The RoadMate 1400 series of GPS navigators by Magellan was much appreciated back in January and finally, the top of the line product in this series, RoadMate 1430, has made its appearance on the manufacturer’s website.  Flaunting a brilliant 4.3” wide-touch-screen display, RoadMate 1430 features maps by Navteq and the traffic update features can be used for free for initial three months. Over 6 million points of interest saved in and a handy text-to-speech guarantees precise instructions all the while. This GPS device is also ultra thin, making it all the more useful while traveling. The battery lasts for about 3 hrs and there’s an Auto Night View that adjusts the device’s display for night. Measuring 4.57″ W x 3.27″ H x 0.73″ D, RoadMate 1430 weighs in at 200g. There is SD card compatibility in the device and it describes location to within 3 to 5 meters of actual one. If you’re looking to tackle USA, Canada or Puerto Rico head on, you can buy it for $400.

There’s a review of the Magellan 6000T coming out of the UK that takes a look at the new high end Magellan market entry that includes things like Traffic and Bluetooth handsfree calling. In a previous review by Pocket Lint, they thought that the Magellan 6000T was “disappointing”. The review wades through some pluses and minuses of the unit, like the fact that the bluetooth calling was solid, and the navigation was good. The issues are mainly with the product design (10 buttons surrounding a touchscreen makes for a repetitive and a bit unnecessary design) and the software interface. This is troubling as I am finding that software issues in other units that I use can weigh on you daily as you try to go through normal tasks.

Their summary says “Looking at specs alone the Magellan Roadmate 6000t is a tempting proposition and the core functions such as Bluetooth and, essentially, address finding are pretty good. However, some poor physical and software design decisions threaten to undermine that good work and over complicate what should really be straight forward tasks. However, you can pick one up for a little under £300 if shop around, so there is a silver lining at least.”

ReadMore at Techdigest

The Magellan Crossover GPS is a good bit of marketing and an interesting concept for a GPS. A lot of people have written in about the idea of using their car GPS for the purposes of Geocaching, and for the most part, you can’t really do it and have a lot of fun. That is unless you have a unit designed to be in the outdoors with the ability to take on some of the demands of the outdoors. It’s got the ability to use Topographic maps, as well as a compass and a tracker.

CNet has a review of the Magellan Crossover GPS up and overall they thought that the unit is a mixed bag. The features are attractive, but overall the performance is mixed at best. The unit is big for road navigation and that can hurt on a long hike, but most folks may use this 95% on the road and 5% for short hikes, and if that’s your expectation, I wouldn’t worry about it. The CNet team didn’t seem to take it for long hikes in the great outdoors, but did notice that in the wild streets of San Francisco the unit sometimes told them to turn after the street went by.

ReadMore at CNet

PC Mag has a review up on the Magellan Maestro 4040, the new middle of the Series 4000 line of widescreen GPS navigation systems from Magellan. They redesigned the interface, which was very much needed, as the older units looked like they were a bit cartoonish, and pixelated; way to out of date. The sad thing is the underlying system was pretty solid and offered a lot. Anyway, the Magellan Maestro 4040 comes with maps preloaded, a SiRF star III chipset, text-to-speech (TTS) capability and Bluetooth pairing to for handsfree phone calls. Not bad.

Craig Ellison liked the re-designed hardware and software with special notes on the large 4.3-ince screen, the new user interface, and the AAA TourBook integration. He said that while the Bluetooth Phone integration wasn’t as good as the current state of the art Garmin systems, that “A large screen, fresh new user interface, AAA’s TourBook functionality, and a great price make the Maestro 4040 a compelling in-car navigation device.”
ReadMore at PC Mag

The GPS magicians at Magellan and the search wizards at Google have combined their relative (and also fantastical) talents to deliver the Maestro Elite 5340+GPRS, a GPS unit rocking some GPRS cellular capabilities. That wireless data’s going to be put to good use, enabling things like real-time traffic (see ya FM traffic receiver of yore) and creepy Google functionality like pointing out the closest proctologist (just around the corner!). But all this fancy technology isn’t coming cheap: the unit will retail for $1299, not to mention an as-yet-to-be-determined monthly GPRS fee. At that price, they oughta program in directions to your local poorhouse.

Magellan introduced its handheld GPS ‘Triton 2000’ during CES 2008, which adopts 2.7-inch color touch screen, 2M camera, an embedded speaker and microphone and SD card slot. Other features included multimedia player, 3-axis electronic compass, barometer function and LED flashlight.

Triton 300 is compatible with National Geographic TOPO maps, and features new Magellan VantagePoint content management software. Another nice convenient feature on the Triton 300 is the fact that it uses two AA batteries.

Magellan introduced the RoadMate 1400 at CES 2008 which is the base model of this new series that also contains the RoadMate 1412 and RoadMate 1430.

RoadMate 1400 features a wide 4.3″ touch screen and comes with Navteq road maps of the continental U.S., Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. It only has room for 1.3 million points of interests and is priced at $300.

More features:

• 4.3-inch WQVGA full-color, anti-glare touch-screen display
• Centrality Atlas III GPS chipset
• 2-D and 3-D map views with auto day/night mode switching
• Trip computer and trip planner
• QuickSpell intelligently searches and checks spelling when entering addresses
• SmartDetour prompts drivers to route around heavy or stationary traffic
• SD card slot for maps
• USB port for PC connection and in-vehicle power