New Magellan GPS

The built in GPS in my wife's Mercedes is terrible. It's like a 1999 GPS in a 2011 model car.

My Magellan impressed me today. I was driving a route that I do probably once a month. I let the GPS navigate just so I could play with it a little bit. When I got close to where I wanted to do it wanted me to take an exit that I didn't think was correct as I had never gone that way before. I decided to trust it and took the exit anyway. Then it wanted me to take a left turn on another road that just didn't look right, but I was in no hurry so I decided to see where it would take me. The route I'm used to taking is going from one freeway to another and I normally have to take a surface street that runs through a business district and has about 8 traffic signals to go through. This road the GPS took me on had a 45 mph speed limit and one stop sign before it got me to the other freeway. I had no idea it was even there. The area has undergone a great deal of construction over the last few years and I had no idea this road was there, but the GPS knew it was there and knew it was a short cut.

The GPs built into the Ford has been accurate so far. No side trips down goat paths or up railroads, or down creeks or 2000 miles away.
The one in the Mercedes is even better. Didn't even get the street address or name of the funeral home put in and it took me right tooo it. Actually it was about 100 ft off. Surely someone sells these stand alone.

msmith1199
It's a pretty small company. Thanks for the update.

I don't think this new one does that, but my older Magellan did it. I don't know if you could do 25, but I could do at least 10 and then it would pick an optimized route to get to all 10. If he works for a package delivery company I'm surprised they don't already have a computer program that does this.

My son-in-law works for a package delivery company.

He was just talking about trying to find a GPS he could key 25 delivery addresses into and have it figure out what the best route would be.

Will your new unit do that?

I got a chance to play a little more with this and I like it so far. On other GPS's I have had in the preferences you could always set it up to select the fastest route, the shortest route, or the route to avoid highways. You don't do that with this one. When you select your go to location it shows you all three routes and then gives you buttons to select fastest, shortest, or least highways. You still have the options in the setup screens to select avoid toll roads and avoid u-turns.

If you still don't like the route the GPS selects for you, you can use your smart phone to select another destination. If you want to take a different road just select a spot on that road directly on the map on your smart phone. Select to send it to the GPS and when it gets to the GPS you get to select to add it to the current route, or use it as a new route. Just add it to the current route and select go and it takes you there first and then on to your destination. I don't know how many extra points you can add, but it looks like you can add multiple ones.

And again you can do all the routing and everything from your smart phone instead of leaning over and trying to do it on the GPS unit on the dash. I do really like that. I have the computer part set up but haven't played with making routes on the computer yet. That's probably something I won't use a lot anyway.

Okay I bought it. On sale at Best Buy for $199. I've got the software installed and so far have just played with it a little bit. I can say so far I like it. I like that I can use my iPhone or iPad and do my searching and see where I want to go. You can easily select locations right off the map on the APP that you put on your smart phone. I like that because you don't always want to enter addresses. A lot of times you know exactly where you want to go, you just want the best route to get there. Then once you select where you want to go your map will display different route suggestions so you can pick which one looks best to you. Then tap the share button, then the send to GPS button and it's done. Put your phone away and let the GPS navigate.

Yes, it does give you the little commercials about what you're near, but a quick swipe of the finger across the screen and they disappear and the map fills the screen. I'll report back when I've played with it a little more.

Pop, the ones I've had always let you select the type of routes you want. Whether it's use freeways or avoid freeways or use only roads for a truck. I even have avoid toll roads in mine. If I'm in the RV I'm not going to just blindly trust the GPS to take suitable routes, but the units I have do just what you want.

We have three GPS's! One in the 2013 WINNE.JOURNEY, A garmin three to four years old
(with all the updates) and then one with the I-Pad and I-Phone . Will be descrepencies BTWN
Them .
My question is Why can't they build one that you can choose BTWN , TOLL WAYS, INTERSTATES, AND TRUCK ROUTES. we can eliminate turnpikes and inter states.
The that will put you on county roads and township roads. Which some of these are not fit
For Mmh's or large Fiveres.
No smart "A's) please. THANKYOU ...

Kaz, I'm not completely fond of the advertisement aspect myself, but it looks like it can be user controlled as to what you get. I do like the idea of gas stations with gas prices popping up on the screen. As you know when you're on a major interstate (at least in California) gas prices can vary by 50 cents a gallon. So I do like that idea.

I like the idea of being able to plan and check the route on the iPad and then have it wirelessly upload to the GPS. You need the big screen of the iPad to check the route and make sure it's not taking you around in circles, but once that's done the small screen of the GPS works just fine.