Magellan Maestro 4200 4.3'' Portable GPS

Someone doesn’t know the difference between a review and a press release.

SUCK!

I do live in CT. Don’t get me started on the cell phone service here either!

the POI sucks its olny 1.3 million and all the other models are 6million POI

Newegg link

Looks like a good Christmas Gift… I shop early. I have been a Garmin fan… have 2 of those, never used one of these… does it have voice prompts for up coming turns and does it speak the street or just the turns? THanks

thanks for the advice jejeje

Could be worse I guess. My Durango has built-in GPS and the map DVD is only updated about every 18-24 months…

i am in grenada, the isle of spice as we speak!

I’ve hated Magellan for several years. I’ve been selling GPS for several years now. They’re always slow, to the point of almost being useless at times. Their user interface leaves much to be desired in terms of usability. It’s clunky and out of order, takes forever to calculate, they freeze up. I could go on for days.

Save the time and money and spend it on a Garmin.

jeffmack01
Apr 28, 2008 1:08 AM
[2192437]
Would this make a good camping/hiking/sailing GPS device? I mean, does it deal with altitude or water depth at all? Or is this perhaps more suited for just navigational use in your car? Or both??

Probably not your best bet.
Although it does have an altimeter, they dont typically have topographical maps loaded with hiking trails, etc, that are useful for any kind of outdoor recreational activities.

On that note…Ill stick with my Nuvi 660 any day of the week!

Read a review at Buy.com, one person said it can’t be plugged in and charging while you’re using it. Anyone have this unit and can confirm this? THnaks

I agree. Most GPS are useless for outdoor recreation.
Get a decent topo map with an UTM grid, and a $30 GPS that gives you your UTM position, and it will be perfect.
Oh, and get a compass too… your GPS might die, and its compass is based on measurements based on the previous readings so it’s not very accurate.

I would not recommend this. Sure, it has lots of features like text-to-speech, but when it comes down to using it, it is a huge pain. I got this not too long ago, and I returned it. The OS (Windows CE 5.0) is so slow and unresponsive you have to hit buttons many times or wait a while for simple button presses to register. It takes a long time to get a signal as well (it has an older GPS chipset). Also, the bluetooth did not work well with my phone. I would recommend a newer model, like the Garmin Nuvï 680. Much more responsive OS, much faster signal reception, and better feature implementation.

N.B. I actually had the 4250, not the 4200, but they are similar.

I just read this posting on Amazon. Not sure if you are just quoting this or if you wrote it there. If you wrote it then you might need to be a little more techie to use this as most of what you are saying is either wrong or something you should not expect for a Sub $500 GPS.

My wife has the 3100 model, only has a 3.5" screen, and after an update and then a few mods to allow the 6 million POI. She will not let me near it any longer. So I will be buying this one for here and taking the other one for me, well that is what she will do once she sees it.

And before anyone asks this model can be Hacked to allow all kinds of things. Check out this page. http://goeken.homedns.org/Weather/Magellan3100/Magellan.htm
Its for the 3100 but the 4200 will work with most if not all of these changes.

I always have it plugged in and charging while in use…no problem, and it backs up to a regular garden variety SD card

Similar yet different. If you are going to rip the product offered then rip the exact product not one similar.

This is a sweet GPS!

I have the 4000 line - works flawlessly (granted I changed the 3d map to 2d). Its very quick - works while charging - is quick to re-route - pretty much a good item to have if you travel a lot. As far as updates - the map software is a bit old - there is a POI hack to make it 6 million (google search it) - the map software doesnt have an update yet, but I live in NY and its pretty spot on. At nearly $200 I recommend this product - I bought the 4000 for about $160 a few weeks ago and couldnt be happier. I assume the 4200 has a few more bells and whistles - if your in the market its a no-brainer.

Ok. Thanks, by the way, what would you back up to the SD card anyway?

Sure, all the people here have money to burn. You check the prices for map updates from Garmin lately??? Feh!

whatever happened to the old fashioned maps and road atlases?

I have had a Magellan 2000 for two years now. Absolutely no problems at all. Brother has a Garmin and has had to do a reset several times. Megallan is a great product.