9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
Good Software, Bad Display
Date of Review: Aug 16, 2008
The Bottom Line: Has its strong and weak points. It's good idea to test-drive for couple of days and compare with competing unit.
Recently, I was shopping for a new GPS. So I compared Garmin C330 and this Magellan 1200. They both performed remarkably, both having stronger and weaker points.
Display
This is the weakest side of Magellan unit. The streets are painted too thin and appear somewhat amateurishly drawn. The biggest drawback however is that the color of the route is bright green on pale green background, which makes it hardly visible, especially at bright light conditions.
When there's fork or turn at the road, Magellan paints the route with 2 colors - the right direction in green, the wrong one in red.
Sound
Compared to Garmin, the sound is obviously too soft. OK at the maximum volume when car windows are closed, but open windows, or drive in rainy weather, or have your passengers talking, and you will have hard time hearing the directions.
Map
Though the way streets are painted is not very good (see above), Magellan has an interesting function: the map on the touchscreen is movable. You can touch the screen with your finger and then move the map, much like you move the map in Google Maps with the mouse. Having moved it, you can tip with the finger on a point of interest or street, and have the option to drive there, or save as favorite. Garmin can't do that. This is interesting function, but I don't think it's particularly useful - I don't think this way of finding where to drive is very practical. To some degree, it's even distracting, because every now and then the screen will enter this mode when you only wanted to "click" on an menu icon.
Magellan unit has an important advantage: it knows your orientation even when you are stopped. So you know the direction to drive even before you begin moving. With Garmin, you find out the direction only once you start moving, so often you find yourself moving in the opposite direction (and by Murphy's law, without knowing the direction, you start moving in the opposite one much more often than not). This is very important advantage.
Turns
When you approach a turn, Magellan unit does not zoom in sufficiently to see it in details (unlike Garmin); instead, it splits the screen vertically on two halves, and shows the turn on one of them. Still, this is not very convenient because on that schematic picture you don't see your car. With Garmin unit, you feel more confident with the turns.
Map Updates
Magellan's map was 3 years old, and at this time there were no updates. Garmin just released new version of the maps, Navigator NT 2009, with significantly increased number of points of interest. It should be mentioned though that Garmin's policy regarding these updates being free or not for different models is not very clear, to say the least.
Speaking of points of interest, Magellan has a little but handy feature: as you scroll through the found points of interest, the arrow at the bottom of the screen points in the geographical direction of each, so you see which one is on your right and which on your left.
Narration
With Magellan units, the driver is much more aware of the expected turns. Narrator keeps announcing the next turn: 5 miles till right turn; 2 miles till the right turn; and so forth. Garmin units are silent until the turn is nearby. So you have more piece of mind with Magellan units, it kind of keeps reminding you: "Yes, I'm with you, I'm keeping track and I'm aware".
Antenna
Magellan has a big edge here - it had no problem locating the satellites even inside the home. It also sensed the movement much better: take the unit, make several steps with it, and it feels it. Speaking of the satellites, Magellan unit also has interesting display showing the Earth with satellites around it - the ones it has found.
Processor
When searching for the points of interest, Magellan unit was able to find results much faster than Garmin. This especially applies to negative results, i.e. when there were no matches due to misspelled name etc. Magellan immediately said "no results", while Garmin unit was "thinking" for minutes, spinning the hourglass on the screen.
Bypass
Magellan has this functionality somewhat confusing. When you need to change the route, not only you have to request it, but also tell it by how many miles to bypass. How do I know??
Navigation
Magellan unit performed quite adequately most of the times, but even in the several days that I tried it, there were two or three times when it was obviously confused without any obvious reason.
Mount
Magellan has good solid mount so it's easy to place it on the windshield in the right position and at the right angle.
Controls
The power on button of Magellan unit is positioned so that every time I had to turn the unit on or off, I had to search for it with the hand. It's not visible from the driver's seat, and not easily sensed by hand. Another somewhat frustrating feature.
Overall, Magellan software somehow appears more intelligent and sophisticated than Garmin. However, the final verdict was in Garmin's favor, mostly because of the bad display and soft sound.
