GPS Sat Nav Systems

Magellan Inc has been in the market manufacturing the GPS systems even before the owners of the Tom Tom and some other current leading manufacturers were on their technological nappies. In 1997, Magellan was the first in the market to introduce the handheld global satellite communicator, the GSC 100. But, all these do not seem to have bearing success of Magellan’s in car satellite navigation systems. The firm has a long history in GPS as long as anyone’s, but it just has not cracked the lucrative in car market in the United Kindom. Magellan was purchased by Mio Technology on 15th December 2008.

It is not that Magellan did not try, it had actually launched a raft of new products aimed at raining on the dry spell. The first was the RodeMate 1215 that was squeezed for just under £100, but it did not prove to be the perfect guidance system. The next turn was taken by the Magellan Maestro 4245, which was much expensive; but it had to face the competition of the top end excellent new Tom Tom XL Traffic 22. In the following review, we will see how well the system managed to do.

Design:

Well designed:
The Magellan Maestro 4245 Sat Nav Unit looks really stylish in its black and silver finishing and also has a nice and large 4.3” display, a one that is really very bright. The device is very sleek and at 17mm depth it can easily be slipped into handbags or pockets with great ease. Looks like even the GPS devices are starting to catch up with the cell phones in the slim race. While articulated, the arm windscreen mount is very solid and it sticks to the windscreen unlike the useless mount that comes with its cheaper sibling, the 1215. The cradle is robust and easy to adjust. The best part about the device’s design is that, there are no unsightly dangling wires that are routed around the edges of the windscreen to pick up the signal; it will just tune in as you drive.

User Interface:

Ease of Use:
The descriptive and intuitive user interface has made the device extremely user friendly. All the functions are controlled online using the crisp 4.3” touchscreen display. The display has enough space for large buttons, making it very easy to use even for those with large fingers. Touch-screen response times are not as quick as most other GPS devices. With using the device for the first time, loading of menu items might take around 10 seconds or more to load, but that is just the system warming up and thereafter you will witness the subsequent usage to be fairly rapid. Just tap over the menu button, and you will be offered with three big button options for entering the address, searching for the point of interests and also for showing the map; along with this, there are three small shortcut icons beneath the device for quick routing to your home address, accessing the Bluetooth hands-free setting and also for bringing up the nearby garages. The keypad on the device has the numbers and alphabets in separate pages, but it is quicker than some of the rival devices, thanks to the unit highlighting possible characters for you to select next. Again, the QuickSpell feature greys out characters not matching with the streets/cities in the GPS database. It is quite handy and worked well during our test period.

Easy to enter addresses:
Sensibly, once you have set your destination country in the options menu, it becomes the default and you will not have to enter it every time you want to type in the destination. This makes the Magellan Maestro 4245 GPS Sat Nav System an exceptional one from the other SatNav’s loaded with European maps that portrays you to be taking a continental trip when you might only be driving along shops. Entering the address on the device is very simple and straightforward. You will be able to get to your destination by typing in the full UK postcode or town and street names. The fairly prompt on-screen keyboard comes with chunky letters and doesn’t show any sign of lag even as the system verifies the name database eliminating names of places that no are longer applicable.

Intuitive options:
A very thoughtful touch of the device is that, once you have found your destination, it displays an options screen that allows you to choose between the shortest time and shortest distance, if you would like to avoid toll roads and how often you would want to use the motorways. On many of the GPS systems, even the high end ones, these options get buried away inside the settings menus and so, it is very refreshing to see them presented at an opportune moment at the time of route planning. We really appreciate Magellan’s thinking to split the screen of the SatNav in half when you are approaching a turning, by displaying a large icon representing the particular turning on one half and a 3D overhead moving map on the other, thus making navigation of roundabouts and junctions a literal breeze.

Ugly maps:
But we did not like the same ill-looking green and brown mapping colour scheme and most importantly, the worst part is that, the map does not give the correct level of detail 100% of time.  Note that, the maps of Magellan 4245 are provided by Navteq. We wish if only they looked like the pretty ones in TomTom and Garmin navigators. The route is clearly marked in a bright green line. While the top screen shows the current road, the bar at the bottom shows the distance to your next turning and the name of the road.

Lack of detail:
Once, while testing, when we turned down a main street off route to test the device’s recalculation, we were really surprised to find the Maestro 4245 portable navigation system did not seem to have that particular road in the database, then it turned out the it actually had it, but for some reason it had not displayed it on the screen. The problem with the detail manifests itself very clearly in the map browse mode. But the issue is that, you will not get to see the full street level details or road labels until you zoom it very close. The motorways are simply impossible to pick out at the medium zoom levels; hence if you are planning a trip via a very busy and confusing routing, it is going to be very tough with this device.

Features:

Basic features:
On the paper, there is a lot to like about the SatNav. In fact, there is no major feature checkbox left unchecked in this case. The Magellan Maestro 4245 satellite navigation system has the full set of European maps for seventeen countries, safety camera alerts pre-installed, an integrated TMC traffic information antenna and even Bluetooth hands-free phone capability. It is also equipped with text to speech system, which will call out most of the street names as you approach them and also has the voice control system. The device also has a few of the features that we loved in the Magellan RoadMate 1215 and unfortunately, it has also adopted the majority of the bad features of the same.

Receiver and start-up:
The Maestro 4245 runs on the “Centrality Atlas III” receiver. This multiplatform chip has the the famous SIRFStar III receiver ticking inside and is used in majority of the GPS devices, offering a fairly exact tracking to date. The device starts up quickly and most of the time, we did not encounter any trouble with the signal strength. It tool around roughly 30 secs to lock a signal with sufficiently rapid re-routing times for normal usage.

Point of Interest:
The Magellan Maestro 4245 Sat Nav is loaded with as many as 6 million POIs, including the basic ones like petrol stations, restaurants, nearest garage, hospitals and banks with supplementary user-added places. Nevertheless, implementation of customised POIs is kind of poor. Meaning you will not be allowed to add a POI directly to the device and will need to do so only in a PC via the Magellan software. This is kind of complicated as you might have to know the longitude/latitude of a desired point. It is disappointing that the software simply doesn’t use a graphical interface to do so.

Bluetooth support:
With the Bluetooth support available in the device, you will be able to connect it to a mobile phone and use the 4245 as a hands-free kit. But we had real trouble getting this function to work, despite pairing it with several different models from a host of phone manufactures. We had trouble in pairing it with some Nokia E-Series and N series phones, but it got easily paired up with Motorola and Apple. Once connected, users have access to hands-free, an address book and some basic SMS functions.

Voice Recognition:
While most of the satnavs requires you to pull over or at least take your eyes off the road to change the destination, the Maestro 4245, by far offers the safest option of voice recognition for route planning. If you are running low on fuel or dying for a bite to eat you do not have to fiddle with the screen to find the nearest places. Instead, you can just say “Magellan” to turn on the voice command feature and you can just bark instructions such as “Nearest Restaurant” at the device and it will bring the list of services available in that area. Then just say the number you want in the list and the 4245 will guide you there. You can also ask the navigator to plot a detour.

Performance analysis of Maestro 4245:

Text to speech support:
The Magellan 4245 has excellent text-to-speech support with the system voicing out every street’s name that you turn into with a simply superb pronunciation and is definitely far better than the robotic voices that you witness with other text-to-speech units. Hearing the name of the road means you do not have to look at the display and this can make all the difference at a complicated junction. But it randomly loses its GPS lock and when reconnected, it gets confused as to where you are and the direction that you are travelling in. And the screen does not update in a smooth fashion, so the in-town navigation can just be a hit and miss. We found that the Last-minute voice directions to be little bit late and most often does not tally with what is actually displayed on the screen and this led to some chaos particularly at junctions. For certain turnings that are close to each other, the instructions are not linked to together and most of the times, the second instruction is not delivered at all.

The split screen system:
We had said earlier that we liked the split screen system of the GPS, but Maestro has not taken complete advantage of this either, particularly in their Next Turning feature. For instance, with a junction approaching the icon abandons you all of a sudden leaving you completely off guard while you rack your brains with a rather unclear 3D view of the Map.

Voice control performance:
The Voice Control has not been well thought out. The manual of the system does not have any instructions on how to activate it and when we finally worked out how to do the same, it turns out that you will have to yell “Voice Mode” at it. We have to say that the only useful application of the voice control is in manually rerouting around a roadblock or traffic jam. Unfortunately, our experience with the voice prompts was just a hit and miss. At times the response would be fairly prompt, but then again if the device had to deal with some intricate routes, then there was a significant delay between activation word and screen display. You are not provided with an option to enter street addresses and you cannot check the traffic status too, really frustrating. However, the voice control is generally easier to risk using the screen.

No seven digit postcode lookup:
It is very disappointing that, being a top end satellite navigation device, the Maestro 4245 does not even have a seven digit postcode lookup. Instead, if you are typing in a postcode, it will more often be asking for the street name and the house number too.

Traffic Information System:
The traffic information system works just pretty well; finally something good about the Maestro 4245 GPS sat nav system. Unfortunately, although the Maestro 4245 has the speed camera alerts as standard, you will have to pay some extra bucks for a TMC Traffic Information Receiver.

Audio:
Returning to the awful performance of the Magellan 4245, it has an awful speaker too. It is too quiet and distorts at maximum volume, making it very difficult to hear the instructions clearly even when there is the slightest noise inside your car. We found that we were missing junctions and even some of the very important traffic information updates, just because a rather cheap corner has been cut. This is totally unforgivable for a top of the range, dedicated satellite navigation system. However, the volume icon is superimposed on the map display, so it takes only a couple of finger taps to change the volume or mute the unit.

Speaker and feedback:
As in the case of most of the GPS devices, the main speaker of Maestro too is placed on the back of the unit with a small microphone on the front. While the very intent of this arrangement is to eliminate feedback, it still seemed to occur with the speaker being tuned to a perceptible audible volume. We made a few calls to test the audio quality of the device and we were not really impressed. The recipient said us that the feedback had always been an issue and that the microphone caused some bass-heavy, muffled voice. Though this is tolerable for some short calls, you would not like to have any kind of long conversations with the device and it will soon be very tiring.

Box contents:

The package of the Magellan 4245 includes the Magellan Maestro 4245 receiver, windscreen mount, an adhesive disc to help with dash mounting, basic cradle, quick reference guide/CD also with an adapter of 12-24V for the cigarette lighter with an in-built FM Antenna.

Warranty:

The Magellan Maestro 4245 GPS system comes with two years manufacturer’s warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

The voice control feature of this SatNav looks to be more of a stunt as against being a helpful feature, yet impressive. Navigation and route planning interface works seamlessly with the text-to-speech feature acting more like a stress buster. However, the list of bad features and issues of the device is longer than that of the good stuff. If the Magellan Maestro 4245 had all these issues and it costs under £100, we would be willing to grudgingly recommend this device to the satnav cheapskates. But the most unfortunate truth is that, its high-end feature set is accompanied by a high-end price. Costing over £200, we cannot advice anybody to buy it over Tom Tom’s most capable XL Traffic Europe 22 or you can even opt for the similarly priced TomTom Go 720T.

Magellan Maestro 4245 Sat Nav – Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Magellan
Model Name	Maestro 4245 GPS System
Navigator Type	Portable
Dimensions (W x H x D)	143.4 x 20.3 x 91.8 mm
Weight	196 grams
Display	WQVGA full colour touchscreen display with anti glare coating
Display screen size	4.3 inch
Display resolution	432 x 240 pixels
Memory type	Internal memory
Memory card slot	Secure Digital (SD)
Map provider	Navteq on board
Maps included	Full European Map Coverage: England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, Andorra.
Waypoints/favourites/locations	1 Million Searchable Points of Interest with space for 6 million POIs
Wireless communication supported	Bluetooth
Voice	Voice commands
Text to Speech	Yes
Connector type	USB
Compatibility	Windows and Mac OS X 10.4 and above
GPS Recommended usage	In-car
WaterProof	No
Additional features	New Intuitive User Interface Pre-loaded speedtrap database QuickSpell Integrated Live Traffic Functionality SayWhere 1 Million Searchable Points of Interest Postcode Search Bluetooth for Hands Free calling Voice Command operation for basic functions
Included GPS Software	SiRFstarIII
Included accessories	Magellan Maestro 4245 receiver, windscreen mount, adhesive disc for dash mounting, basic cradle, quick reference guide & CD and also a cigarette lighter adapter (12 – 24V) with the FM Antenna built-in
Battery type	Rechargeable lithium-ion
Battery life	Up to 180 minutes, depends on usage and settings
Warranty	Two years