My Review of Magellan Maestro 3225

I just purchased Magellan Maestro 3225 from Costco for $149+tax+shipping. Prior to buying the Magellan 3225, I couldn't find much info on 3225 on the web. So I hope this "review" can help those of you interested in buying Magellan Maestro 3225. Since only other GPS I ever used is Garmin 650, I am making comments on Magellan 3225 with Garmin 650 as reference. Note that I got the Garmin nuvi 650 from Costco last Thanksgiving 2007 for $299+tax. Since Garmin is twice the cost of Magellan, it is not fair to directly compare these 2 units, particularly on hardware. As for navigation and software, it should be fair to compare these.

I used Magellan Maestro 3225 and Garmin 650 in side-by-side comparison for past 3 weeks. Mainly in drives around San Jose, CA. I also use it on 1.5-hour drive from JFK airport in New York City to Fishkill, NY.

I provide a summary here for those who don't need the details.

Bottom line: Magellan 3225 offers great value for its price of $149. To me, the most important feature is the Speak Street Name function. And Magellan 3225 is one of the cheapest GPS to offer this feature.

Positives: Magellan does all the basics that GPS needs for navigation. Magellan has perfected the method of entering address.

Negatives: Time consuming to add and manage Custom POI. Concern with hardware production quality control (display brightness varied in 2 units that I tried).

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Below are the details:

Accuracy: Both units are identical in accuracy. Both units prompts me to turn at the same time. When I go off my route, both units re-calculate or re-route at same time.

Navigation: For left and right turns in city driving, both units performed identically. For highway driving, 3225 does the basics while 650 is better. I don't even need to look at the road sign with Garmin 650, whereas I do need to use the road sign and make decisions with Magellan 3225. In NYC, many times highway continues to a split on right side, almost like an exit. At highways split, Garmin will say: stay left (or right) on I-x. Magellan just says continue on current route I-x. Another example is at interchange of 2 interstates, where multiple exits are close to each other 650 will tell me exactly which exit to take, while 3225 just says exit I-yy West in 0.3 miles.

LCD Display: (Due to technical reasons, I got 2 Magellan 3225 units from Costco; I kept 2nd unit and returned the 1st unit. There was big difference in the 2 units' display brightness and contrast. I'm not sure which unit is normal and which is abnormal, or if there is a whole range of brightness variation in 3225 units.)

Here is a post of the details:
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/8527

1st Magellan 3225 unit was hard to see during bright sunlight. 2nd 3225 unit is almost as good as 650. Color usage on Garmin is better than Magellan. 650 uses white for map; pink for route; roads are red/orange/black; status bar is green/red/blue. 3225 uses green for map; bright green for route; roads are red/orange/white; status bar is gray/white. Magellan's has less difference between foreground and background colors.

Map Display: 650's map is easier to read than 3225. Since it's not fair to compare between 3.5" on 3225 and 4.3" wide screen on 650, I won't dwell on this. In terms of information displayed on map view, both units are similar: turn-in distance, arrival time, direction, next turn's street name. One advantage of Magellan is that it shows (at the top of screen) current street/highway that I'm on. Also, next turn signal is constantly displayed on 3225 at lower left of screen. This is very convenient. On 650, the next turn is displayed on the map itself, drawn on top of streets. This looks nice, but it takes my brain a few seconds to visually understand the map and register the turn information.

3225 split screen feature (TrueView) is overkill for 3.5" screen: 1/2 of the screen is taken up the turn arrow and not much room is left for map itself; 3225 is more usable with split screen turned off.

Map Display (not during routing): While not in routing mode, 3225 displays the current street name that I'm on; whereas 650 displays the upcoming cross street name. It would be better if both info can be displayed.

Map Details: One positive for 3225 is there is a map scale in 2D mode; I find this very helpful and provides a reference of the zoom. The negative on 3225 is that the text labels appear and disappear every second during the redraw, at certain zoom. Probably due to slow processor that cannot continuously render the text.

Sound: One great thing about 3225 is speaks street name feature. I find this very useful, and a great value for $149 GPS. Both units have their unique emphasis and intonation in pronounciation, but in general they are excellent and understandable.

Turn Prompt: Both units prompts very early on about the next turn. However, as I come up to the turn, 3225 just beeps, while 650 will speak the turn and street name again.

Volume: Some have complained on the web that volume is too low on 3225. I didn't find that at all. 3225 is almost as loud as 650; just a tad lower. However, the speaker on 3225 is not good. When volume is max, the sound is broken with static.

Entering Addresses: I love Magellan's method of entering Addresses. It speaks what I typed. So I can concentrate on the keyboard as I type, rather than looking up at the address bar after every key press. If I make a mistake, I can hear it as Magellan repeats back to me. Magellan dims out the letters that are not available in map database, which is a another great concept. Magellan's order on entering address is City, Street, Number, while Garmin's order is State, City, Number, and Street. Magellan's order makes more sense. I often want to go to a store that I know the street, but not the number. After entering the Street name, Magellan tells me which Numbers ranges are available.

Trip Planner: 3225 has a Trip Planner where I can set multiple waypoints. 650 can only handle destination and 1 waypoint. Multiple waypoints seem to be an useful feature, but I haven't tried it out yet.

Current location: 3225 readily shows current location: current street and nearest cross street; it also shows the longitude and latitude. On 650, I can save my current location, but I cannot view current location's information.

Map Overview of Route: On 650, there is a setting view entire 2D map of my route. This is very useful to double check GPS routing is correct, without going into turn by turn details. On 3225, it is more difficult, as I have to do this manually; go to the map and zoom out.

Menu: I find the Magellan 3225 menu organization more straight forward than 650. It is easier to find settings on the 3225. Another reason is 3225 has less features so it is simpler.

User Settings: I hate it when settings are hidden in layer and layer of menu and selections. Well, in this case, 3225 is not as conveninent for some functions. Here are the number of key presses from the map screen to acess these settings:

(Volume Settings) 3225 -> 1 key press; 650 -> 2 key presses (main menu, volume settings). No big difference.

(Brightness Settings): 3225 -> 5 key presses (main menu, next, user options, system settings, brightness). 650 -> 2 key presses (main menu, brightness settings). Big negative for 3225. This is important as I constantly have to turn up the brightness during daytime and down at night.

(Trip Computer): 3225 -> 4 key presses (main menu, next, user options, trip computer). 650 requires 1 touch. Another negative for 3225.

(Route Method): After picking a destination, 3225 asks if I want to use Fastest Time, Shortest Distance, Least Use of Freeway, or Most Use of Freeway. I like this option. I can easily avoid highway for short trips during rush hour. 650 Route Preferences is in Navigation settings.

(Night Mode): Both units will automatically switch between day vs night mode (background color switches to black) based on the time. 650 remembers the daytime and night time brightness settings independently. I basically use max brightness (100%) during daytime and close to minimum brightness (20%) at night. 650 remembers this and automatically adjusts the brigthness settings as it switch between daytime and night modes.

Windshield Mount: 3225 mount is 6" long with 2 pivot points. It is very bulky and large for such a small GPS unit. Now, the positive is that this brings the GPS unit closer, making the 3.5" screen easier to read. On the other hand, 650 mount is compact and only 3" long.

Accessories: 3225 comes with bonus AC outlet charger. 650 does not.

POI: 3225 comes with 1 Million POI. But following the information on the web, I update it to 6 Million POI. 650 comes with 6 Million POI.

Custom POI: Big negative for Magellan here. It is much more time consuming to add custom POI on the 3225 than 650. For each POI list (in CSV format), it takes 2-5 minutes to convert it to Magellan MGLN format using the included POI Editor. I have to do this for each POI list. For Garmin, I just drop all the CSV files into a directory and it will install as is.

3225 treat each POI file separately. I need to select POI file on the GPS unit in order to use it. So with many POI lists, I have to: (1) take the time to combine them on PC (can be separate them by categories); or (2) use them individually on the GPS. 650 treat each list as a different category; and all of them can be used at one time on GPS.

Software (Magellan POI Editor v4.1.1.0): Software does bare minimum of what is needed. There should be some enhancements to make modifying POI lists easier. Plus, there are several nuisances or bugs with software.

1. There is a bug that the POI Editor program cannot be closed. See my post here:
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/9011

2. When I try to Transfer to GPS, it takes me to incorrect directory on the GPS hard drive. Instead, I just copy and pasts the files manually in Windows Explorer.

3. Magellan POI Editor or updates cannot be downloaded from Magellan website. I just don't get why? Maybe Magellan never update this software.

In summary, for $149, Magellan 3225 is worth buying. It does the all basics that GPS needs to get you from point A to B.