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Ferdinand Magellan was the first explorer to circumnavigate the globe. He did so under the Spanish crown in the 16th century. Since that time, the name Magellan has stood for navigation far and wide. Is it any wonder that there is a firm for global tracking services, therefore, named Magellan? Is it any wonder that the Magellan Roadmate series includes prime features for easy navigation and easy use?

The Magellan Roadmate series is a line of handheld GPS devices to help clients navigate North America, including the United States. Each unit is easy to use with interactive displays that are intuitive and simple to understand. It’s so you easy that you almost don’t need to read the directions! While Magellan offers various models, all of them share some common features, including six million points of interest (POI). These points allow you to click on an icon for the location you’ve chosen, and the GPS system will provide detailed instructions for arriving at your destination, including freeway exits and other useful information. There are a wide variety of POIs, including fuel stations, hotels, and cash machines, and POIs can be searched by name, city, category, or location closest to your position.

See below for other shared features. The home icon allows you to set any location to be your home base. QuickSpell is a capability of the Magellan Roadmate GPS system that lets you check spelling while you type, and it quickly and easily searches POIs and addresses for you. SayWhere is a feature that uses text-to-voice technology to give you street names and turn-by-turn instructions to get you to the next stop on your journey. Auto re-route and SmartDetour are two of the greatest features of the Magellan Roadmate. These help you avoid congested traffic due to accidents, road construction, or other factors. Your route will be re-assessed, even as you turn off in other directions to avoid heavy traffic. Auto NightView is a very useful feature that automatically resets the LCD screen settings for brightness, color, and contrast for ease of navigation in low light situations. Address Books come standard on each of the Roadmate GPS systems. You can save information for use on future trips, and avoid having to look up the same POIs over and over again.

There are plenty of other great features available, though they don’t come standard on all models. For example, the Roadmate 1430 has a handy tow truck icon that displays your exact whereabouts so tow trucks can locate you easily in an emergency. On the 1200, 1400, and 1430 models, you can take advantage of 2D and 3D screen view options. And, every Magellan Roadmate comes with detailed maps of each North American country, in addition to Puerto Rico and Hawaii. Your position will be located to within 3 meters of your actual location in real time, and the unit’s rechargeable batteries last for three hours before needing a recharge. The Magellan Roadmate GPS makes customizable routes a reality, and some units have the ability to load up to twenty locations at once!

Users love the flexibility and grand detail received in using these sleek little compact GPSs, especially since you can take them anywhere! You can also attach it to your windshield or dash with accessories that comes with. There is a volume adjustment so you can hear around noisy situations, and the level will come back down when it becomes quieter. Additional maps are available for download for the UK and European countries, as well. For everyday life, excursions into traffic or your own little epic adventure, the Magellan Roadmate GPS is a fantastic buy!

TomTom ONE 130 3 5 Inch Portable GPS Navigator

3.5″ TFT 320×240 Color LCD Touchscreen / 1GB Flash Memory / Pre-loaded maps of USA/Canada / High-sensitivity GPS chipset / 266 MHz, 32 MB RAM CPU

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars The Best Idea I’ve ever had
I drive all over the place because I work in promotions, and getting this GPS was the best decision I’ve ever made. It has vastly increased my productivity when it comes to errands and easily directs me around Boston, a city in which I used to hate driving with a strong passion. The text to voice is a very important feature, especially at intersections with a few roads coming in and I highly encourage getting a GPS with this feature. I’ve noticed that sometimes it has trouble connecting to satellites, but plugging it in to charge usually corrects that problem immediately. The volume gets very loud and though it’s difficult to adjust sometimes, that small problem doesn’t reduce my wholehearted recommendation of the 130S!

5 Stars Easy and Accurate!
After weeks of researching GPS devices, I finally decided to buy a TomTom. The price is better, TomTom includes Canada at no extra cost, and it is fast and easy to set up. So far, this device has been very accurate and I live in a very rural area. I am very happy with my purchase!

5 Stars I LOVE my Tom Tom!!!
I researched this item on Consumer Reports first and plugged in all the important features I was looking for, including price. I am extremely happy with the value and how well the product has performed so far. The touch screen is easy and clear and it shows you the names of streets before you come to them. I would definitely recommend this product. It is easy to use and helpful when navigation and directions aren’t your forte!

5 Stars Very good choice!!
This GPS is a very good navigator. It’s the perfect size for me and fits in every place in my car. It’s exactly what I was looking for, and it’s very easy to download the actualizations from the computer.

5 Stars Great GPS (TomTom ONE 130)
This is one of the best products and/or gadgets I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. From the day it arrived I turned it on (it was fully charged), and noticed how easy and intuitive it was to use and play around with. I thought maybe there was a problem with the contents when there were no user’s manual that fell out when I opened the package. It didn’t matter — it was very easy to use. I knew that I could download the manual from the TomTom website.

I bought this GPS for planning our trip up to New York City. I did some searching and reading about a few different GPS’s, and eventually ended up getting a low-priced but a newer model from TomTom. What finally helped me decide was:

1)portability (fits in shirt pocket).

2)support available on the Net.

3)simplicity of use.

First use:

Going to checkout the local parks near our home became so simple and nice, that otherwise would have been a difficult and time consuming task, with the unfolding and folding of maps, looking out for street names, or printing them out from Google Maps.

Extensive use:

Before the trip I entered all the restaurants and places we would like to visit as “Favorites”. This is a trip from Virginia Beach to NYC (Manhattan). Never been there before, but with this gadget we weren’t afraid to go just about anywhere we pleased. We followed the GPS to Delaware, caught the ferry to New Jersey, and reached our hotel with ease. This route was modified. The original route was given by TomTom to use the I-95 area, but we modified it to go our way which was very easy to do using the “Find alternative” icon.

Basically, we stayed in New Jersey going to Manhattan via the Staten Island Ferry (which is FREE), and back to our hotel in New Jersey. And we did this for a few days with the help of this GPS. We didn’t bother driving in Manhattan, looking for parking, etc.

The hardest part about this whole trip was figuring out how to use the subway system. We even used our GPS to help us find out which way to go from time to time while on foot (thus the small size and portability). And it’s great for a map reference. But I have to mention here that picking up the GPS signal while being surrounded by tall buildings out on the side walk is a little difficult. And I have to guess that it’ll probably have the same effect while driving here.

Next, there seems to be some concern with the volume problem that I kept reading about. Ours was o.k. This GPS is very loud at its default of 70%! And clear! We had to turn down the volume while driving on the freeway — it has a “Link volume to car speed” feature, which I think is ingenious, so it was louder on the freeway, then it gets down to its lower volume at lower speeds. The suction cup is nicely designed, and it’s simple to take the whole assy. on and off to put away from vandalism.

There were fancier ones that mention the street names aloud, and ones that give you traffic information, and other things. But all I wanted was something simple and straight forward (turn left, turn right, stay on the left lane, etc. — TomTom ONE 130 is perfect). Also I thought about getting the bigger 4.3″ wide screen, but after using this it’s not necessary.

Minor complaint:

One minor complaint is that when naming your “Favorites” it doesn’t let you tap the cursor to any of its area, instead you have to erase the whole thing that has been highlighted or put the cursor at its very end. And when you want to give it a name and the address together, the number portion automatically gets inserted at the beginning which is annoying.

My solution: enter the name, and when entering the number portion, precede it with a special character like an asterisk then the number, then follow it by another asterisk, then the street name but without any space before it. Also I found it convenient to include the phone number on this whole line.

Buy/More Info