Friday, October 30, 2009

Best Buy Magellan RoadMate 1470 Best Price, Buy Now!

The Magellan RoadMate 1470 GPS device boasts a unique 4.7-inch color touchscreen and ultra-thin design, delivering powerful navigation in a compact package. This easy-to-use device gives you confidence while on the road with premium features, including AAA TourBook, highway lane assist, spoken street names, multi-destination routing, and pre-loaded maps of North America.

exclusive Magellan OneTouch personalized search icons let you easily bookmark favorite destinations so you can find them anywhere you travel. Find your favorite café or restaurant in any city with a single touch. The RoadMate 1470 device delivers your favorites at your fingertips. Features include:
  • Ability to personalize OneTouch search icons with your favorite places
  • Announces street names and directions at each turn
  • Ultra-wide 4.7-inch touchscreen display
  • AAA TourBook and Roadside Assistance menu
  • Permits multi-destination routing
  • Maps of United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico 
After using this GPS for four days and 900 mile trip to the San Francisco Bay Area and home to Los Angeles area, I am returning it. It has two major disappointments to me. First is the lane guidance. The lane to exit on is shown on a very small highway sign with extremely small lettering, very hard to read. Traveling at night its tough to see the corresponding actual highway sign to exit on as it may be (and usually is) poorly lit. The second disappointment is the next turn arrow in the top left of the screen, way to small and gives poor information, very confusing at times. Other than those two items I like this Magellan better than all the other GPS's I've owned (Mio, Garmin 200, Garmin 255W, Navigon 2000S, TomTom 130, TomTom Xl340S) The TomTom's lane guidance system showing big green arrows on the lane(s) you should be in is light years ahead of the Magellan's lane guidance IMHO. The next turn arrow on the TomTom makes much more sense than the Magellan. The perfect GPS would be this Magellan 1470 with the lane guidance and next turn arrow and other screen information of the TomTom XL340S. If lane guidance isn't that big a deal to you, I highly recommend this Magellan as the POI features it has blow all the others away. I'll miss the ding dong signal when to turn:=(

Original review....
Magellan has made a reasonable cost GPS with limited extras, but the extras it has are the right ones to have. You can program in multiple destinations with optimization of the route. You can find a point on the map and name it then save it in the address book. The map (driving) screen shows the next turn and distance down to tenths of a mile to that turn in the top left corner. The next street name to turn onto is shown across the top of the screen. On the bottom left of the screen is a toggle button that shows various information such as ETA, time to destination, time of day, your speed. When on a freeway (highway) an icon pops up on the left side of the screen, that if you press, shows the services available (food gas lodging) on the next few exits coming up, just press the exit you want and the GPS will take you there. The screen is big bright and beautiful, easily seen in daylight hours,and spectacular at night, the best I've seen in this area. I read the reviews here and was concerned about the time some say it takes to acquire a signal. Out of the box mine had a signal within one minute and has never taken more than a minute. The sound volume is OK and the computer voice is good, pronounces street names very accurately. The POI search engine is fantastic and extremely easy to use. The input screens have an intelligence about them that will normally find what your looking for in far less keystrokes than other GPS brands. Is there anything about this GPS that I wish were different? Yes. I wish more information was shown constantly on the bottom of the screen, highway speed limits, ETA, your speed. The distance until the next turn stops counting down the distance at one tenth of a mile and your indicated position on the screen lags behind your actual position (probably within the margin of error of any GPS). Now this would be a deal killer to me except Magellan overcomes this with two great innovations. First the screen zooms way in so you can clearly see the next turn and second a tone sounds indicating that you should turn at the next street. In my opinion that zoom and tone feature is fabulous and makes a great difference in the peace of mind that your actually turning onto the correct street. This zoom and tone makes up for the inaccuracy that all GPS's have. The lane guidance feature is marginal, (I like the Tom Tom lane guidance a lot better), but the verbal instructions are extremely good and timely and missing a turn would be hard to do with the expert advice the text to speech provides. Summing up, this GPS delivers on features you would want on a long trip and is also great around town with its ability to easily find POI's.
Best Buy Magellan RoadMate 1470 Best Price, Buy Now! [Click Here!]

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Garmin GPS 76CSX, Magellan RoadMate 1470, Garmin nuvi 275T, Magellan RoadMate 1412,


2 comments:

  1. big screen. nice features on paper. not so good in real life use..I am very impress with it...

    r4i

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