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Magellan RoadMate 800 Portable GPS Navigator
Product: Magellan RoadMate 800 Portable GPS Navigator Review. List Price: $799.99 Amazon Price: $99.99 Add to cart to see low price@ Availability: In Stock Usually ships in 24 Hours Free Shipping Available |
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Thales Navigation is one of the world’s leading innovators of global satellite positioning, navigation, and guidance equipment with operations throughout the U.S. and Europe. Known for its popular Magellan , MLR, Ashtech , and DSNP brands, Thales Navigation offers a broad range of navigation and positioning solutions for consumers and professional customers around the world. Now streamlining its portfolio of brands to maximize marketing resources, Thales Navigation will offer all of its consumer products under the Magellan brand and all of its professional solutions under the Thales Navigation brand.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #10513 in Consumer Electronics
- Brand: Magellan
- Model: RoadMate 800
- Dimensions: 3.00″ h x 1.00″ w x 7.00″ l, 4.00 pounds
- Native resolution: 320 x 240
Features
- 4.3″ WQVGA color touch screen
- Auto NightView and auto re-route
- Holds over 6 million points of interest, one million custom POIs, and 200 personal addresses for quick reference
- Includes bird’s-eye, 3-D viewing, multi-destination Route Optimization, Voice Guidance and Trip Planner features
- Only 10.8 ounces in weight and 3.15 x 1.55 x 6.26-inches (W x D x L) in dimension
Great GPS system
I purchased this unit a few weeks ago after researching quite a few options. The navigation portion of the unit is outstanding. The screen is very bright. The 3D view is way cool. It takes only 30 seconds or so normally for the unit to acquire your location. It routes very well. Has loads of features. The screen is very readable. It autoshifts from daytime to nighttime view. Both look great. The voice comments are excellent. It comes with an MP3 player and a picture viewer also, but that is NOT why you would buy this unit. You would purchase it because it is a great navagation system. The mp3 and picture viewer are just little extras. They work just fine. The unit is very portable and can easily be switched between cars. It can also be used outside the car with its built in rechargable battery. The only complaint I have so far is that the windshield mount, while quite sturdy, still allows the unit to vibrate around a bit. Also, the manual is, as usual with some of these products, lacking in some important details. When mounting the unit, I would suggest you have the bottom of the mounting bracket touching your dashboard to reduce the vibration. This helped quite a bit. Lots and lots of points of interest built into the unit. It is incredibly easy to start using this unit. Take it out of the box and attach the windshild mount and off you go. Highly recommended as a GPS navitagion system. It is the same price as the Magellan 760, but with additional features. While it is more expensive than the Megallan 700, it has numerous additional features including 3D viewing and many more Points of Interest. I think it is worth the extra $$$$ for this.
RoadMate 800: Yes and No
I bought this unit specifically to navigate around New England during a 10 day vacation. I agree that the display brightness is terrific, the voice queues are great, and the unit is easy to figure out without reference to documentation. The mounting bracket works well and holds fast. While it took several minutes to initialize in Southern California, when I turned the unit on in Boston it immediately updated. It’s wonderfull to have all the US (and more) in a handheld, battery operated device with 4.5 GB to spare.
This RoadMate takes some time (10 to 20 seconds) to detect a user course change and seems to get confused occasionally about what direction the vehicle is moving by asking for one U turn and then another to compensate. It annoyingly broke a 100+ mile stretch of I84 into multiple segments with instructions to “keep right” or “keep left” when all one needed to do was stay on the same road. I agree that it makes little sense have a built-in an MP3 player that cannot be used while the system is navigating.
Most annoying were errors in the database. The problem seems to be that there are lots of updated entries — along with the original entries. The very first place I tried was Legal Sea Foods, which I entered as Legal Seafoods. It gave me one location — in Florida. When I corrected the spelling, it gave me two addresses for the closest one: One right, one wrong. When I tried Jimmy’s of Savin Rock in CT, it gave me two identical street addresses, one in North Haven (wrong) and one in West Haven (right).
I couldn’t find any mechanism to return to a listing found in the address book without having to enter all the search data a second time. It would be nice if it queued the last few dozen search results.
I’m a little spoiled by the nav system in my Prius that always knows where the car is and almost instantly updates the route if I deviate from instruction.
On the third day of the trip, the unit hung up and I could never get it to run past the second splash screen despite reseting and even letting the batteries run down over night. I called the manufacturer and was connected to India Tech Support (very friendly, but totally useless). The unit is going back, but I might get another. The jury is out.
800 vs 760
I have been doing a lot of research to decide between 760 and 800. It turns out that 800 comes with features that I cannot use while driving, such as MP3 and picture viewer. It does come with battery which I think is good to have.
The main difference that 760 has and 800 doesn’t is 760 announce the name of street that you turn into. This is a absolutely must have feature in my view. I bought 760 in Feb, 2006 and have been loving it ever since.
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