Again Garmin chooses the best route, Magellan chooses the second best route, and TomTom's ONE XL chooses the worst route. While Magellan and Garmin both route us along the 101 highway from San Jose to San Francisco, TomTom's ONE XL instead chooses highway 880 North to 80 West -- an odd choice that adds around 4 miles (6 minutes) to the journey. Even worse, TomTom again has us arriving on the wrong side of the street, with our destination address on the left.

Both the Magellan Maestro 4250 and the Garmin nuvi 680 arrive with our destination address on the right side of the street, but only the Garmin actually tells us what side of the street our destination will be on. Occasionally the Magellan unit would verbally announce what side of the street the destination was on, but that was the exception and not the rule.

Garmin's maneuvering instructions are also the most detailed.

For the third test, I chose a short, 3-mile trip from Beacon Street in Boston to Cambridge, Massachusetts:

The results of test #3 are consistent with the previous two tests: TomTom's ONE XL chooses a route that's about 30% longer than Magellan's Maestro or Garmin's nuvi. Garmin chooses a route that's slightly longer in distance than Magellan's Maestro, but is actually a shorter drive time, and Magellan's Maestro plots an acceptable route that's only slightly worse than Garmin's. It's interesting to see such varied routing results even on a short trip of less than 3 miles -- just goes to show you how different every GPS unit actually is.

The routing engine on the Maestro 4250 produced consistently solid results, soundly beating TomTom's new ONE XL unit, and closely matching Garmin's routing engine. Garmin edged out Magellan in all three tests, choosing slightly more efficient routes with more detailed turn instructions and shorter drive times.

TomTom's ONE XL unit performed poorly in all three routing engine tests, producing the longest routes in all three tests, and putting us on the wrong side of the street at our destination address.

Again, only Garmin's GPS unit announced what side of the street our destination address was on.

All three tests showed Garmin's unit as the winner with the strongest routing engine. Magellan's Maestro 4250 performed admirably, coming in second place. TomTom's ONE XL (with TomTom's newest maps installed) came in a distant 3rd place in all three tests.

19. Voice Recognition

The Maestro 4250 includes voice recognition, a feature that allows you to issue commands to the GPS using your voice instead of the touch screen.

Unfortunately, voice recognition on the 4250 still leaves a lot to be desired. For starters, only a small set of commands can be issued via Voice Recognition, and even those commands only work well if you're sitting in a silent, parked car.

Let's take a closer look at how the VR features work on the Maestro 4250:

Figure 76: Enabling VR on the Maestro 4250

By default the 4250 ships with the Voice Recognition feature enabled. VR can be turned on or off at any time under the Voice Options menu, shown above (Voice Options is located within the User Options menu).

Figure 77: Say a Command

Whenever the VR feature is active, the Maestro 4250 "listens" to voices in the car. Saying "Magellan" brings up the "Say a Command" screen, shown above in figure 77.

The following commands can be issued via voice recognition:

• "Roadside Assistance”
• “Where am I?” or “Current Location”
• “Go Home”
• “Nearest Restaurant”
• “Nearest Gas”
• “Nearest ATM”
• “Nearest Bank”
• “Nearest Coffee”
• “Reroute”
• “Distance to Destination”

The restaurant command also has a shortcut that skips the cuisine subcategory selection menu, so instead of saying "Nearest Restaurant" and then choosing "Chinese" as the cuisine, you can say "Nearest Chinese Restaurant" and the Maestro will automatically produce a list of nearby Chinese restaurants. What you can't do, however, is spell out the name of a specific restaurant or address, or change the area in which you want to search.

When VR worked, I loved it. However, too few commands are supported. For example, there's no way to enter a street address using your voice, nor can you escape out of menus, pan/zoom the map, control a Bluetooth connected cell phone, or any of Maestro's other features.

The limited range of VR supported commands was a minor issue compared to the fact that it only worked in a quiet car without the stereo playing and without any background noise. Magellan's own documentation seems to acknowledge the problematic nature of their voice recognition software, and offers several tips to improve performance, ranging from rolling the windows up to preventing the AC/heat fan from blowing across the GPS.

Another problem I noticed when using the 4250's Voice Recognition feature is that the unit "wakes up" constantly if you're talking to someone else in the car or are on the phone. Of course you can just cancel out of the "Say A Command" screen, but it gets annoying after a while and I eventually disabled the VR feature.

All in all, Maestro 4250 includes just enough VR to make you realize this could potentially be a great feature. Unfortunately it's too limited and performance is too inconsistent to make voice recognition a viable way to control the Maestro 4250. No doubt this technology will improve over time, and after wetting my appetite for VR on the 4250 I'm looking forward to seeing it more thoroughly implemented.

20. Traffic

Magellan's Maestro 4250 includes everything you need to receive real-time traffic alerts. The FM traffic receiver is built-in to the 12v power adapter, and the GPS includes 3 months of free service. After that, traffic service from Magellan will cost about $60/year.

You can check to see if your local area is within the traffic service's coverage area and sign-up for service at Magellan's Traffic website.

Real-time traffic data allows the Maestro 4250 to factor current traffic conditions into the route it chooses. If a traffic event along your route will cause a delay, the Maestro will alert you to the problem and ask if you want to route around the problem area.

Figure 78: Traffic Options

Most of the traffic options come pre-configured and don't require any special settings. However, if you want to change or view any of the settings, traffic options can be accessed by tapping Main Menu (second page) -> User Options -> Traffic Options.

Figure 79: Incident Options

Incident options allow you to customize what types of traffic events the Maestro 4250 will alert you to. By default all incident types are enabled.

Figure 80: Traffic Selection

The Traffic Selection menu allows you to turn traffic data on or off, and specify whether the Maestro 4250 should automatically route around traffic problems (Use alternative route).

The Reroute option lets you specify how far in advance of a traffic problem you want the GPS to alert you to the problem. The default setting is to alert the driver if the traffic is within 10 miles of your current position. This can be changed to Live Alert, 40 miles, or 20 miles.