GPS Review: Magellan RoadMate 3000T

A new review has hit the presses on the Magellan RoadMate 3000T and from the article, there are a lot of solid featres in the unit. The unit is launched into the more crowded mid-tier sweetspot of GPS receivers for cars. For me, this is the place that solid features for a good price intersect. The units here have reasonably sized screens, easy to use interfaces with a touch screen driven system, and they are affordable in the $350 and up range.
Craig Ellison from PC Magazine has a review up, and in summary he says, “Magellan's RoadMate 3000T is a good, solid competitor in the $600 range. Features such as SmartDetour and Quick Spell differentiate it from some of its competitors. An improved interface and the combination of hardware buttons and touch-screen input make it easier to use than earlier RoadMate models.”
ReadMore at PCMag
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Posted by Scott Martin at June 23, 2006 9:33 AM
Have used the 3000T for 5 months now, and cannot give it more than a 4 or 5 out of 10. Rationale:
== software locks up too often and entire unit needs to be reset too frequently. This is a REAL pain!
== routing logic needs to include a "use this particular hiway" to be really useful. For long trips, personal knowledge to want or need to use a particular road or hiway as part of the trip should be able to be user-input into the whole. And some of the routes given are just not acceptable -- for instance, to get from Danville to Lane IL, it wanted me to stay on I 74 to IL 54 to IL 10 -- when getting on I72 to IL 10 was at least 10 miles and 15 mins shorter. Just dumb.
== maps are not as accurate as I'd hoped. For example, system did not recognize a 4 lane stretch of US 51 south of Decatur IL that went to 4 lanes from 2 5 years ago! Map had me in a field for 7 miles until I was once again on "old" road.
As a first time user of a GPS device, this unit did make me appreciate the usefulness of the genre. But I'm glad I "won" the thing in a sweepstakes and did not drop $500+ on it myself.