our destination address. Notice that Maestro displays several pieces of useful information on this page before we even start entering the house number:

Street and city names are displayed in the blue box on the right side of the screen
The valid range of house/building numbers for the chosen street are displayed across the top of the screen in the white bar (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 whether you're entering house #1, 10, or 100.

Figure 26: 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 wish the estimated drive time was displayed next to each of the four options so you could make a more informed decision about which method to choose. Without the estimated travel time displayed, it's impossible to know how much longer/shorter a route each of the four options will produce.

Figure 27: 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 3140 is speedy: in my testing the average route calculation time was about 5 seconds.

Using the Maestro 3140 is zippy and responsive when navigating the menus.