Product Description

The Magellan RoadMate 3050T North America makes it easy to avoid traffic incidents with advanced turn-by-turn voice and visual GPS guidance. Plus, listen to your favorite music and view pictures on the 3.5 Inch color TFT touch screen display. The Magellan RoadMate 3050T is the next generation in easy GPS navigation with LIVE traffic incident reports shown on the interactive touch screen. Simply touch an icon to view detailed traffic incident information. Automatic rerouting directs you around incidents whenever a quicker way is available. Enter an address and get turn-by-turn voice and visual guidance to virtually any destination. The built-in map and over six million pre-programmed points of interest show your location, destination and route; Plus nearby services and amenities in traditional or bird's-eye 3D view. Touch a point of interest icon for information about services and get an instant route. Multi-destination Route Optimization enables you to plan a trip with up to twenty stops and instantly find the most direct route between them. The friendly voice tells you when to make each turn as you travel. Your Magellan RoadMate 3050T comes equipped with Magellan TrafficKit; everything you need to avoid accidents, road work and more as you travel. SmartDetour routes you around sudden stopped freeway traffic. Plus, the built-in music player, photo viewer and rechargeable battery let you take entertainment on the road and continue navigating when you're outside your vehicle.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47005 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Magellan
• Model: 980859-05
• Dimensions: 3.80" h x 1.40" w x 4.80" l, 2.75 pounds
• Display size: 3.5

Features

• Brilliant 3.5-inch color display for easy operation and sharp images
• Detailed voice instructions with multiple language options
• Preloaded with over six million points of interest, such as gas stations, restaurants, ATMs, airports, parks, historic sites, and museums
• Plays MP3 and WMA music files
• Full navigational coverage in the U.S., including Puerto Rico, and Canada

Amazon.com Product Description
For a remarkable, intelligently-designed multipurpose GPS navigation system that packs everything but the kitchen sink into a portable device, you can't go wrong with the Magellan RoadMate 3050T for North America. Equipped with preloaded software for use in the United States, including Puerto Rico, and Canada, the 3050T delivers comprehensive navigational coverage in an easy-to-use package to give you the best driving routes. The 3050T also provides a number of viewing and entertainment features to make your driving experiences the best they can be.

Made to be user-friendly, the Magellan 3050T has a 3.5-inch touch sensitive screen that displays vibrant colors and sharp images. Simple menus and smart keys provide quick access to the 3050T's features, which include preloaded detailed maps, bird's eye 3D viewing to give you a clear sense of your surroundings, and over six million points of interest such as gas stations, restaurants, ATMs, airports, parks, historic sites, museums, and much more. The 3050T lets you select up to 20 destinations and optimize the most direct route between them, as well as store your favorite locations for the trips you take frequently. You can also customize mapping selection with the 3050T, which lets you select routes based on driving time, distance, and traffic congestion, or exclude routes you prefer to avoid, such as toll roads.

The 3050T fits easily into any vehicle without the need for special installation and works at any hour of the day. The auto night view feature adjusts brightness and contrast for easy viewing at night, and the voice guidance option provides friendly turn-by-turn instructions to get you to your destination. With SmartVolume adjusting the sound level of your system when you speed up or slow down, the 3050T makes sure that the directions you get are clear and easy to understand. And for the first three months after your purchase of the RoadMate 3050T, you'll have a free subscription to Magellan's LIVE traffic reports. With detailed, up-to-date traffic incident reports at your fingertips, you'll be able to find alternate routes and avoid traffic congestion created by accidents, road construction, special events, and more.

In addition to having the features that make it a first-class navigation system, the 3050T is also a music player and a picture viewer. Through the integrated speaker, the 3050T plays MP3 and WMA music files for your entertainment. And if you're outside your vehicle, you can also plug in a set of earphones to listen. (For safety reasons, please remember never to use earphones while driving.) The picture viewer is ideal for road trips with friends or family as well as for gatherings such as parties and picnics. Upload the pictures you've taken with your digital camera and you'll be able to share a slideshow with everyone right away.

Housed in a high-impact plastic case and able to operate in a temperature range of 32 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit (O to 45 degrees Celsius), the 3050T is versatile and durable enough to go where you want to go. At 8.64 ounces and measuring 4.8 x 3.8 x 1.4 inches, the navigation system is extremely portable. The powerful 2100 mA rechargeable lithium ion battery provides up to six hours of continuous use. Multilingual options make the 3050T perfect for speakers of English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

Customer Reviews

The Magellan RoadMate 3050T a Great gps
See update at end..

I purchased this unit, the Magellan RoadMate 3050T, which is the 3000T, but with the receiver for Traffic-enabled info. For what I paid for this unit and the features it has, I believe it to be a very good deal.

The windshield suction cup mount works ok, but I wish it was a little stiffer. On bumpy roads the GPS can bounce up and down a little. With the unit mounted, the first time I tried to power it up I thought I got a bum unit. You have to hold the power on button for up to 15 seconds the first time, about 3 seconds after the first to have it spring to life. I think Magellan should state this right on the plastic protection sheet they have on the face of the unit. It would have saved me some startup anxiety.

Once I got it working it zeroed in on the satellites very quickly. In the windshield mount, the gps maintains an excellent signal. In fact, much better then my Garmin Maps 76S. Even with heavy over cast and in tree cover I have full signal bars on the upper right of the display.

Speaking display, this unit is very bright, even in full sun. In fact, at night, with the brightness turned all the way down, it is a little brighter then I really like.

The display makes use of a lot of icons. I had to breakout the manual to figure what some of them meant.

I am a stickler for wanting to know what direction I'm traveling. I planned to purchase the Garmin Streetpilot C550. I changed my mind after finding the Garmin does not display the normal compass heading on the main map display. The Magellan 3000T displays the heading full time in the map mode in the lower left corner. It uses the N, NE, E, SE, SW, W, NW headings.

A very good sounding lady gives voice directions. It is very clear, and volume level is also very good. This unit does not have the "text to speech". However, after using the Magellan 3000T, I really don't care that it doesn't speak the road name. What it will do is tell you when a turn is coming up and which direction you will need to turn and on the display it gives you the name of the street. The directions are clear and understandable leaving no doubt what you need to do. The maps are from Navteq. I feel Navteq is the best out there.

Update speed of this unit is very good. The display refreshes quickly and I never feel it is lagging behind. The route calculator waste no time as well. Most route calculations take less then 5 seconds to complete.

With the TrafficKit, this gps can find you a way around most traffic flow issues like slowdowns, accidents, construction, and other reasons. Around the metro Detroit area it seems to work pretty well. However, on a trip up north, it didn't work as well. I believe this to be more of an issue with the service provider then a problem with the gps. I'm sure with time this will improve. One detour it took me on saved us over an hour in stop and go traffic with just a few miles added to the distance. For one year of service it cost about $60. I don't like how the TrafficKit attaches to the gps. The cables end up going all over the place and the antenna for the receiver is long. Seems they could have come up with a better design. I ended up leave the antenna lying on the dash. It just looks messy.

The software that comes with the unit seems a little lame to me. You really can't do much with it. I wanted to be able to download the trip computer to my laptop. I have not found a way to do this. I'll be calling tech support to see if I'm missing something.

I have not tried the mp3 player or picture functions as I really don't care to have pictures on the unit. I'll try the mp3 in the near future.

For me, this unit is a keeper.

Pros: Easy to see, easy to use once I learned the system, pleasant command voice, easy to remove and install into its mount,you have a choice of using the touch screen or navigation buttons.

Cons: Power-on confusing the first time I used it, trafic receiver attachment messy, I had to upgrade the firmware to bring it up to date (no big deal though)

Update as of 12-20-06

Cons and Pro addition to date: Can't use the MP3 player at the same time as navigating. POI database is wrong for southern Florida areas. Items in the database not where the gps shows they are in the state of Florida. POI very good for Michigan. All in all I still like this unit and find it as good or better then other brands in the same price range on the market.

The traffic alert system works fine when it has a signal, but the info being fed to it is out of date/time and not many areas have reporting. This is a disappointment. I will not renew the subscription until I hear they have improved the service.

A logical upgrade for reasonable cost
I previously owned a Magellan Roadmate 300 that required you to connect to a PC to upload maps and routes any time you wanted to travel to a different area. I finally became tired of that process and decided it was time to upgrade to a unit with all US road and POIs pre-loaded.

I researched mainly Magellan and Garmin (2620, NUVI 350, 360, 660) before deciding to purchased the Roadmate 3050T.

Main reasons for selecting the Roadmate: Value (Price vs. Features), POIs, Waypoint support to "force" a desired long-range route, existing familiarity with legacy Roadmate interface.

The display is excellent, clear, and bright. I'm having a little trouble getting used to the zoom buttons being located on top of the unit, but other than that I agree that from an ergonomic perspective the device is fairly easy to use.

My initial use of the 3050T has left a positive impression. The routing speed and "flyover" map displays are a big improvement over my old flat-map 300. There is a "locate" diplay that gives you lat/long, speed, altitude, and direction. The built in Li ion battery is Heaven-sent for in-home programming and short trips where you don't want to mess around with a power cord. I also look forward to taking it with me on my next airline flight (N.B.: some airlies allow you to use a handheld GPS in flight, but don't assume that yours does in today's security-conscious environment. CHECK WITH THE AIRLINE FIRST!!!)

Limited testing of "forced" local re-routes (wrong turns, missed turns, etc) has shown the unit to be very fast to calculate. The routes generally seem efficient. The POI database containing 6M points of interest is also much improved over the older and more limited database in my 300. Contrary to a previous reviewer's experience, I tried searching for several retail and restaurant locations and located all of them with ease. This is in the Atlanta metro area.

I have not experimented with the MP3 player functionality as it does not interest me and was not a factor in my purchase decision.

Keep in mind that "outdated" databases are a problem for the whole industry. It truly can take years for new roads, stores, etc to appear in GPS map databases. The simple fact is that even with my 3-year old 300 I rarely ran into problems where point-to-point routing was severely impacted by new or changed roads. The biggest problems I recall running into with the old 300 were missing a relocated exit in one state (I ended up rerouting through the next exit and backtracking a bit on local roads), and a relocated roadway in another (I just kept driving until for a little while until I was back on the "old" road, and everything went back to normal). In the worst case scenario where you get confused and don't know what to do, drive through the inaccuracy and you'll be re-routed to an existing and workable route.

I'll be leaving on a 2K mile round trip this weekend and will add my updated impressions, including function and use of the traffic feature, upon my return.

Initial conclusion: Great VALUE for the price paid.

Good GPS but maps are seriously out of date
First the positives - worked right out of the box and attached to the windshield with the suction arm. Great ergo and screen is bright and easy to follow. I really want to like this unit.

Negatives - maps are really out of date (Q3'05)! The Costco where I bought the unit doesn't exist according to the GPS - the nearest one is 6 miles away. Asked for the nearest Applebees and was told it is in Connecticut (I live in Washington) - there has to be one in Chicago?? Checked on the nearest Subway Sandwich place and it missed the 4 that are within 2 miles to send me 6 miles away. And so on - just terrible for a GPS system that is advertised as finding places. It did find the nearest McDonalds (but missed two others that are nearby). It has 2M POI but I don't really care about gas stations in Puerto Rico if I'm in the NW US.

And, to add further misery, if the GPS knows where I'm sitting, why do I have to key in the city I'm in before I can put an address in?? Shouldn't that be a default? Just a reflection of the overall mapping program - not ready for prime time.

I also have to question why music and picture display would be hyped up on this unit. The person that spends $500 for this unit is almost guaranteed to have a digital camera of some worth and an IPOD or MP3 player that does the job much better.

So the bottom line - decent unit with crappy maps. And I've read in other reviews that I might have to buy an updated map - which I would not do. Costco has a good return policy that I'll take advantage of.