21. Bluetooth

The Bluetooth function of the Magellan Maestro 4250 allows you to use the GPS as a hands-free device for a Bluetooth enabled mobile phone. Once paired with a cell phone, you can answer and dial your phone via Maestro's touch screen.

Figure 81. Bluetooth Menu

The Bluetooth menu is accessed by tapping on the telephone icon from the Main Menu.

Figure 82. Bluetooth Main Menu

Before you can make use of the hands-free calling features, the Maestro 4250 must be paired with a Bluetooth enabled cell phone. To pair a phone with the GPS, make sure your cell phone's Bluetooth is enabled and set to discoverable. Then tap on the Pair with a Device icon, as shown above in figure 82.

Figure 83: Pairing...

During the pairing process, your cell phone will prompt you to set a passkey. This same number will need to be entered on the phone and GPS to complete the pairing process. You can use any passkey you want, but to keep things simple you may want to just use 1111. Note that this is not the encryption passkey or a password that others can hack, this is just a security measure to prevent unauthorized devices from connecting to your GPS.

Figure 84: Bluetooth Key Pad

Bluetooth compatibility was poor. I was able to successfully pair the GPS with an Apple iPhone and place/receive phone calls. But the SMS features didn't work, nor could I view the address book. The call history also only displayed calls that were placed via the GPS, and didn't display the phone's call logs.

Next I tried pairing the 4250 with a Blackberry 8700. The pairing process seemed to work (it let me put in the passcode on both devices) and the Blackberry showed the Magellan GPS as a paired Bluetooth device, yet the Maestro 4250 still reported "No paired phone connected" and was unable to communicate with the Blackberry 8700.

When testing the hands-free speakerphone feature, some callers reported hearing their own echo on the call. I also found Maestro's internal speaker couldn't get loud enough to hear the caller when driving in the car.

22. Signal Strength: The Mighty SiRF

All Magellan's Maestro models use SiRF's high performance SiRF Star III 20-channel GPS receiver, including the Maestro 4250. This chipset is extremely sensitive and able to maintain solid signal reception even when driving in challenging situations, such as dense urban environments (behind tall buildings), bridges, and canyons. In fact, in my testing I was able to get a strong signal even indoors.

The integration of SiRF's chipsets into the latest generation of in-car navigation systems has been a watershed event for GPS manufacturers and made GPS navigation significantly more reliable.

As GPS price wars continue to rage, some GPS manufacturers have begun replacing SiRF's receiver with lower cost solutions in an effort to cut costs. Thankfully Magellan has continued to use SiRF's best of breed StarIII receiver on the Maestro 4250. Signal acquisition time is fast, and signal tracking was very reliable.

23. User Options

Figure 85: User Options Icon

Many aspects of the Maestro 4250 can be customized to fit your own particular preferences via the User Options menu, located on page 2 of the Main Menu, shown above.

Figure 86: User Options Menu

The User Options menu is where you'll find configuration pages for map coverage, screen brightness, time zone, POI settings, and more.

Figure 87: Region Selection

The Maestro 4250 includes maps of the 48 US States, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. The 4250 won't automatically switch the map coverage, so if you travel from the US into Canada, for example, you'll need to manually switch the maps to Canada.

Figure 88: System Settings

The System Settings menu allows you to adjust the volume settings (this can also be done by tapping on the volume icon from the map page), screen brightness, power settings, language, time, and unit of measure settings.

Figure 89: POI Selection

When looking at the map screen, either when routing to a destination or just driving around, the Maestro 4250 displays POI icons on the map. Tapping the POI icon on the map sets that POI as the new destination.

The POI Selection menu, shown above, allows you to customize which POI categories you wish to display on the map. There may be times when you'll want certain categories displayed and hidden at other times. For example, you may want to display restaurants when driving around in a rural area, but then turn them off if you're driving in a major city.

Checking a POI category on this screen will cause POIs of that type to appear on the map screen. Unchecking a category will remove it from being displayed on the map.

Note that you can still search for POIs of any category, regardless of whether they are being displayed on the map.

Figure 90: Map Options

The Map Options screen allows you to specify whether you want to view the map in 2D or 3D, show the map as "north up" or "heading up", show the TrueView split screen when approaching a turn, and whether you want the Maestro to automatically switch to night view based on the time of day.

Figure 91: Detour Preferences Menu

The Detour options screen allows you to customize the amount of time the GPS will wait before assuming you are stuck in traffic and displaying the detour icon on the map.

In my testing I found the default setting of 1 minute was too short. Sometimes just slowing down to pay a toll caused the detour icon to appear. You may want to set this to a longer time (i.e. 5 minutes).

Figure 92: Navigation Instruction Menu

The Navigation Instruction menu lets you to specify whether you want the GPS to verbally announce street names and/or exit ramp names.

Most people will probably want to leave ramp names disabled, as the GPS can get get awfully chatty with both options enabled.