Magellan Input Anyone?

[silver_vibe]

I'm considering a Magellan RoadMate 800 as a Christmas gift to my wife.Does anyone have experience with Magellan's "SmartDetour" feature? Does it work well at getting you around jammed freeways?cnet gives this unit a 7/10 rating. I'd love input from someone that has first hand experience with this GPS.

[Jahntassa]

Personally I think the magellan software is very slow and not very good looking. I personally swear by Garmins.The Roadmates are fairly good (I think) as far as usability to people who have never used them before, but have you looked at any of the Garmin series? Especially the Nuvi? The update speed (while you're moving) is pretty good and the interface is quite fast.

[mcgusto82]

i also recommend trying out different models, so you can tell the difference in them.

[silver_vibe]

Quote, originally posted by Jahntassa »Personally I think the magellan software is very slow and not very good looking. I personally swear by Garmins.The Roadmates are fairly good (I think) as far as usability to people who have never used them before, but have you looked at any of the Garmin series? Especially the Nuvi? The update speed (while you're moving) is pretty good and the interface is quite fast.Thanks for this input - I'll go look at them in the store. The nuvi video on Garmin's website looks like a cool unit. Does it offer alternate routes if you're hwy speed drops below 15mph like the Roadmate?The cheapest nuvi is 33% more than the RoadMate 800 I found. I still will go check them out, but if you are correct about the Garmins being that much better, I may have to wait for the Garmins to drop in price.

[Jahntassa]

You can try other garmins beside the Nuvi. That was just an example. Most of the Garmins use the same software, they just have different formfactors / screensizes.I would say stay away from the Sony unit, it stinks as far as reception goes.The TomToms are nice units, but I had problems with their inaccurate POIs.I wasn't aware that Magellan had a feature like that, where it would re-route if you went under a certain speed. All the GPSs i've used have a 'Detour' function but you have to do it manually.. I think. It may have a way to have it speed-based but I never looked.

[audiovibe]

If you havent bought one yet you should also look into the alpine Blackbird the msrp is only $499 software updates are free and also has navteq traffic built in. I bought mine because they will be releasing a dock to interface with the a/v headunits. If you have any questions on the unit just askhttp://www.alpine-usa.com/en/p...-B100Aron