Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The RoadMate 3055 is a decent GPS. The hardware is handsome, thin, and light weight. The software is showing its age and computer and car connection is just obtuse.
Every manufacturer of GPS devices has an awful problem right now; there are too many models with too many features, too many price points, and absolutely no logic to model names or numbers. Magellan is just as bad as any other vendor. There are a few features to consider when buying a GPS. First is screen size, bigger screens are more expensive, but not necessarily better or easier to use (4 inches is a pretty common size, anything bigger just gets in the way). Second is Text to Speech, if you want road names read to you, and then get a unit with Text to Speech (the 3055 does Text to Speech). If you only want the GPS to say, turn left in 5 miles, turn left in point two miles, turn left now, ding dong; and then don't spend money on Text to Speech. I find it critical that the GPS say the road name. Third is Bluetooth, a way to connect your cell phone to the GPS and make hands free calls while driving. To me, this is a pretty worthless option, the speakers are never large enough and the noise cancelling is never good enough. Fourth is traffic subscription. Lifetime traffic is a nice thing, but you will have ads scrolling on your GPS, they aren't annoying, but they are there. Almost all the GPS get their traffic information from the same place. It is extremely unreliable (I have about 4 years of experience in a major metropolitan area and travel in many cities), the traffic jams area almost never there, or someplace not reported. I would frankly never pay extra for traffic information (see lower in the review for how poorly this unit performed). Fifth are map subscriptions. This is very sticky. Lifetime subscriptions typically cost around one hundred dollars and give you four updates per year. One map update costs around sixty or eighty dollars. Lifetime map update included with a GPS is not a bad plan, but almost no GPS offers this. Magellan is no different; lifetime subscriptions are around eighty dollars. Sixth is choosing between road assist or not to road assist. With road assist, whenever the GPS thinks an exit will be confusing, a representation of the road and signs appears on the screen. This is very useful in major cities on highways, totally useless on rural roads or small towns. I'm not sure this is worth extra money.
Turned off, this is a very nice looking GPS. The border is gloss black plastic, fairly wide, and makes a great landing spot for your fingers while using the GPS. The back is nice looking silver. The unit is light weight. The pain starts after turning on the unit.
Magellan has chosen to do nothing significant with computer connection. There is absolutely 100% NO Mac support, you have to have a Windows PC for any firmware or map updates. The first step I did with this unit was to update the firmware. You must install Magellan's Content Manager Software to do anything with this device and a computer. The software only moderately inhabits your computer, by default it runs at start up. It does everything magically, with little user intervention. The firmware update was painless, except that the software warns that this might take hours to complete (Magellan is horrible at predicting how long anything will take, from software updates to Bluetooth pairing), it only took ten minutes to download. The updating was painful to watch, the GPS goes through blue screen after blue screen reminiscent of the blue screens of death on a PC. Each screen had ultra cryptic words that mean nothing. Fortunately, the update completed without a problem.
Virtually every single GPS on the market today (including the Mio's that nobody has purchased) allow you to transfer addresses from Google maps to the GPS. Magellan has chosen to not do this. This is a HUGE mistake by Magellan, the only way to enter an address is through their on screen interface or through your phone's address book (more on that abomination later). On a recent trip, I found the address on Google maps, verified with satellite images that it was indeed the correct address, transferred it through my MacBook Pro over to a Garmin Nuvi 765T GPS. On the Magellan, I spent endless time touch typing on the screen the city, the street name, and then the address number. I took off on my trip with both GPS's; the Garmin took me to the exact correct address. The Magellan took me to a place five miles up the road to a vacant corn field. Admittedly, this was a very difficult address to find, but with Google maps and Garmin, no problem getting there. Magellan couldn't find the location.
The screen is resistive touch (meaning you have to press kind of hard on the screen to make it do anything, but you could use a stylus or gloves to touch the screen). If you are used to using an iPhone or iPod Touch, you will hate this type of screen. It requires much more deliberate forceful presses to make it do anything. The screen was fairly responsive, but not always. There are very few options to customize the noises this thing makes. I absolutely despise the snap click sound this device makes every single time you touch a virtual key on the screen. There is no way to change that sound or defeat it, short of muting the sound. Just after start up, the GPS makes a strange loud ohhh hoooo sound that also annoyed me. And instead of the voice saying turn now, when it is time to make a turn, the device makes another annoying ding dong sound (that can be changed to other more annoying sounds). The Text to Speech voice is a pleasant female voice that is not changeable. The voice is a little less robotic than Garmin's.
The lane assist at first seemed really nice. Then I studied it carefully and compared it side by side to Garmin's version. Sadly, Magellan loses in this race. Instead of a replication of the real signs (color, relative size, and wording as Garmin has implemented it) Magellan has chosen to use green rectangles with highway numbers and comapss directions. This is pretty sad, these are generic rectangles and the highway numbering is accurate, but the words on the GPS never match the real road signs. In addition, Garmin has chosen to really represent the look of the highway with accurate lane count, and a big purple arrow that shows you were to go. Magellan, on the other hand, has chosen to do some very vague highway lines in green. It would be very easy to miss some complex exits with this particular system.
The Magellan screen is fairly cluttered. They have added about an inch to the width of the screen compared to other four inch GPS's. The top and bottom of the 3055 screen is consistent with the other RoadMate models - very simple distance to destination, zoom buttons, Menu, distance to next turning point, and the "one touch" button. On the left traffic delays are displayed. On the right there are two icons, one for volume and the second for stuff along the route (gas stations, rest stops, etc.). There is enough room to see the map or routing. The default view of the road is zoomed in very tight, almost too tight really.
The biggest crime Magellan has commited with this GPS is the whole mounting / charging arrangement. Included in the box is an awful simple suction cup mount. The GPS slides down a T slot into the holder. The supplied mini-USB to 12V adapter slides into a slot on the mount and provides power to the GPS. That adapter also houses the traffic antenna for traffic delay updates. This is cheap, crummy mount at its absolute worst. The charging arrangement is ridiculous. The GPS will take up to four hours to charge using the 12V adapter. The battery will last about two hours on a full charge. So this means a four hour car ride to get a full charge, because the "out of the box" experience is only with the 12V adapter. The manual does mention an optional AC adapter. After doing a bit of testing, the GPS requires fairly high wattage to charge. Any mini-USB cable will work to connect this GPS to an AC adapter or a computer. An iPhone charger will not work. An iPad charger and most USB ports on a computer do work to charge this. The biggest problem, it is impossible to figure out if the unit is charging, there is no light on the unit to show charging status. The battery level indicator on the unit is pretty worthless, I could not understand if the battery was dead or fully charged.
The next crime is synchronization with a cell phone. The iPhone is supported by this device. The instructions clearly state that your address book can be imported into the GPS. It also warns that it might take up to five minutes to pair via Bluetooth. In about a minute my iPhone 4 was connected to the GPS. I then responded yes to importing the phone book. About a minute or two later, all my contacts were imported. I was overjoyed; this was easy and seemed to work out great. I have the most basic contact list in the universe, maybe 150 contacts all entered via Outlook and using standard fields for the data. The darn GPS made 375 out of them, put them in random order, created a huge number of no title entries, duplicated a bunch of contacts, and then never got an address right so I could navigate to that address. That was about the most useless piece of garbage import I have ever met.
On a recent trip I pitted my Nuvi against the 3055, side by side navigation in the car. When I deviated from the planned route, the Nuvi spoke up with "recalculating" (that does get a annoying after a while) while the Magellan just redid the routing and never said a word (good job Magellan). Both units called out exits and turns equally well - Magellan a bit earlier than Garmin. Both pronounced or mispronounced words equally well. Magellan was very pessimistic about arrival time and updated often during the...Read more›
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Product Description:
The Magellan RoadMate 3055 offers something extra with an exclusive ultrawide 4.7-inch touch screen, Bluetooth, lifetime traffic alerts, highway lane assist, OneTouch favorites and Built-in AAA TourBook.
The Magellan exclusive, ultra-wide 4.7-inch touch screen stands above the rest at 17% larger than a standard 4.3-inch screen. Enjoy hands-free calling and a noisecancelling microphone with advanced Bluetooth technology.
Magellan has partnered with the most trusted name in travel--AAA. Only Magellan products include the built-in AAA TourBook with Diamond ratings and descriptions on AAA-approved places to stay, play, dine, and save.
Personalize your travel experience with the OneTouch menu of your favorite places and searches. Bookmark your favorite coffee shop, restaurant, gas station, or bank to find the nearest location, anywhere you travel!
Enjoy subscription-free, lifetime traffic alerts available at any time! Premium maps of the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico make this perfect for travel across the country or everyday commuting.
Perfect for the everyday commuter or business road trips! Travel with confidence using the top-of-the-line Magellan RoadMate 3055, an easy-to-use, premium navigator packed with features!
RoadMate 3055 Features
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