Magellan Maestro 4040 4 3 Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
Magellan Maestro 4040 4 3 Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator
Elegance, simplicity and advanced features designed to save you time and effort on the road. Magellan Maestro 4040 makes driving more pleasurable and less stressful. Enter virtually any address on the freshly-designed graphical touch screen, or select from 4.5 million preprogrammed points of interest to get turn-by-turn voice guidance to anywhere in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. SayWhere text-to-speech tells you the street name for each maneuver, so you can focus on driving. Smart buttons and Magellan’s unique QuickSpell function enables error free spelling to minimize steps so you get a customized route to your destination with just a few touches of the screen. It offers several AAA features especially suited for members. Bluetooth wireless technology enables hands-free phone calls with your Bluetooth-enabled phone. Store or sync numbers and contact information for clear communication through the integrated microphone and speakers. Easily add LIVE traffic incident reports and Voice Command control. Voice Command-enabled – Add Voice Command control for hand’s-free operation with a simple upgrade from www.MagellanGPS.com (Activation fee applies). Expected availability in Summer 2007 Birds eye 3D view – Clearly see your surroundings in 2D or 3D Rechargeable battery – Navigate when you don’t have access to power Select up to 20 destinations and choose order that best fits your needs Prompts you to route around sudden slow freeway traffic (no fee or subscription required) Auto Re-route Auto NightView Slot for SD memory Size 5. 0 (l) x 3.75 (w) x 0.88 (h); Weighs 8.5oz
User Ratings and Reviews
2 Stars NO updates available
I really like magellan GPS units – bought a tom tom but wanted to go back to magellan but after buying this one found out there are no updates for this unit and it is outdated by a couple years and when I travel a lot i need the latest updates on roads. suggest buying a model with updated files.
5 Stars Happy With My Purchase
I bought this product in March of 2008 and just recently called customer service for the second time since I purchased the product and had no problem with understanding the customer service rep or getting a reasonable response for my reasoning behind calling. I am very pleased with my product purchase and the Magellan company.
4 Stars gps works great!
The unit worked great right out of the box. The Magellan customer service was great as well, I was able to get the latest map up-grade free of charge. It’s very easy to use and accurate as well. Much better than any other gps I’ve had in the past. The widescreen really is a great feature also. Two thumbs way up. thanks
3 Stars Good Hardware, But Beware of Buggy Map Updates
We have had this product 2 years and it provides an impressive number of features for the price. We travel a lot between N. Calif. and Phoenix and “Ingrid” (that’s what we call the unit’s female voice) has proved invaluable.
Recently, we paid Magellan $80 to upgrade the maps to the 2009 version. On a recent trip to Phoenix, the updated maps were full of errors and Ingrid got completely befuddled in the Southeast portion of Maricopa County. Also, we have a AAA enabled version of this unit, and it was unable to find the nearest AAA office with the new map update.
We wrote Megellan and their response was that the maps were provided by a third party vendor (and were done in 2007 for the 2009 update!!);So Sorry. So be aware that the maps may not be as up to date as expected and may have some flat out errors. Oh, and the hardware performance seems to have deteriorated with the map update as well. It takes longer to find the satellites and seems to have more trouble finding the route at times, even if the map is correct.
5 Stars First time GPS Owner
This is my first GPS owned so I have no other system to compare it to. I read a lot of reviews about this product before I pulled the trigger. I always read the negative reviews first to see if they can scare me away from the product, but the two most reoccuring issues were the cradle and the customer service, in which neither one have anything to do with the actual product. I have not had to call customer service so I cannot comment on that. My GPS cradle fits like a glove though.
Routing
I’ll get into my favorite features and call it a day. It is very simple IMO to enter an address, put in the city, street name, then building number. From there you can choose your route (fastest time, more use of freeways, less use of freeways) and can also exclude roads on the route. Sometimes I will GPS a place I’m not exactly sure where it is, but Magellan will give me the city streets route, and I’ll know the highway is much more convenient, so I can just go back to choose route, and tap most use of freeways. And to get back home, you simply tap the home button and route.
Bluetooth
The bluetooth is pretty nice. Once paired, you can dial someone’s number 1 of 2 ways: select there # from the GPS if you’ve entered the # with their address, or you can simply dial it from your phone. Pairing the two is as simple as pairing anything else bluetooth.
POI
The POI database is pretty abundant. The only thing I did not have success locating via POI is the club. Everything else from schools, to sports complex, to airports, to atms, to fast food I have had no problem. And it doesn’t just simply select the closest available so you accidentally get the wrong one. You can select POI’s by city, current position, by name, etc. Depending on the criteria you select, it gives you a list of POI’s to choose from.
En Route
When driving Magellan always gives you a heads up 2 miles in advance of your next turn. It gives you another heads up I believe half a mile from your turn. It is pretty spot on for when to make turns, whether on the highway, or in the city. When on the highway, it will tell if the exit on the left or the right, and will say the exit name, and display the exit # and name. The small problem I’ve had is once you arrive. I would say about 80% of the time it says I have arrived about 100-200 feet early (which is better than late), so finding someone’s house could take an extra 60 seconds or so, but it has not caused me any problems because it’s not like I’m driving with my eyes closed.
Hope this review was helpful, and I would definitely recommend this product. Easy to use with multiple functions including things I have not mentioned here (i.e. mutliple routes).
