Magellan Maestro 4350 Review
Magellan Maestro 4350 4.3-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Bluetooth & Integrated Traffic
Bodily, the Magellan Maestro 4350 is almost same to its forerunner Magellan Maestro 4250, but it is where the similitudes end. The internal software of 4350 has been almost completely renovated. Magellan has listened to feedback from customers, and finally made a GPS, which can have its own against the GPS on the market today.
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Display
The display is very bright and the touchscreen is very sensitive (sometimes too). Optional power-saving feature reduces the brightness of the screen somewhat between turns when using the battery. I found this very useful and saves the battery it attracts your eye when it ‘wakes up’ to normal brightness. Because there is about five seconds before the first oral notification of the next turn, gives the visual face to face, as a verbal instruction is imminent. Touching any part of the screen to restore full brightness. The menu is well set up and intuitive. There are several things that you want to change, but overall is very good.
Audio Quality
The sound is loud and clear, even when increase the volume, which was never necessary for me. It is a male or female voice options available for each language English, Spanish and French. Like most units in that price range the 4350 announcing real street names, together with instructions for turning. Sometimes pronunciations are off, but they get the point across.
System MP3 player and Photo Viewer is a good, and do the job done. Video player handles XviD. AVI files, which limits their usefulness, but I think that this is the only GPS to have a video player so you probably can not do better elsewhere.
Now is one of the two main complaints I have with this model – No headphones / line-out jack! What is an MP3 player without? This will only listen to the simple (mono) through the speaker or FM transmitter to send signals to your car (more on that later).
POI’s (Points of Interest) and AAA
Magellan claims 6 million POIs resident in the base of 4350 (my Audi has about 1.7 million). Find one could not be easier. You can search by name, category and area. In addition, this is a list of names of all objects by AAA, with descriptions, reviews, and member discounts. AAA members also receive one year warranty coverage, and a button for access to local certified garages. Although not mentioned in the rather sparse instruction manual, you can import your own POI’s as Google .kml or .kmz files. To do this, you need the Magellan “Content Manager”, free download which you’ll have if you updated the firmware.
Route Selection
Planning routes is easy, as the addition of temporary stops (which can not be done with many models of GPS). Keyboard can be configured as qwerty or ABC and it gray’s out unrelated letters as you type – a great feature. After selecting a destination the 4350 estimated four routes: quickest, shortest, cheapest and simplest. The fastest way is selected by default but you can examine the relative times and distances, or see the relation directions in the map before you select the best for you. Some or all of these routes May be the same as the criteria are often met by the same route.
A “One-Touch” menu you can save your favorite locations as icons in a simple menu. “Home”, “Previous,” “SOS” (Emergency) and the AAA “Service” are the standard icons. You can add five of your own, which can indicate the POIs lists or addresses.
Guidance – On the road
The 4.3″ screen packs in a surprising amount of map detail without looking cluttered. You can view maps in 2D or 3D (I prefer the 3D view). Landmark buildings can also rise from the map in three dimensions, but in my rural I have not seen the field in practice. Information about the next turn is shown at the top of the screen, and I especially like the names of streets and cross – look at them and disappears. You can choose which POI categories are displayed on the map – I select restaurants and gas stations. Unlike from other devices that work in 2D and 3D mode. For major chains (BP, McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, etc.) is replaced by generic symbols, corporate logos, so you can see at a glance what is coming up.
A new feature called “Lane Guidance” is one of the main reasons to choose this facility over the Garmin 760.At complicated interstate exits it displays a visual representation of the overhead highway signs to show you which lane you need to be in for an upcoming maneuver. Garmin models with a feature called “Lane Assist” is much more expensive. The only other GPS guidance lane near this price range is NAVIGON 7200T but POIs base is small and the search was reportedly poor.
Conclusions
The best things of Magellan Maestro 4350 is all to do with its basic functions – it gets you from one place to another with the maps clear and explicit verbal instructions within a reasonable time. My Audi navigation system often fails to provide all relevant information about the upcoming turn, or warn me late to react when driving in heavy traffic. Magellan device never wavered in this regard. In fact, some believe that the 4350 direction of being too talkative, but I wanted to be sure that I’m ready for the next move, even in traffic, and this model gave me this feeling.
Magellan has been completed with excellent performance at very competitive [street] price. Therefore, despite the lack of headset jack, I gave it five stars. I had discovered that the microphone is so poor that it is a handsfree function useless, I could go to four stars. However, it is a good choice for those who do not have Bluetooth capability.
For more information: Garmin nuvi 885T Review and TomTom ONE XL-S Review
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