Magellan Maestro 4250 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
by Magellan
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Magellan Maestro 4250 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: A solid choice, but not without flaws
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought the Magellan 4250 from Amazon for $357. I have previously owned a Magellan Roadmate 760, an HP rx5915 Travel Companion (TomTom) and three Garmin handhelds, one of which I have also used for auto navigation overseas (a Garmin GPSMap 60CSx). I have agonized about what new GPS to get for a couple of months now and have extensively investigated this one, the Garmin Nuvi 760, the Navigon 2100 and the new HP 300 series.
Design. The unit is attractive with both black and silver in the bezel and it's nice and thin... about the size of a Pocket PC device. The mounting bracket only adjusts two ways, but you can get that third degree of freedom by rotating the direction of the suction cup on the windshield so it works fine. I like this mount much more than the old flexible mounts on the Roadmate series. Those were horrid. They include a slip case for it, which is a cheap one, but nice of them to do anyway.
Startup. The unit doesn't always start up easily. It sometimes seems to 'stick' at the lawyer garbage screen even when I press the ok button. It usually starts just fine, but when it does stick, it still usually gets going after about a ten second pause. Occasionally, I have to turn it off and on again. I guess this is what we get with a Windows CE based device.
Satellite Lock. The first time I started the unit, I told it where I was in the config menu and it's been very quick to get a satellite lock on every startup. It's generally ready to go before I get out of my driveway and has been very reliable at maintaining a lock. It is much faster than the old Roadmate and faster than the rx5915 (which also has the SirfIII chip).
Maps. It's not Magellan's fault, but I'm quite irritated with Navteq for screwing up the maps around my home. About three years ago, I reported that their maps lacked my neighborhood street even though it's been here since 1985. They emailed back about six months later saying they had come by and added it to their database. What they didn't say is that they totally messed up what is where, putting streets in the middle of houses and shortening the overall street to less than half of its real length. What a mess! I've had to set my 'home' to a spot down the street that is still on the map. Other newish things in my area (such as a new major road that's only been open for a bit over a year) are in place, though, so you shouldn't give too much weight to whether my neighborhood is rendered poorly. Garmin uses the same company for their maps and TomTom uses a different company, Teleatlas.
Basic navigation. The 4250 seems to do a decent, though not perfect, job of navigating. I drove it to another city about a hour away today (on a route I'm familiar with) and it did make what I consider to be the 'right' choices. It had a couple of questionable calls that I'll have to keep an eye on. At one place, I took an exit to stop at a store and to continue my trip, it wanted to send me back onto the highway the wrong way for one exit instead of just telling me to do a U-turn and re-enter the highway. Another time, I pulled off the road for gas and, when it recalculated, it wanted me to cross the main road I'd been traveling down and go onto local roads (instead of turning left back onto the highway). My experience has been that all GPS devices do a certain amount of this stuff, but I was surprised by these two that seemed so far from reasonable by any standard. I'll have to keep an eye on it, though the rest of the navigation was quite smooth. A feature I haven't used yet is that, once a route is calculated, you can select a segment and exclude it. That's something the Garmin lacks that I really wanted so I'm glad to see it here.
Voice / Text-to-speech. The voice on this not great. It's an irritating woman's voice that tends to grate on the nerves. I turned the volume down and that helped a lot, but I don't understand why they don't give us a choice of voices like they did with the Roadmate. Why do companies remove features that don't cost anything (or much) to add to the new product once developed on the old one? The text-to-speech is a bit smoother than on the old Roadmate, but I'll still probably turn it off as I did before. It drives me crazy that the voice reads every single bit of a long line of alternate road names. They separate the different names with a / in the screen... why not just have it read to the first slash. It's totally ridiculous and irritating for it to keep repeating 'turn right on Bennett Road / US 29 Business / US 250 Bypass' over and over as you approach a turn. You can see the alternate names on the screen... how about just having it say 'turn right on Bennett Road'?
Traffic. I live in a rural area and don't use this. I'm saving my free activation for my next trip and so can't speak to how well it works.
Exit POIs. This is one of the features I think has a lot of potential. I haven't been able to test it yet, but was disappointed that it says in the manual that, if you do exit to a gas station using it, then it will cancel your current route. That seems silly since it can remember a set of waypoints in order for a trip, and it can detour around a traffic problem without losing your route. Still, that's a minor annoyance and I think the feature will be useful. I'll find out in about a week when I'll be traveling on Interstate highways.
Screen. The screen is sharp and clear and bright. I've read some people comment that they don't like the colors, but I do. I find them nicer than the colors on either the rx5915 or the Garmins Nuvis that I looked at. It automatically turns to night mode, which it nice, but the night colors are not as nice as those on the rx5915. The 4250 night colors are a black background with white roads, where the rx5915 night colors are a nice set of dark and light blues. Still, this is a very nice screen and is easy to read in every lighting condition I've hit yet. (Haven't had the sun directly on it yet.)
Trip Mode. One of the things I liked about the Garmin Nuvi 760 I considered was the ability to take a set of waypoints and optimize them for the shortest time to travel them all. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the 4250 has the same feature. You just set up some waypoints in the trip editor and then tell it to optimize the trip. Very nice if you have half a dozen errands to run and want the GPSr to help you keep the trip as short as possible. That's about all I've done with trips, but it all seemed easy to do.
Voice Recognition. Forget about it; this is worthless. It's bad enough that the things you can tell it are extremely limited (and mostly not the things you'd really want), but it can't hear you over even regular road noise. I had to lean way forward toward the unit just to get it to respond to the 'Magellan' key word and it never did respond to most of the other commands I gave it. And if you did want to know something like the nearest ATM, you'd have to cancel your route before even asking as those options don't show up when a route is active. Just pretend this feature doesn't exist.
Bluetooth. This was disappointing in that it won't remember my phone (Razr v3) and reconnect. You'd think that pressing the 'connect' button in the phone menu would do it, but it doesn't. I have to go into my phone and have it search for new devices every time to get it connected. Now who wants to go through that? Even when connected, the speaker is marginal and it cannot access the phone's contact list so this is another worthless feature in my book. I'll stick to my bluetooth headset.
Address Book / Points of Interest. It's built-in points of interest are quite comprehensive, though it would be nice if they would let you combine a search by category and name. You must choose one or the other, which means you can't narrow it down by category first and then search by name. Still, it works and it does have pretty much everything I've ever asked it about. The address book works well and includes the option of storing up to three phone numbers, plus a note field, for each entry. If you use the bluetooth with your phone, it will dial those numbers if you wish. You can designate an entry as a 'favorite' to have your most used addresses in a shorter list. Custom POIs (now call 'enhanced') can only be saved using the included POI software and is one of the weaknesses of the Magellan. I can't express strongly enough the senselessness of not allowing GPS coordinates to be entered into the address book or of not allowing addresses to be entered into the custom POI file. To make my POIs, I have to use Google Earth to give me the GPS coords for a given address and then copy those into the POI Manager software. Given that every address in your address book is ultimately a GPS coordinate, it's absurd that you can't freely copy those back and forth. Add to it that you are limited to only ten categories of POI in your custom file and you just have to wonder what they were thinking. So overall, the address book is pretty good and custom POI handing is pretty marginal.
AAA Tourbook. I wasn't very excited about this when I chose the 4250, but after looking through it, I have changed my mind. It has a ton of great information about places you travel through. Instead of just finding the name of nearby hotels, it gives you quite a bit of information on each. You look up the hotels near you and it gives you the AAA stars, a description of it, amenities (so you can know if it has high speed Internet and such), whether it takes pets, and so forth. It does the same for food, events, entertainment, etc. I think this will be very useful.
Overall. I wasn't sure at first, but I am starting to think I'll keep this unit. Although I have pointed out several flaws in the product, the truth is that every brand has major flaws. Owners of the new Garmin Nuvi 7xx series complain that it locks too strongly to roads, putting you on roads that you're not on, and that it can take a long time to start up. They also have a variety of UI issues that are different than those that Magellan has, but just as irritating. There are also many things I like better about the Garmins.
The TomToms (if my TomTom-based rx5915 is any example) have a whole slew of usability issues (like not showing you the address for an entry in your address book and not showing addresses of POIs you searched for) and it has given me some amazingly creative routes that loop you out and around, going miles out of your way, when a simple right turn would have gotten you where you were going. But the TomTom also has some really nice features that the others lack.
So I am simply resigned that none of the companies can actually design a complete product and the act of choosing is just one of deciding which irritating things you can and cannot live with, and which unique features you'd really use. I do find myself wondering if the people who design these things ever actually use their own products. If so, I just don't see how they would make the decisions they do.
Anyway, I think overall, this unit will be pretty good, and even if the Garmin were to edge it out in operation (which I'm not sure it would), there is no way it would be enough better to justify the extra $150 or more that it costs. And this has several nice features the Garmin lacks. While I am a bit obsessive about my electronic gadgets and am quite hard to please, for 95% of the people out there, this would be a fantastic unit with lots of great features. The only caveat is that, since the voice recognition and bluetooth are virtually useless, I'd say that if one of their less expensive models lacks the voice recognition and bluetooth, but is otherwise identical, it would probably be the better bet. On an absolute scale of what I think a GPSr should be, I would have given this 3 stars, but compared to the other options out there, I feel 4 stars better represents its relative merits.
Customer Review: It's a good unit, but also has some flaws
Summary: 4 Stars
I thought I'd follow up with my decision and share my experiences thus far.
I had both units, decided against the Garmin and popped open the 4250. This is our family's first GPS unit and our only other experience was a positive one using Hertz Neverlost.
PROs:
- As mentioned already, I'm a fan of the POI system on the Magellan and the fact that gas stations, ATMs, grocery stores, restaurants, coffee, etc show up as I roll by is appreciated. Easy to tap on an icon and get routed.
- POI alerts are pretty cool; I used the included SW to get red light cameras and speed traps and as you approach these areas, the unit will warn you that you're within your specified range of what ever it is. I let the wife take this on a business trip she went on and she regularly had the unit warning her of these types of things in an unfamiliar area.
- The AAA guidebook is actually pretty neat. Not only does it provide POIs, it further provides the AAA info such as a description of the place, typical cost, a rating, business hours, accepted forms of payment (cash, visa, MC, etc) and a phone number that you can simply tap on when paired with a BT phone. More info rarely hurts in my opinion.
- The voice recognition, while not perfect, is kinda cool. When rolling along, I can say, "Magellan", "Where am I?". The unit then presents me the trip computer (speed, heading, alt, etc) and states the road I'm traveling on. While that's kind of neat the first time, stating "Magellan, nearest coffee" and being presented options that I can vocally navigate to by glancing at the screen and selecting the number of the associated place, or moving to the next page by saying "next" or "previous" is more functional. You can also ask it things like, "nearest ATM", "go home", "nearest restaurant" to which you'll get a sub-menu you can work through (american, italian, etc.) or you can just get fancy and say "Magellan, nearest chinese restaurant" select one by number and have it route you without touching or looking (if you want to take whatever is closest) at the unit is neat.
- The unit is snappy in acquiring where it is (w/in 10 sec) and I can even get signals within my house. Maybe that's the norm today, but I didn't expect that.
- It's thin without any additional antenna to be extended. What you see is what you need. There is the FM antenna that runs with the power adapter if you're going to use the traffic subscription (I haven't tried this)
- Text to voice is nice. My wife was a big fan of having the unit speak to her in street names rather than being vague. I like it as well. Some names get butchered, but for the most part it's pretty good.
- My mobile phone (LG Muzic - Sprint) is not listed as supported, but it works for everything except the text messaging when paired with BT. I can find POIs, click on the phone number associated with the result and the unit calls the place. Speakerphone is okay and at times it is hard to hear with road noise. It's usable, just don't expect polycom quality.
- The estimated arrival time is nice. In my experience, I've seen it overestimate the amount of time needed by a couple minutes. However, it does update as you approach your destination and I've not yet exceeded the arrival time. I'd much rather have it work this way than be too aggressive with arrival time.
- When routing, once I've selected an address either by city, zip code or whatever that other option is that I can't remember at the moment, it gives me the option of selecting the parameters for routing (examples are shortest distance, fastest route, most use of highways, least use of highways) and an option to avoid toll roads. I can either just hit 'go' or update my parameters before hitting go. Again, maybe this is standard, but I like these options.
- Also, the ability to exclude roads is nice. Once a route is selected, I can hit the next maneuver arrow to pop up the maneuver list. From there, I can tap on a road and tell the unit to exclude the use of that road to reroute. Handy when construction/traffic is an issue.
- It came with a travel pouch. Nice touch when throwing the unit in a bag.
- AC adapter was included along with the car adapter. The Garmin I got only had the car adapter. Weird.
- Reroute is fast. Drive past an instruction and within a few seconds, the unit calculates a new solution. If you're moving enough, I've run into scenarios where the reroute computation start is fast, but takes a bit to figure out the actual route.
- Wife acceptance factor was good. She's not a tech guru, but is happy with this unit. It's intuitive for her to use and she told me it significantly reduced her stress when she had to drive in So CA on business having the unit with her.
- Adaptive keyboard is nice. As you type a city or street name, the unit removes invalid letters that aren't associated with the correct spelling of a street name. It's minimized fat fingering a wrong letter and speeds up typing since you can be a bit sloppy. Additionally, it does the same thing when selecting street number to allowing you to chose only valid house numbers for the street you've selected.
Cons:
- No support for waypoints on a multidestination route such that the unit moves onto the next destination upon arrival of the previous destination. The 4250 does allow you to plan a trip and enter multiple destinations, but it won't advance to the next destination without me telling it that I'm ready to do so. More of an annoyance to me than anything since I can get to the next destination within a few clicks.
- As mentioned previously, the power button doesn't always behave. I've held it on for 10-15 seconds with no response and didn't get one until I pushed it repetitively, held it down and did a number of other various things to get it to turn on. In the 2 weeks I've had it, I still don't know what the magic sequence of pushes of the power button is needed to get it to turn on when it decides to act up. But I've not had to use the reset button on this unit yet either.
- Routing gets a little wonky giving me some questionable directions at times; I have confidence the unit will get me where I need to go, but am not always certain that it selects the best way to get there; for instance, yesterday it essentially told me to take an offramp and then take the continuing onramp in lieu of having me just continue on the original road. Although technically, I guess it may have been the shortest route for the roads given. Still....
- While voice is cool, the unit is sometimes hard of hearing and you may need to issue commands multiple times to get it to respond. Some have reported false voice activations (radio or something else triggers it to turn on). I've had this happen only once when others in the car were speaking. There is an option to disable voice recognition.
- BT with mobile phone doesn't pull in my contacts. I can use the phone to dial using the contacts and the GPS unit handles the call; it'd be better to me if the GPS could see my contacts
- My GPS and phone don't 'see' one another when in the vicinity of each other; I've not had BT devices before, but I expected the units to pair automatically if they saw one another. Instead, I have to manually connect the phone to the GPS if I want to use it. Kind of a pain - maybe because my phone isn't supported?
- Unit hasn't woken up on a few occasions when connected to car adapter power. It usually comes on automatically when I turn on my car. There have been times that I've needed to play the power button roulette game until it comes on. I've not picked up on a pattern of when this occurs. I was going to exchange the unit, but am unsure now if I will after hearing this isn't an isolated thing among this model - I'm guessing SW bug is involved.
- Can't enter addresses via PC or trip plan. I think someone said tomtom can.
Those are the main things that I can think of. Overall, I'm fortunate to have gotten a unit that works for the most part and am happy with the features it brings for the price. There are some nice things that Garmin provides, but when it came down to it, having BT in this feature packed unit seemed to make more sense for me than the more expensive (when comparably equipped) Garmin 750. Garmin units are nice, but at the higher price I haven't yet felt the need for MP3s (I have an iPod and a music phone), pictures, a translating dictionary or other stuff I'd likely not use. I don't need a GPS that can make coffee, but I do expect it to guide me to coffee!
For me Magellan was the right choice and I'm pleased to have it as my first GPS unit. There's plenty of POIs, the AAA guide book is a nice touch and talking to the unit is neat. Hopefully this helps someone else that's looking to make a decision.
Customer Review: Excellent GPS Unit!
Summary: 5 Stars
I spent a lot of time researching a GPS unit to purchase. I "settled" for the Magellan 4250 because I couldn't justify the additional $100-200 to purchase a similar Garmin product and I stayed away from TomTom because a retail store rep mentioned that those units were returned pretty frequently.
I took this unit with me to Las Vegas and it got me from point to point without issues. Directions are clear and the interface is pretty straight forward. Entering addresses is quite easy, route calculation is reasonably fast. It has a day/night mode and is quite visible even in direct sunlight. My only complaint with the screen is that the unit is still too bright when in night mode and the brightness is set to the lowest level.
I used the Trip Planner to enter multiple destinations for my trip up to Vegas. This made going from one point to the next easy as I didn't have to make any address entries or search for a POI. I just click on Guide Me, select the destination from my saved Trip and I'm on my way.
POI was very useful. You can search POI by Name, Category or AAA TourBook and then search near you, in a city or near an address. I like the breakdown of POI Categories, very user-friendly. If you have a Bluetooth compatible phone, you can contact the POI if they include the phone number. Just select the phone number and you'll be connected via the built-in speakerphone, which works pretty well. A feature that I didn't think I would use is the ability to choose what POI icons (coffee shops, shopping areas, gas stations, atm/banks, etc.) appear on the map. I found this feature quite useful in searching for a nearby coffee shop.
AAA information is great, I actually used this to find a nice breakfast restaurant. It gave me the restaurant hours, diamond rating and dress attire. Additional AAA TourBook information include these categories: Accomodations, Restaurants, Destinations, Attractions and Events. I found the Events outdated, but I was told by a Magellan sales rep that AAA will be releasing quarterly updates. As of this review, AAA still has not released any updates, they hope to have it up sometime in late 2007. Looks like they are waiting up to the last minute.
AAA Members have additional benefits, see AAA's website for more details. One notable benefit is an extra year warranty.
The Voice Command feature is a nice extra, but it will most likely go unused.
Bluetooth was not compatible with my phone (Cingular 8125), however, I was able to test it using the Sony Ericsson W800 and it worked flawlessly. When you receive a text message an icon appears on the map and you can read the message directly on the screen. The same goes with phone calls. The only downside is that you can't import your contact list.
Live Traffic information is free for 3 months and it looks like $40 per year subscription, quite reasonable. When you have the unit plugged into the FM power/receiver, you'll see an icon on the bottom right hand of the screen indicating traffic status, or if there are any issues on the way to your destination. I have yet to determine how fast/accurate the traffic updates occur.
A nice feature with this unit is that once you have entered your destination, you can look at the direction list and if you see a street that you don't want to include (let's say because you know it has heavy traffic), select that direction/step and you can exclude this from your route. Nifty.
If you are into customizable icons/voices, they are not built-in.
Overall, I am very happy with this purchase and would gladly recommend it to family, friends and strangers reading reviews on Amazon.com.
Job well done Magellan!
*** 2007-11-29 Update****
I've had the unit for about a month now. I have additional comments.
Auto Detour: If you are in traffic, the unit will suggest a Detour. I've only used it once, but it came in very handy.
Traffic: I've come to the conclusion that this is pretty accurate, though I wish there was an option to use the Auto Detour feature before actually hitting traffic.
Exit POI: While on the freeway, I can check to see freeway exit Restaurants, Lodging, Gas Stations and Auto Service Shops. The unit displays the distance to each Exit POI.
Voice Command: I didn't think I would use this much, but with proper annunciation, I found it more convenient to say "Magellan Go Home" instead of pressing the options on the screen.
Size: Since this is my first GPS unit, I may be taking it's size for granted, but I like that I can fit it in my jacket pocket.
Customer Support: When I first got this unit, I couldn't register the product, so I called Customer Support. They were very helpful in helping me register my product. I also had to call them a second time to get assistance in activating my Traffic Subscription, again they were very helpful and was able to resolve my issue.
My Complaints:
- At times the unit is a little slow to respond when an option is selected
- There is no quick/easy way to add a POI by name to the Trip Planner
- Text to speech doesn't always come off well (i.e. Los Angeles/CA-60 W is read "Los Angeles Forwardslash C A Dash Sixty W")
- Searching for a POI by name takes about 15 seconds
- I upgraded my phone to the AT&T Tilt, Bluetooth usage is limited to making and receiving calls
That's about it. I still recommend this unit.
*** 2008-07-30 Update****
I upgraded the firmware on my unit to version 4.60 and I felt the need to update my review. Magellan has improved quite a few things:
- Improved visual cues on the map makes navigation easier
- Bluetooth connection is now automatic, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a call from a friend without having the need to re-connect my Tilt. I was even more pleased when I was able to dial a POI phone number without re-connecting. (Still no SMS or Contact support for my Tilt, but that is probably an OS issue)
- Map scrolling is faster
- Re-route calculation is noticeably faster
- Magellan even fixed the text to speech issue I mentioned in my last update
One of the features I wish Magellan would improve is the time it takes to do a POI Search By Name. I use this feature quite a bit and waiting the 15 to 20 seconds to display a result set just seems too long.
I'm pretty sure there were other improvements that I haven't seen, but the fact that Magellan has released at least 2 firmware upgrades since I bought my 4250 states that they are committed to improving the user experience for their products.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, "Job well done Magellan!"
*** 2009-07-12 Update****
Magellan released yet another firmware update, version 4.86, and I have to applaud them for their latest fixes/additions:
- POI Search By Name time has finally been reduced! I searched for a store (whose logo resembles a bullseye) and search took 4-5 seconds, very fast! There are still times when it takes around 10 seconds, but that didn't happen too often.
- Map drawing speed has also been increased when you scroll around, it is quite noticeable.
- Voice Command is more responsive.
- Lastly, Magellan added 2 new turn chimes, one for a left turn and another for a right turn. Very nice.
Alright, consider this my last review update (unless Magellan releases another firmware upgrade). I officially have no more complaints.
Thanks Magellan!
Customer Review: Great Bargain GPS
Summary: 4 Stars
The Magellan Maestro GPS is very easy and intuitive to use to get directions. The menu is simple enough and the screen is not cluttered at all, giving you easy access to view the map and/or select whatever functions you need. I find the next-turn arrow in the lower-left corner to be a great feature that cannot be found on some other high-end GPS units - how can such an important feature be overlooked by other companies?
The directions the 4250 provide seem very accurate. The GPS alerts you with voice guidance in the form of "Turn right in 0.5 miles onto Main Street" at intervals of 2 miles, 0.5 miles, and shortly before a turn, giving you plenty of warning prior to the next turn. When you have a turn immediately following another one, it will also add "Turn right onto Main Street, followed by a left turn." It's very good with freeways, giving you plenty of notice which side of the freeway you should be on prior to a split in the freeway or an exit. I find myself rarely having to look at the screen because the voice prompts are so spot-on. As far as accuracy goes, the 4250 seems to direct me to my destination VERY well, sans an occasion where it told me the location was on the wrong side of the road than it truly was (it was a house address though, not a business). For the primary function of a GPS, getting you where you want to go, the Maestro 4250 is stellar!
The 4250 has some cool features, such as the ability to view "Exit POIs" or restaurants and hotels at the next exit while driving on a freeway. This is a great feature that I find very useful while on a long road trip, which allows you to stop off and grab a bite. I really wish the 4250 would let you divert your route to catch dinner at a local restaurant or such when you're not on a freeway. I haven't found any way to do this so far except for cancelling your current route and then selecting the restaurant nearby. As an aside, the GPS has never told me to make a U-Turn, as it seems to route you around a few roads to get you back on track - this can be both a blessing and a pain, depending upon the occasion and the path it takes (once it took me on a 3-mile detour because of this, although it was in a rural area with few roads).
The bluetooth function works decently enough. The nice thing is, if you connect your phone to the GPS via bluetooth, when you find a POI you can just click on the phone number given for said POI to call the restaurant, hotel, event location, etc, and your phone dials it up! There's a bit of a trick to pairing your phone to the GPS and getting it to automatically pair in the future when both are on (how to do this isn't in the manual/reference card that comes in the box), but once you've got the feature enabled you'll never have trouble again. As far as sound quality, I can almost always hear the folks on the other end just fine, although sometimes they seem to have trouble hearing me, in which case I have to speak up over the road noise.
The AAA Tourbook feature is an added bonus that functions well, but could have been better integrated. It's nice to be able to view ratings, descriptions, cost estimates, etc. of restaurants and hotels. My one complaint here is that you cannot locate a point-of-interest with the GPS POI menu and then view the tourbook information on that POI (if available). You have to actually go through the AAA Tourbook menu to view any/all tourbook information on a POI. Unfortunately, not all POIs exist in the tourbook, so if you decide to search solely through the tourbook for POIs, you'll be missing out on a lot of other places to eat/stay/etc. In it's current state, the AAA feature should be viewed as an added bonus rather than need-to-have functionality.
The voice command functionality is pretty limited. You only get a small number of things that you can command, such as telling the GPS to "go home" whereas it will reroute you back to your pre-programmed "home" location, asking the GPS for "distance to destination" whereas it will tell you how far away you are from your destination and when it thinks you'll arrive, asking for the "nearest restaurants" feature in which case the GPS will ask you for a cuisine type and then list all nearby restaurants. I wish the 4250 would allow you to input destinations with the voice prompt, but unfortunately it doesn't allow that and only has a small subset of commands available. Again, like the AAA features, the voice command feature is more of an added bonus rather than a polished feature, although I do find myself using it often.
It seems Magellan has listened to the customers and updated many of the previous problems reported. The 4250 no longer says "Palm Doctor" for Palm Dr, now it says "Palm Drive" just fine (a complaint I've read many times about this model). You can update the AAA Tourbook POI data by visiting the AAA website (if you're an AAA member), however I'm not sure about how often Magellan updates the maps themselves in this device.
I haven't used the RDS-TMC live traffic feature yet, so I cannot comment on that feature.
There's a lot of complaints out there about the power button being quirky. I can confirm this - it is quirky. In fact, the first 4250 I owned wouldn't turn on at all some days. I got tired of this and exchanged it for another, and the new one seems to work just fine. Again, there are still some small quirks with the power button even on the new one - sometimes I have to hold the power button down for 10 seconds before it turns on, but it's always turned on for me. If you get a bad one that doesn't want to work, I highly recommend returning/exchanging it for another.
All in all, even despite the few small complaints, none of them really are deal breakers except if you get one of those bogus 4250s that doesn't want to turn on. In fact, I find the pros far outweigh the cons, and I've been extremely happy with my purchase. I highly recommend this GPS to folks in the market for a budget GPS that doesn't sacrifice on functionality. I even find myself wondering how I ever got along without my Magellan Maestro 4250.
Customer Review: Great Routing Engine
Summary: 4 Stars
I'd like to start his review by simply saying, this product is not worth the $499 MSRP price tag at all. If I had actually had to pay that much for it I would have sent it back. As usual though, I got a great deal on this by buying it on Amazon and it was worth the just slightly over $200 I paid for it.
There are many features on this I don't use and probably never will or ever intended to use. The Blue Tooth hands free cell phone option I don't use, this thing is just too quiet to make that practical and you can't do text messages with it. I use "Call Wave" free service that converts all my voice mail to text messages so this would have been a handy capability I would have used if possible. I also don't use the voice commands on it. It seems stupid of them to of made this so you can't use voice to enter in a destination address, unbelievable that this isn't a capability for a product that lists at $499. Haven't found any need to use its capable voice commands so its a pointless feature to me.
I've read other reviews that the touch screen seems to delay or not respond at times. I've not seen this to be a problem except when trying to enable blue tooth on it, then it seems to hang up and had to be rebooted by powering off and back on. The power button is not absolute, but this I've noticed is common on all devices running the Windows CE operating system which this uses. Once you get use to it then no big deal, just not as expected. The power cord should have in the least been placed on the left side of this, not sticking out the right. Common sense in the design should have been obvious this would be installed in a vehicle for the driver, so the power cord should have plugged into the other side. I've also noticed the power cord (a USB mini plug) doesn't stay in very well so sometimes it switches over to battery mode unless you slightly move the power cord. All your routing and everything maintains, so its no dramatic deal, but should have been better.
FM traffic reporting is not available in my area, I really wish it was and this was a working concept, it would come in very handy for me in my area where we have mountain roads often closed due to snow. So I don't use and can;t comment on the FM traffic reporting feature.
So far all bad, so why did I keep it?
It does an exceptional job of its core purpose! Many other GPS systems use the same exact maps, however, the actual routing engine that calculates where you should drive to on those maps is not the same. Think of it like 2 different people looking at the same paper map but each person giving you different directions to get to the same place. I'm a service tech, so I spend all day driving to numerous different addresses, day in and out, so this thing gets a lot of use from me. I've already tried everything out there from paper map books, to printing out Google routing maps, to VZNavigator on my cell phone, to the similar priced Garmin and Tom Tom units. None of these other options come even close to how well this 4250's routing engine works. It picks perfect routes and it does an almost deadly accurate estimate of actual trip time. The only other device that came close to routing this well was the Garmin I used, and it didn't always give me the best route, the Garmin also consistently under estimated actual arrival times. Its routing times look shorter and faster, but in actual reality they were not once you drove them.
The routing engine in it does have a weird bug however. When your parked in a parking lot and it initially calculates your route it does so perfectly. However as you work your way out of the parking lot and onto the streets for the route the 4250 gets (consistently reproduced) extremely confused. It jumps into recalculating your route while in the parking lot when you start moving and gives you a new insane and off the wall route that sends you every time in the complete wrong direction if you pay attention to it. Like if it initial determines go onto street "A" and turn left, once you start moving in a parking lot it will recalculate and then tell you to go to street "A" and turn right. It may seem at first this is due to the changing direction the vehicle is pointed, but this bug is not factoring that in, it literally shows you the route recalculated going in the complete wrong direction on the street. As soon as you get onto the actual street though it recalculates again and gets you going the right way. I found it best to enter in all my route information, see where it tells me to go while still parked, then ignore it till I'm on the actual street.
Long freeway off ramps running parallel to the actual freeway seems to confuse it as well if your just listening for the tone on when to turn and not paying attention. Often when its a very long off ramp it doesn't tell you to turn till well after you have passed the actual exit. It tells you the right exit, just doesn't notice the actual location of the off ramp.
Its listed POI's are severely out of date, it lists many business locations that have been gone or changed at least 5 years ago, other new ones that have been around at least 5 years still do not turn up in the default search listing. However, I notice if you use its listing many places aren't there, yet if you type in the actual name to search that way they are in its data base. Its actual map is current though for my areas.
Over all I'm very happy with it, its not perfect, but so far better than the many other options out there I have already tried. Had I actually had to pay the $499 list price for it I would have sent it back by now, for that money I'd expect it to be better than it is, but for just over $200 maybe as much as $300 its great.
I am disappointed that this is a urbanized only system. I like to off road in the desert and mountains here and was hoping this would be useful for off road GPS navigation and trail mapping, its not. If you aren't on an actual street its pretty much useless out in the wilds and instead still need a hand held GPS system for this type of purpose.