Magellan Maestro 3100 GPS Navigator
The Magellan 3100 is best known for its low cost and simple functionality for the budget conscious. It delivers the best navigation experience at an entry-level price point. Pocket-sized, powerful, and re-engineered for easy use, its fresh graphics, intuitive interface, and friendly voice will guide you turn-by-turn as you enjoy the drive.
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Design
The display features the standard 3.5-inch screen and touch sensitive. The Magellan Maestro 3100 isn’t the thinnest model out of the bunch but still manages to be portable enough to carry around with you. It does include a suction cup style mount where you can place it on the windshield, but can be difficult to remove at times.
Look and Feel
The interface looks a bit old fashioned with the 2-D map interface and basic zoom controls with enough details to warrant its usefulness. The Magellan 3100 maps can switch to a 3-D mode, with color-coded roads that highlight your route and major roads. The overall placement of the icons isn’t anything extraordinary, but it’s pretty much complete and that’s a good thing even for a budget GPS device.
The main menu is a bit simple with just 3 main icons letting you fire up the map, enter an address, or listing the places of interest. Everything from there is just a matter of touching big icons in getting the work done. It does a good job in keeping the most important functions without adding too much bloat.
Performance
There are some instances where the device would just hang up. Even if you are using it for the first time and have successfully made the initial setup procedures, the system could subsequently hang. The overall performance is a bit sluggish too making it pretty unstable at times.
The route recalculations were a bit speedy on the other hand, but sometimes a few turns can be missed when it announces the turn after the street has been passed. Pinpointing locations were also fast enough to make the Magellan Maestro a reliable tracker.
The battery life is below average, but understandable for a budget GPS device. As long as you keep the backlighting as dim as possible, you’re looking at running the device for at most 3 hours.
Navigation
Navigation-wise, the Magellan Maestro fairly delivers with its coverage of 48 states, but supports a very limited list of only 750,000 points of interest.
Despite all that, navigation is quite simple since the Magellan Maestro 3100 has kept the basic tradition that most other models have by letting users key in destination address whether it be by city, state, street, and/or zip code. Combining that functionality with Magellan’s QuickSpell feature, telling your device on where to go is a cinch. This feature can be very useful for people who are planning basic trips.
Of course for the users that more familiar to GPS devices, they can just head to the map and plan from there. It is better to navigate with the 2-D screen as the 3-D screen covers half the area on what the 2-D screen accomplishes and can be quite confusing when you want to go through tough intersections.
Extra Features
There isn’t much being offered in this budget device, but the QuickSpell feature that is present in higher and older models makes an appearance in the Magellan Maestro 3100. Those who are fond of keying in street names as their destination will find this feature very useful. As the street name is being keyed in, certain letters that are dimmed which aid you in pressing the right letters to get the street name you want. Think of it like an auto-complete feature without pressing the wrong letters. There is also a basic Trip Planner feature that supports up to 20 destinations.
Conclusion
The Magellan Maestro is fairly underperformed when pitted against competitors, but for a price of less than $200 for a fully-fledged GPS device, the deal ends up pretty sweet at the end. There aren’t many extra features, but that also means clean menus and easy navigation in using the primary functions, which is great for newbies. Though it doesn’t have many POI’s, the QuickSpell makes up for it and as long as you know the address, you can pretty much go around the quirks and reach your destination with the help of the Magellan Maestro. Those looking to try a GPS within their budget should be happy to start with this or view the entire Magellan Maestro range here.
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