Magellan RoadMate 1412 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator

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Clear 4.3-inch WQVGA touchscreen shows your position, POIs, route, ETA and more on the interactive map

SayWhere text-to-speech tells you street names with every turn-by-turn direction.

The advanced QuickSpell feature intelligently searches addresses and Points of Interest, offering you a simple list of available locations. It even checks spelling so you can enter a destination with just a few touches of the screen.

SmartDetour prompts you to route around sudden slow or stopped freeway traffic and automatically re-calculates the fastest detour.

The integrated rechargeable battery offers navigation for up to three hours. Search destinations, plan trips and enter addresses and personal Points of Interest from a meeting place, restaurant or anywhere power is unavailable.

Innovative easy-to-use interface makes it a breeze to find the route to your destination in seconds--without even needing to read the instructions. Click to enlarge.

Adjustable mount for your windshield or dashboard.

Key Features Include

• Large wide-format color 4.3-inch WQVGA touchscreen shows your position on the map, route, destination, ETA, surrounding Points of Interest, signal strength, next maneuver, street names and more at a glance.
• 6 million Points of Interest: Easily find what you need. Gas stations, restaurants, hotels, ATMs and hundreds of other businesses and services are intuitively categorized and searchable from the built-in POI database. Most include the phone number.
• Expanded NAVTEQ maps let you Travel the entire U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada with all the maps you need, pre-loaded on the included SD memory card.
• SayWhere text-to-speech lets you hear street names with every voice direction and have a clear understanding of when to make the next turn while you keep your eyes on the road.
• Bold, intuitive menu options make it easy to pick destinations and choose how you navigate, without even reading the instructions.
• Uniquely stylish and compact, it's easy to transfer your Magellan GPS between vehicles or toss it in a suitcase to take anywhere.
• Select the types of services and amenities you'd like to see and interactive POI icons appear on the map. Touch an icon for a nearby service to see address, phone number (when available) and get an instant route.
• Program any location into the "Home" button and find your way back from wherever you are.
• Enter destinations with a few keystrokes. QuickSpell searches locations and checks spelling to provide you with a simple list of available destinations.
• SmartDetour prompts you to route around suddenly slow or stopped freeway traffic and automatically calculates the quickest detour. No fee or subscription is required.
• Clearly see your surroundings in 2D or 3D with Birds eye 3D view.
• Never miss a turn with Auto re-route and quickly get back on track whenever you take a detour.
• Auto NightView controls color and contrast adjusting automatically for easy viewing at night.
• Choose the way you want to navigate to use the most freeways, least freeways, fastest time, shortest distance and avoid toll roads. Exclude specific streets or freeways after a route is calculated to get there the way you want.
• Multi-destination routing: Select up to 20 destinations and choose the order to plan a trip in advance and repeat the same trip again. Easily reorganize, add or remove destinations.
• Create and save personal Points of Interest for easy reoccurring trips.
• Navigate up to 3 hours when power is unavailable with its rechargeable battery:
• The Centrality Atlas III processor with integrated GPS receiver provides superior GPS performance for accurate and reliable positioning and navigation within three meters.

What's in the Box
Magellan RoadMate 1412 4.3-inch widescreen portable GPS navigator, adhesive disk for dash mounting, basic cradle, swivel mount, vehicle power adapter (12-24 watts), quick reference guide and CD, alcohol pad

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GPS manufacturers produce many different models, in an attempt to provide choice. Often however, the result is confusion. Hopefully, the chart below will help you plow through Magellan's choices and lineup.

Before we get into all the details, here's a brief look at the various series offered by Magellan:

• RoadMate 1200 series - This budget, entry level lineup has a 3.5" screen
• RoadMate 1400 series - Still a very basic navigator, the 1400 series bumps the screen size to 4.3"
• Maestro 3100 series - This first generation Maestro series has a 3.5" screen, but at 1.14", is fairly thick
• Maestro 3200 series - This second generation Maestro series slims down to 0.7" thick
• Maestro 4000 series - These units bump the screen size to 4.3"

Feature descriptions

• Maps - Where it says 49 states, the pre-loaded maps include the entire U.S. except for Alaska.
• POIs (Points of Interest) - I recommend getting a unit with at least 4.5 million. Here's a post for further reading on points of interest (POIs).
• Speaks street names – Formally known as text-to-speech, this function allows the device to call out the name of the street for upcoming turns, so you’ll hear "approaching right turn, Maple Street" instead of just "approaching right turn." A very helpful feature.
• Live traffic – A nice feature that isn’t quite ready for prime time. Expect lots of inaccurate reports as well as incidents that aren’t reported. Delivered over FM, this service is available in certain metropolitan areas -- a coverage chart is available on Magellan's website.
• Bluetooth for hands-free cell phone use – Another nice idea, though sound quality often leaves something to be desired.
• AAA TourBook - Rates five categories (accommodations, restaurants, destinations, attractions and events), and provides detailed information. For restaurants these include types of cuisine, description, hours of operations, parking/credit cards accepted, ratings and cost. The AAA roadside assistance screen shows phone numbers for AAA roadside assistance and membership enrollment, and some basic information about your current location.
• Voice commands – Too bad it doesn't work that well.

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At the risk of upsetting the nice PR folks who provide me with review units, I've decided to share my thoughts on what brand of GPS is best. Clearly this is subjective — its my opinion and mine alone. And things do change. However, based on models I've tested over the past year, this is how I see things shaking out.

• Garmin – Garmin receivers are intuitive, easy to use units with an uncluttered interface. If you want a simple out of the box solution that just flat out works, this brand’s for you. They are easy enough that your parents or even grandparents can use them. While Garmin isn’t always the first to introduce new features, they generally nail them when they do. Finally, all their nuvi units have around six million Points of interest (POIs), name of geographic point that may be of interest to you, whereas most other brands will drop the numbers on lower level models.
• TomTom – The one place TomTom out paces Garmin is on customization. If you want to tinker with your device, get under the hood and play with settings, a TomTom may be your best choice. That flexibility can cost you though – there are more menus to navigate and a more cluttered screen. Having said that, TomTom does the best job of balancing lots of options with an intuitive interface. TomTom often leads the way in innovation too, though first to implement doesn't necessarily make for the best implementation. One other note — TomTom uses Tele Atlas maps while Garmin uses NAVTEQ. Both do well in urban areas, but in my experience, Tele Atlas maps underperform NAVTEQ in rural America.
• (TIE) Magellan and Navigon – These brands will perform basic navigation and get you from point A to point B, usually as well as a Garmin or TomTom. But along the way you may experience frustrating things like confusing interfaces, excess steps, lockups, etc.
• Mio – Before switching to the Navman interface, I would have ranked Mio higher. They dropped some advanced features in the changeover though, and I found routing problems in recent review units. Perhaps next year’s switch to Windows Embedded NavReady will improve their rankings.
• All the rest – Don’t go there. Stick with one of the companies above that have been doing this for years. Check the GPS rankings on Amazon and after scrolling way down to find the off-brands, read their reviews and you’ll see that the problems just get worse.

Car GPS Brand Summary

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