9. Finding an Address

Figure 37: "Enter Address" Icon, Main Menu

The Maestro 4250 allows you to input a destination address a number of different ways, but probably the most common method is to use a street address. To test Magellan's address entry system, we'll enter a destination address in New York City: 135 Central Park West.

The first step in entering a street address is to tap on Enter Address from the Main Menu.

Figure 38: Choosing The Address Entry Order

The Maestro 4250 provides a nice range of methods for entering a street address:

• Enter City - This is probably the method you'll use most often. 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 instead of a city name.
• Previous City - allows you to view a list of recently used cities
• My Addresses - allows you to pick an address from the address book
• Intersection - allows you to enter two cross streets and route to that intersection (rather than a particular house / building number)
• Previous Destination - Pick an address from a list of recently found addresses

I like this screen and I found it easy to use, although I would have preferred to see the address book more prominently positioned - perhaps even relocated to the Main Menu for faster (and more intuitive) access to the saved address book.

The ability to search for cities by zip code is a handy feature that saves time and is especially useful for areas where you're unsure of the official city name.

In this example I'll tap on "Enter City" to bring up the virtual keyboard, shown below.

Figure 39: Spelling the City Name

Magellan's excellent text entry system, known as QuickSpell, uses information in its database to only permit letters that would spell a valid city name to be pressed. As you type, Maestro dims out letters that don't spell valid city names.

This feature is not only a huge time-saver when entering city or street names, it also greatly reduces the likelihood of accidentally tapping an adjacent letter.

While spelling out 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, or you can wait until enough letters have been entered that the Maestro 4250 will automatically product a list of matching city names to choose from.

Figure 40: Select A City Name From the Results List

Once enough letters have been entered that only a few possible matching city names exist, Maestro automatically jumps to a list of matching cities. I'll select "New York, NY" and continue.

Figure 41: Entering the Street Name

After entering the city name, next the 4250 asks for the street name of our destination address.

Spelling the street name is identical to the the city name: as you type, Magellan's QuickSpell feature only allows you to select letters that will spell a valid street name. This feature may not sounds like a big deal, but it greatly speeds up the text entry process and makes the GPS easier to use at arms length from the driver's seat.

Figure 42: Choosing the Street From the Results List

Once enough letters of the street name have been entered, Maestro pops up a list of matching street name within the selected city. If you're unsure of the full street name, you can tap OK from the text entry screen at any time to see a list of all street names that match the letters that have been input.

I'll tap on "Central Park W" and continue.

Figure 43: Entering the House 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 numbers for the chosen street are displayed in the upper-left corner of the screen. In this example, the valid range of house numbers along Central Park West in New York is 1-499. This can be handy for situations when you're unsure of the house number.

Once the house number has been entered, tap Done to continue on to the Route Calculation page, shown below.

Figure 44: Choosing A Routing Method

Once the full address (City, Street, and House Number) have been entered, Maestro asks how we want to calculate the "best" route. Like previous Magellan GPS units, the Maestro 4250 provides more control over route calculation than most other GPS devices, allowing you to choose from four available routing preferences (once the GPS has calculated the route, you can further tweak the chosen path by browsing the maneuver list and excluding any roads you want to specifically avoid):

• 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 routes that will be fastest, even if they're not the shortest distance. For example, a winding series of back roads with lots of stop signs and traffic lights might be the shortest distance to a given address, but it's 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 result in a shorter total 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).

After choosing the preferred routing method, tap the red "go" button to start navigating to the destination address.

Figure 45: Calculating Route

Route calculation was slightly slower than competing GPS units, but was still acceptable. Routes typically finished calculating within 8-10 seconds, on average.