Upgrading to Magellan 4350

 

I've been using a Garmin Nuvi 200 for some time now and recently decided to upgrade. I have finally decided on the 4350. This unit has practically everything I want in a GPS unit.

Can anyone who has moved from Garmin to the 4350 (or similar Magellan unit) relate their experience?

Be VERY careful.....

draksig wrote:

Can anyone who has moved from Garmin to the 4350 (or similar Magellan unit) relate their experience?

IIRC, the 4350 is ABSENT a major feature......like the ability to add your own custom POI's ????

It appears that it does NOT have an SD card slot, although that in itself wouldn't be a major problem, I guess.

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Magellan Maestro 4250// MIO C310X

No custom POI? I had not

No custom POI? I had not noticed that. If so, that would be a deal breaker for me. My 2nd choice would be the 4250 but it is missing a couple of features the 4350 has that I like. Like adding a via point to the route, review multiple route options and the speeding alert.

May have to do more research.

Upgrading to Magellan 4350

I bought a Magellan 4350 and a Garmin 265WT .The 4350 was so much better than the 265WT I gave the Garmin 265WT to my brother but as KA1167 stated you can not add custom POI but it does have a SD slot.

I am having second thoughts

I am having second thoughts about the lack of custom POI being a deal breaker, the other features it has are just overpowering. Adding a destination as a via point and giving you several routs to choose from is why I decided on the 4350 over the 4250. the one feature that TOMTOM has that I liked was the way it showed you the entire route and you could make it recalculate a new one. the 4350 comes the closest by showing several rout options and letting you disallow some roads from the route.

Quick question, since the

Quick question, since the 4350 is so new, maybe the POI software just hasn't been updated for it yet. Has anyone tried to manually move the poi file (afer converting it to the proper format with software) directly to the correct folder to see if the unit will see it?

Nope, it's not there

draksig wrote:

Quick question, since the 4350 is so new, maybe the POI software just hasn't been updated for it yet. Has anyone tried to manually move the poi file (afer converting it to the proper format with software) directly to the correct folder to see if the unit will see it?

If you go to their website and look at the manual, they do not even have the basic software to support it in the unit. The SD card is to add your MP3 files.... Got to say this was a major miss in removing the ability to add POIs

Custom POIs

This issue is being addressed in this thread http://www.poi-factory.com/node/18393

The 4350 does support custom POIs its just not well documented. See the thread.

Be Very Careful . .

ka1167 wrote:
draksig wrote:

Can anyone who has moved from Garmin to the 4350 (or similar Magellan unit) relate their experience?

IIRC, the 4350 is ABSENT a major feature......like the ability to add your own custom POI's ????

It appears that it does NOT have an SD card slot, although that in itself wouldn't be a major problem, I guess.

It does have an SD slot.

Magellan Maestro 4350 a Great Value

Senorspeaker wrote:

I bought a Magellan 4350 and a Garmin 265WT .The 4350 was so much better than the 265WT I gave the Garmin 265WT to my brother ...

My Magellan Maestro 4350 is the first GPS unit I've bought. Since I travel weekly between Delaware and the Washington DC metro area I wanted a unit with real time traffic reports and the ability to suggest alternate routes. I also felt that Bluetooth capabilty would be a good feature. Other features I though might be useful was lane guidance and a wide screen.

I did a fair amount of research on the web. While the Garmin 265T is a Consumer Reports (CR)recommended unit, it lacks many of the features I wanted. The 4350 was a "featured" product on the CR web site and I noted that it is a "quick recommendation" product on gpsmagazine.com. In addition it is the top rated unit at PC World. It has the features I wanted and its street price is about the same as the Garmin 265WT which lacks lane guidance among other features. It seems the Garmin unit with features comparable to the Magellan 4350 is the Garmin 765T, however its street price is at least $150 more than the 4350. Also as a long time AAA member I thought that having the AAA tourbook as POIs and one touch dialing to AAA was a plus.

I've had the unit for a couple of weeks and I'm very satisfied. As far as traffic goes, last week going from Arlington, VA to Delaware I got backed up before the I-395 bridge across the Potomac River. The GPS unit suggested I take the Memorial Bridge into DC. I never would have done this on my own, but there I was on Constitution Avenue and all. It worked! Later the unit first had me planned to take the Baltimore Washington Parkway, but based on the traffic reports changed me to US 301 accross the Bay Bridge. This time I double checked on My Traffic.com and confirmed the the Bay Bridge was wide open! Bottom line was that in spite of heaver than normal traffic I got to Delaware about my usual time.

Bluetooth however is a mixed bag. My phone is an LG VX-8300. It has voice recognition which allows me to phone people in my contacts list by using their names or dial numbers by voice over my Bluetooth headset. The 4350 does not access my phone contact list nor does it support the voice recognition feature. Otherwise it works fine with my phone, including one touch dialing to the POIs which came with the unit and one touch dialing to entries in its own address book.

The cons are minor. It appears that the software for this unit is a significant departure from previous Maestro units. Documentation for certain features such as custom POIs is almost non existent and, being a new unit from a company that does not have the market share of Garmin, there is little information from users on the web.

Satisfied 4350 firstTime GPS buyer

Attractive...right sized...good mounting, easy cabling, excellent practical features.

Documentation for basic features is sufficient but extensibility is needed for hackers and pluggers; they require blogAID. Would be nice if the company interactively leveraged opinions of its customers.

The FM output is poor quality as is the built-in speaker. I don't know if i can output the speaker to AUX input on my stereo. that would be nice.

I'd like to create custom voice-overs to replace the Male/Female voice. That would make it a customizable enlightening tool that would sell like iPods.

I would like a POI editor on the CD. IT ISN'T THERE. I'm still looking around for one. I'd also like to TEACH it to remember certain routes. A learning mode would be awesome.

It does not tell me my speed. It only reminds me that I am a speeder on highways. Great...another nag.

I'd like to hack the tiles and add Chesapeake Bay lat/long fish POI....however their Marine products would wind up bankrupt. I respect this "lack-of-feature".

Magellan has a great product with the 4350.
Great products like the 4350 that don't let users extend them, diminish in the market! RETURN THE POI EDITOR TO US....let the owner own and USE the device !

At least a good POI editor and a POI editor guide converter would benefit the user. Magellan asserts that they include the POI editor...it's NOT on the CD.

I'd like a summary write up on the data model it uses. I might even author it. I am ready to hack it out personally.

I do like the 4350 unit VERY much but leadership in the company is lackluster. See what happens when culture goes corporate and turns from sales/marketing/engineering ? No upsides i can think of except bond holder/enterprise holdings selfishness. Paradox in capitalism...isn't it ?

Upgrading to Magellan

Love my 4350, and yes you can add POI's. A little tricky but works, you need to convert poi's to .kml with a poi editor then I copy and paste in magellan maps, also love the Route options, be sure and download newest firmware.

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Nuvi-3760 *** Magellan-5045

POI Editor

you wouldn't know where to get a POI Editor that would work with the Magellan ?
if the license carries along with the 4350 device...as the company seems to promote, I'd like to investigate and get a copy of the POI Editor that is supposed to be on the CD.

Poi Edit

Download here http://www.poiedit.com/downloads.htm

You want to go into (tools) - patch converter, when you get your 4350 I can lay it out more if you need me to. Pretty easy actually.

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Nuvi-3760 *** Magellan-5045

Real Time traffic actually works somewhere, wow

Alan H wrote:
Senorspeaker wrote:

I've had the unit for a couple of weeks and I'm very satisfied. As far as traffic goes, last week going from Arlington, VA to Delaware I got backed up before the I-395 bridge across the Potomac River. The GPS unit suggested I take the Memorial Bridge into DC. I never would have done this on my own, but there I was on Constitution Avenue and all. It worked! Later the unit first had me planned to take the Baltimore Washington Parkway, but based on the traffic reports changed me to US 301 accross the Bay Bridge. This time I double checked on My Traffic.com and confirmed the the Bay Bridge was wide open! Bottom line was that in spite of heaver than normal traffic I got to Delaware about my usual time.

I have a 4250 unit and have been unimpressed with the real time traffic feature. I live in St. Louis and have also tried it driving through Houston and Dallas and it was close to useless. Since then I disocvered no brands works well in St. Louis and it is more of how good the local information is, Nice to hear it does work somewhere well as it gives hope that they will get this feature working in other araes over time.