Magellan Maestro 4250 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
by Magellan
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List Price: Our Price: $58.00 You Save: $541.99 (90%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Magellan Maestro 4250 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator
Customer Review: Basically good, but with 2 major flaws
Summary: 3 Stars
I won't repeat what the other reviewers have said. I thought that this GPS unit was basically pretty good. But, I took a long motorcycle trip with it last fall (Oct 2008), during which 2 major design flaws surfaced which drove me crazy.
Flaw #1: The AAA information is not integrated with the regular POI information.
For me, the AAA trip guide data was the deciding factor in purchasing the Magellan. Unfortunately, it is implemented as a completely separate, standalone feature. For example, suppose that you use the freeway "what's ahead" feature to find a motel near Exit 100. The Magellan will show you a list of motels near exit 100, but the Magellan's native POI data just gives you the name, address and phone number of the motels. Now, if you want to get the AAA info for those motels so that you can decide which one to stay at, you have to exit the Magellan POI database, go back out to the main menu (back, back, back...), select the AAA Tourbook menu option, and do a completely separate search for those motels based on the city and motel name and/or address...which I hope you remembered or wrote down.
The good thing is that the user interface for both POI database is the same. The bad thing is that the two database use different categories in some cases, so it isn't always easy to find a particular POI in one database or the other.
It would be MUCH better if the two databases were integrated, and the AAA information was available as an adjunct to the native POI data.
Flaw #2: The unit's POI features are heavily biased towards freeway driving.
When you are cursing down the freeway with the route-tracking feature turned on, the top-level "What's Ahead" button will show you a list of upcoming freeway exits, ordered by distance, and for each exit, it shows the travel service POI's (gas, food, lodging, etc) available at those exits. Great!
But, if you are traveling cross-country on the "back roads," that feature isn't available, and getting at the equivalent information is a major pain in the rear. For example, on my motorcycle tour of the West, I had a relatively small gas tank so I was always interested/concerned about how far it was to the next gas station. When you are route-tracking but off the freeways, that information is essentially impossible to find.
What you have to do is to cancel out of route-tracking--losing your time and distance to your destination--then pull out a paper map, figure out where you are, locate some likely towns on the map that are ahead of you, then search for those towns on the Magellan to find out if they have a gas station. You could in theory just search for gas stations that are nearest to your current position, but that just shows you all gas stations in a radius from your location, including those behind you or off in different directions. If you in unfamiliar territory, you have no idea which one is the one in front of you on your current route.
What Magellan SHOULD DO is to implement the "What's Ahead" feature for all roads, not just freeways, making use of your route information to decide where you are and where you are going. Instead of a list of freeway exits, it could be a list of upcoming towns and other locales. All the data is there in the unit, but they way it is currently implemented makes it all but useless for off-freeway travel.
Customer Review: Terrible Customer Service & Support
Summary: 1 Stars
I recently purchased a Magellan Maestro 4250 though the GPS initially worked well I ran into problems with the map update and after sending it into the service center they lost the GPS and customer is doing nothing to resolve the issue! I have been repeatedly disappointed with the support I've received from Magellan's customer Service since my first contact with them.
Here's my experience:
I bought the Maestro 4250 in November and as the map database was out dated I called Customer Service to take advantage of the "Magellan 30-Day Map Guarantee". After contacting Customer Service I was directed to fax them a copy of my receipt for the unit and told that I would be contacted within 24 hours confirming my eligibility for the update. Four days later I had heard nothing, when I called to Customer Service I was told that the fax quality to poor to confirm my eligibility so I was asked to scan and email the receipt which I did. Another week passes and no word, another call and I'm told they can't locate it. This scenario is repeated 4 times before I finally get in touch with a Rep. that finds my original email with receipt attached. A month after my initial contact I was informed that my map update had been approved and I received the Map DVD's 6 days later. At NO Time during this experience did a Magellan Customer Service Rep initiate any follow-up call or e-mail. Had it not been for my persistence (10-12 phone calls) I'm convinced I would still be waiting for the update disk.
So upon receiving my update disk, I closely followed the map update instructions including fully charging the GPS and booting my PC without my firewall and anti-virus software. Two minutes into the update process the Maestro GPS prematurely shut itself off and attempted to restart. I'm assuming the update wasn't complete and I never got past the Magellan blue screen. At this point the GPS would no longer connect to the PC. After a short discussion with a Magellan Tech Support Rep. I was given an RA # and I shipped the unit to the service center at my expense. I understand that software problems and conflicts happen but this has only made a bad experience worse.
My latest aggravation is that during my conversation with customer service to get return authorization, I was promised by the Customer Service Representative that I would be contacted by email upon receipt of the unit by the repair center. Although UPS Tracking verifies delivery 10 days ago on Jan 7th , receipt has still not been confirmed by the Service center. I was also promised that I would receive the unit back within 7 days of the unit being received at the service center. This obviously hasn't happened either. I've now been informed that they will contact me in 7-10 days to advise me of the status (I'm not holding my breath!).
After numerous phone calls and e-mails, the Customer Support Representatives have done nothing to resolve the situation. If my business treated customers in this manor I would very quickly be out of business! Three days ago I told the Rep. that I expected to hear back from someone within 24 hours on how they were going to remedy the problem and have heard nothing since.
I have had a Garmin GPS for four years and had no problems with it. In addition the software update on that unit was easy and painless! This is my first and probably last Magellan purchase!
Customer Review: So far so good
Summary: 5 Stars
So far I have only two complaints, and I will hold them for the end. My 4250 was packaged very well, the shipping was fast. It was simple to take out of the package and get up and running, and with the "Points Of Interest" and addresses that are already in the thing, you really don't have to do anything else. I elected not to use the adhesive disk because I stick nothing to the interior of my car, so it is mounted on the windshield, and it holds securely. It is very simple to use either through touching the screen or voice commands, although sometimes it does not respond to my voice commands, but that can be expected with the inherent background noises that exist in a moving or running vehicle. Sometimes it can be a challenge to find and address/street, but I have found if you type as far as it will let you, and then start backing up one letter at a time, you will eventually find the address/street you are looking for. They are not always in there the way you expect. A good example is people here refer to some streets as RR but they are really Roosevelt Road, you have to actually enter "Rooseve..." to get on the right page. It's not a problem just one of the little things you have to learn. If you put in your destination, and then examine you route by using the simulate mode, you can figure out which of the 4 routes you want to take, and you can fast forward or reverse through the simulation to look at specific areas of your trip, which is a very nice feature. Sometimes it just will not calculate the route the way I want to go, and when that happens I just go the way I want, turn off the volume and it will continue to recalculate my route until it gets to the one I want. So far it has not gotten me lost, although for some reason it did have me exit the interstate and then get back on the interstate at the next on ramp. I'm not sure why we did that, but I have learned to follow directions and you won't get lost. The POI software is great, I installed it and thought it was a joke at first, but then I discovered that between Mapquest and Google Earth, I can locate anything, then I can get the Lat. and Long. and convert that to the decimal lat. and long. and I can enter my own POIs. Then using this system I can create trips using the POI editor, you can just name POIs stop 1, stop 2, etc. Ok now for the complaints; To use a voice command you have to say the word "Magellan" and the unit responds with "Say a command." Sometimes it will respond with "Say a command" while you are talking to someone in your vehicle. I am sure it hears something that sounds like someone said "Magellan" and it is doing what it is programmed to do, but sometimes is gets a little annoying. The other problem is sometimes the unit seems to lock up. On several occasions I have had to wait several minutes for my 4250 to respond and allow me to enter an address or intersection. It has never happened at a critical time while I was driving, each time it has happened I was sitting still. This is a computer, and sometimes computers get conflicting instructions. I have not had to turn the unit off yet to clear a problem, but I think it gets confused sometimes. Over all, I like my 4250 a lot, and if I had it to do all over again, I would definitely buy another 4250.Customer Review: Touch screen cracked at 3 months old
Summary: 4 Stars
I had always thought GPS systems were a complete waste of money. Why not just use a street map, or print out MapQuest directions?
As I found myself taking more long road trips and driving on unfamiliar roads, all of which looked the same, I realized that a GPS system that could take me directly to where I was going and route me around road construction and traffic congestion was a smart purchase.
The price I paid last June was $260.00 for a Magellan Maestro 4250. It had an excellent reputation for reliability, and being a AAA member, the AAA Tourbook Information feature was a selling point right there. I paid extra for a yearly subscription to the traffic monitoring service (congestion shows up as yellow lines on the on-screen route map.)
On my first trip with it, it really proved its worth, talking me through turns at intersections, expressway entrances, and interstate names. "Left turn in two --- miles on ---- Boughton Rd" An acid-green line defines the unit's pre-programmed route to the destination you've chosen. If you accidentally go past its determined turn, or you veer off from its assigned course, it automatically recalculates your route for you and gets you back on track. "When possible, make a legal U-turn in Point --- One --- Miles!)
It got me into Canada through Detroit and Windsor to the Josiah Henson settlement "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with no problem. Coming back was another story. For some reason, even though I had programmed a hotel in a the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, it wanted to route me north through Sarnia, ON and Port Huron, MI instead of back through Windsor. Weird.
But overall, things went swimmingly until Sunday, August 3, 2008. I pressed the bottom of the screen to switch menus, and it cracked! Not a little one, either, but a star-shaped crack that went all the way across the bottom of the screen. I called Magellan customer support that Monday, and they would accept it for repairs, but it turns out that the touch-screen is the only part of the unit not covered under warranty. $85.12, please. (Really, Magellan. If you can price touch-screen replacement to the penny, this cracking must be an ongoing and pervasive problem with these units.)
I sent my unit to Magellan repair, and got it back three weeks later, seemingly working fine. My next long road trip, in which I was led straight into a road construction traffic jam, revealed that during the repair, my traffic subscription had been wiped clean (I thought). After a call to Magellan customer support, I found that the touch-screen was apparently unrepairable, and Magellan had sent me an entirely new unit, with a different serial number. She was very helpful in transferring my subscription to the new unit, and it's been working like a charm for the last 5 months.
A plane trip to Orlando in October revealed a feature I hadn't known about. I had to set "home" to be Orlando International Airport or someplace in Orlando; otherwise, the unit assumed I was actually at my home, and was going to route me to the Orlando Vans Outlet Store all the way from Chicago.
But, Magellan! Give us poor schlubs a warranty for that touch-screen! It's the Achilles' heel of the whole unit.
Customer Review: Positive Experience with Customer Service
Summary: 5 Stars
Received Maestro 4250 unit from Amazon on Dec 3, 2008. Called Magellan toll free number to update maps to latest for $10 shipping fee for disks. Taking advice from other reviewers, I went to Magellan's website and registered (using the AAA link to get extended warrantee# and downloaded latest operating software #free) as well as latest AAA data. I'm a AAA member.
While waiting on new map disks, I used the unit in Houston Texas with traffic advisor. Worked great since Houston has this service. I've been able to pull up traffic "status" maps from my computer at home & work, but it's really nice to have it built-in to GPS unit so I can map detours "real time". Also took 900 mile round trip to Mississippi over holidays. Unit performed great. I was able to use most of the unit's features on this long trip. Very nice. I'm looking forward to using the Bluetooth feature with my mobile phone, but right now my phone model does not have Bluetooth.
Now for the problem, and my positive experience with customer service.
I had read from other reviewers that the map update disk could cause the unit to freeze and not work. That's exactly what happened to me. About a third of the way through the update (using my computer) my unit screen froze and nothing I did helped. I called Magellan's toll free number; explained my problem; and I asked to ship my unit back to Magellan, and for Magellan to load the map update for me. They gave me the mailing instructions (to Tenn.) and a repair order number to put on address and tape to the unit inside the box. Cost me $4 to ship the unit by USPS. Put in mail on Jan 14. Received unit back via FedEx on Jan 22. The reason for the short turn-a-round is that they sent back a different unit. This makes sense, otherwise it probably would have taken much longer to get unit back.
The replacement unit looks like new. It was loaded with latest operating software, latest map & POI data, and latest AAA data. The only thing that wasn't working was the Traffic Advisor "subscription". I went to my account page on Magellan's website and found the "code" that I used with the original unit but it would not work with the different unit (different serial number). So I called Magellan and selected Tech service option, explained my problem, and was given a new code over the phone. They even stayed on the line while I typed code into unit (very nice). New code works fine.
Note that to get the replacement unit's serial number "registered" you'll need to go onto Magellan's website under your account and add it. But this was no problem. The rep said that they would transfer ownership over to the replacement unit and honor my full / AAA extended warrantee on the replacement unit.
The best part was that during the 4 or 5 phone calls to customer service I didn't have to wait to speak with a person (even on Sat.). They also don't make you go through layers and layers of options before gaining access to a live person. I'm very happy with the unit's features, performance, and Magellan's customer service. Not to mention Amazon's price, and service. Amazon and Magellan is a nice combination. I recommend them both.