Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #83 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Magellan
• Model: MA4700SGXUC
• Released on: 2009-07-15
• Platform: Windows
• Format: CD
• Dimensions: 3.46" h x 5.20" w x .61" l, .38 pounds

Features

• Ultra-slim GPS device with 4.7-inch color touchscreen, personalized OneTouch search, spoken street name guidance, Bluetooth capability, voice command and more
• Multi-destination routing with route optimization lets you plan the most efficient trip
• Highway lane assist points you in the right direction when approaching interchanges and exits
• QuickSpell with SmartCity search narrows your address and city searches Highway exit points of interest (POI) search lists upcoming gas stations, restaurants, hotels, and more near highway exits
• Includes maps of United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico

Amazon.com Product Description
The premium Magellan Maestro 4700 GPS device boasts the acclaimed and exclusive OneTouch favorites menu and an ultra-slim 4.7-inch color touch screen. Preloaded NAVTEQ maps and six million points of interest for the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico make the Magellan Maestro 4700 GPS product ideal for both business trips and vacations. Easy-to-use premium features, such as AAA TourBook, voice command, highway lane assist, predictive traffic, and Bluetooth compatibility for hands-free calling, give you confidence on the road and deliver an exceptional navigation experience.

	Exclusive OneTouch Favorites Menu Easily bookmark favorite destinations and searches with personalized bookmarks so you can find them anywhere you travel. Find your favorite cafe or restaurant in any city with a single touch. The Magellan Maestro 4700 device definitely delivers "your favorites at your fingertips."
	Exclusive AAA TourBook Guide No membership required. Invaluable to anyone who travels, the AAA TourBook guide, which contains information on all 50 states and Canada, is built into your Magellan Maestro 4700 and provides ratings and descriptions on AAA approved places to stay, play, dine, and save.
	4.7-inch Touch Screen The wide, ultra-slim 4.7-inch color touch screen shows your position on the unit including map route, destination, ETA, Points of Interest (POI), OneTouch favorites, street names, and more--all at a glance. The large 4.7-inch screen is 16% larger than a 4.3-inch screen.
	6 Million Points of Interest (POI) Easily find whatever service you need. Gas stations, restaurants, hotels, ATMs, and hundreds of other businesses are intuitively categorized and searchable from the built-in POI database.
	Voice Command Safely navigate hands-free by speaking a variety of commands to control the Maestro 4700. You can "Go Home" or find the "Nearest Gas" just by using your voice.
	Highway Lane Assist Realistic highway signs point you in the right direction when approaching interchanges and exits, ensuring that you'll choose the correct lane well before your next turn.
	Bluetooth Compatibility Easily make or receive calls using a compatible cell phone and even synch up to 1000 numbers directly from your phone. Plus, the noise cancelling microphone keeps road noise down so you are heard clearly.
	Predictive Traffic It automatically analyzes past traffic patterns when creating a route to help you avoid known delays, saving you time and making your journey less stressful. Choose to stay on your current route or go with the new less-traveled route.
	Highway Exit POI Search Search for gas stations, restaurants, hotels, and more near upcoming highway exits.
	QuickSpell with SmartCity Search Enter destinations with only a few touches. QuickSpell with SmartCity search helps you quickly enter addresses and narrow location searches, making destination entry easy.
	Multi-destination Routing Plan a trip with multiple stops in the order you want, or have it optimized for the most efficient route. Easily reorganize, add, or remove destinations.
	Spoken Street Name Guidance Hear street names and directions for a clear understanding of when to make the next turn, while you keep your eyes on the road.
	3D Landmarks Visual cues, such as stadiums and bridges, let you navigate safely and easily.
	Find your Car Easily remember the location of your car in parking lots, airports, malls, universities, amusement parks, or stadiums. When your day is done, the Maestro 4700 will automatically guide you to your car.
	NAVTEQ Maps Travel the entire United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada with all the maps you need, pre-loaded on your device.

What's in the Box?
Magellan Maestro 4700 GPS receiver; pre-loaded maps of United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico; windshield mount; adhesive disc for dash mounting; vehicle power adapter; USB cable; user handbook; user manual on CD-ROM.

Customer Reviews

A Good Navigational Tool
With an occupation that keeps me on the road, a working navigational tool is a must have. Having gone through my fair share of slow and inconsistent GPS products ranging from Garmin, TomTom and yes even Magellan through the years, one must really do their homework. After researching several systems this model kept popping up on my radar screen.

Coming out of the box, this unit worked perfectly without the usual hiccups of other systems that I have owned. Installation is simple. Powering up is a breeze. The download time for entering starting point to destination is about 45 seconds. The One Touch screen is on the money. The menu allows for editing for one's own personal choices. I really have come to like the Predictive Traffic feature. In short, it creates alternate routes for known traffic tie ups.

Even though this system is primed for Bluetooth, not all mobile devices are compatible. The Maestro 4700 paired at times with two out of three cell phones. Connections were dropped a bit more often then expected. As usual, my personal phone did not pair up with this system. Maybe its a great working feature with the right phone. Even if it did pair up with my go to phone, I don't see myself giving up my wireless ear piece anytime soon. This feature rates 3 stars at best.

Like every GPS system before it, Voice Command on this unit is simply a wasted feature that does not work. This add on alone receives a failing grade from me. On the other hand, Spoken Street Name Guide with text to speech is clear and precise. The 3D Landmarks add on is a nice touch. I have yet to use the Find My Car feature. The free, no membership required AAA Guide is loaded with great up to date information.

The Maestro 4700 measures in at over 5" wide x 3.5" height and weighs about 6 ounces. The biggest draw for me personally is the large 4.7" color touch screen, predictive traffic, and the lane guide arrow features. Unlike previous models that I have owned, the Maestro 4700's screen is viewable in all lighting conditions. The user friendly one touch interface is definitely a winner.

Quick Spell automatically fills in the blanks and makes locating a destination easy. One of the sweetest features is the lane guide arrows (Highway Lane Assist) program that sounds a bell when my next turn is coming up. It quickly guides me into the correct lane without the usual "Oops, how did I miss that exit?"

The Maestro 4700 comes preloaded with maps of the USA, Canada and Puerto Rico. Additional maps can be stored on board via SD Card. Included accessories are a windshield mount, storage pouch, dash mounting disk, car power adapter, handbook, USB cable, and an informative CD. I recommend buying a good protective case. Magellan loses major style points for not including an AC power supply plug. Unplugged, the battery provided me a little over 2 hours of power.

As with most electronics, this system includes the standard 1 year warranty. If it is returned within the applicable warranty period, Magellan will replace the defective unit. Most likely the buyer will receive a reconditioned unit of the same model or at the company's discretion another model of lesser value. I know this from personal experience. Both Magellan and Garman share this replacement policy. Keeping that in mind, I strongly advise all buyers to think extended warranty packages.

I found that one continually overlooked offering is the warranty plan offered by most major credit cards. For me personally, my credit card warranty has been a worthwhile, cost effective investment. With pennies on the dollar, it is a warranty that backs up my products one hundred percent from the date of purchase.

The glitches I found with both Voice Command and Bluetooth pairing undoubtedly keeps the Maestro 4700 from garnering more then a four star rating. Even with those issues this product still delivers on the basics. For me that is more then enough. Its still an above average NAVAIDS tool.

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UPDATE:10.31.09
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I've owned this system for a few months now. I've driven cross country and back and also made my monthly run up the coast. The only issue that I have had is the age old problem with NAVTEQ maps. On more then one occasion the maps placed me in the opposite direction of my destination. I don't see the folks at NAVTEQ fixing this problem any time soon because it has existed for so long. NAVTEQ mapping was an issue on my other GPS products as well. I probably have a better chance of winning the lottery rather then waiting for the folks at NAVTEQ to fix their maps. Other then that, my Magellan 4700 GPS is still on the job and doing what it does best.

Love hate relationship
This 4700 is my 4th Magellan. The first was a 750 which was the same as the Hertz 'Never Lost'. Worked great but when the 860T hit the market I had to have it. One year ago I bought a 3250 for another car, a little "funky" but it gets me where I need to go.

Last week my old reliable 860 was unfortunately stolen from my car. So since I have had good luck with Magellan I started to look for a new GPS. First I purchased a RoadMate 1340 which looked good in the box but had a display that was unreadable in daylight; any daylight. Returned the 1340 and then purchased a Maestro 4700... then the fun began.

Positives: Nice display... AAA Tour Book... Clear and loud voice... mostly (not always accurate)... Ability to do multi-location routing... Basic voice commands... Bluetooth & Traffic neither of which I have used.

NEGATIVES: Constant RESTARTS: When certain locations are requested. The display reads "YOUR DEVICE NEEDS TO BE RESTARTED TO INCREASE PERFORMANCE, PLEASE WAIT WHILE YOUR DATA IS SAVED. And then the unit turns off and restarts. I have spoken with Magellan support several times in the past week and, at first, they claimed that they have had no problems before. Today they said that I should return the unit for repair. For example: I live in Connecticut and often drive to Florida, when I put in ANY address in Florida the unit restarts. This is also true for many cities in Georgia and South Carolina. If you need to go to Mobile, Alabama however no problem.

The in-putting of locations is done by Town or City not by State; so if you want to go to San Francisco and type that in you get to choose from every town in Mexico that has San Francisco in the name.

For the most part it works locally BUT, from Connecticut, you CAN NOT go to ANY city or town in Florida, as well as many cities in Georgia and South Carolina. The same error message: YOUR DEVICE NEEDS etc. appears and you can't navigate to your destination! Therefore this GPS is useless for me the way it works today.

In time I believe that Magellan will get the 4700 'right', at least I hope so. When and if Magellan fixes this fatal problem I will change my rating to 5 stars, until then I will not go South of the Mason Dixon Line.Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator

HOPEFULLY THINGS WILL GET BETTER Added August 16, 2009
And now for some history:

The checkered history of the Magellan corporation, as we know it today, may have contributed to some of the issues that have been illuminated in this and other forums. Since my first experience with Magellan labeled products was positive, I tried to stay with a known entity. In the early 1980's I bought a Magellan Loran C for marine use. It ALWAYS worked providing me with accurate TD's and, with the Loran C overprinted charts got me to my waypoints and destinations. BTW Loran was developed by the Military as Loran A during WW II.

While GPS was not developed until the late 1970's and early 1980's it was not available for commercial use until the mid 1980's. All through this period Magellan, or as it was previously known as Navistar, was in the forefront of navigation product development. Later, a number of Silicon Valley companies were involved with or owned Magellan. In 2001 Thales, a French based Fortune 500 communications and defense company acquired Magellan and tried/did change Magellan's name to Thales Navigation; not a household name.

Five years later, in 2006, Thales sold Thales Navigation to an Investment group named Shah Capital Partners which changed the name back to Magellan. Recently, in January of this year, Magellan was acquired by MiTAC, a Taiwan based company that is, along with other products, in the GPS business. MiTAC owns Mio and NAVMAN and now Magellan. To me, it looks like MiTAC is committed to the GPS marketplace.

From the foregoing, one might see that while Magellan had some less than satisfying marriages in recent times, its beginnings were superb.

Now we have an industry (popular priced GPS devices) that brings out new products every few months just to keep up with the competition. Often these products are released; "not ready for prime time". Virtually all of the companies in this arena (Magellan included), have to recall or upgrade or `ship' updated firmware or hardware. Even the industry leader (by units shipped) Garmin/Nuvi have had their share of problems. What is critical to the success of these companies, in my opinion, is the manner in which Customer Service is addressed. Starting with the contracted, offshore-based telephone and e-mail support, without an escalation plan to the refusal to acknowledge that a problem is not a one off.

I, for one, am encouraged that Magellan is now owned by MiTAC. I like my new Maestro 4700, warts and all, and in time hope to love it when it works as well as my stolen 860t did. For now I will do `workarounds'.

That's my opinion, I could be wrong.

Decent bang for buck
I have had this unit just over 2 weeks now, got it the first day it was released. I replaced my old Magellan 1412. Over all, I have been pleased with the functionality for price ratio.

It worked right out of the box, finding the satellite signal within a minute. I immediately liked the large screen yet a reasonably thin design. I took it to the car, and found mounting it to the windshield was a snap. So far so good.

I used immediately used it on a trip to go from Washington DC to Winston-Salem NC. It worked perfectly in terms of directions heading both up and back. Here are the things I really liked:
- The lane directions were very helpful when navigating highway interchanges. The lane directions popped up well in advance to find the right lane
- The spelling fill in function is also helpful.
- I really liked the "closest gas" button on the map screen when you are driving. I used this to locate gas (and restrooms) and it worked flawlessly. I also liked using the one-touch menu to find rest stops, resturants, etc. The nice thing is that after arriving at the interim destination, the gps then asks you if you want to continue to your final destination. I also like that you can set up your own custom one touch destinations.
- AAA points of interest are seemingly limitless.
- I found the distances and directions to be very accurate. This is a big step up from the Roadmate 1412, which often put destinations on the wrong side of the road, or would deliver weird ways to get there.
-The maps are very well laid out and easy to read. Very simple to zoom in and out on a map, and switch to 3D or 2D maps.
- Volume seemed about right to me, even with road noise at 65+ miles per hour
- The Bluetooth synced with my iPhone relatively easily. It didn't work the first time, but I rebooted the gps, and it worked right away. I was easily able to import my phone book from my iPhone, which is nice to be able to leave the phone in my pocket. If you have addresses in your phone book, you can also easily load them and map to them quickly. Volume on the phone function is ok. It could be a little louder in my opinion
- I also like that it would offer multiple detours through the Predictive Traffic function. I was able to use this on I-95 twice and it really helped to detour off a side road for a while.

Things that need Improvement:
- The Voice Command is spotty at best. I can get it to "go home", but pretty much any other command doesn't work, or the GPS gets confused on how to confirm the command. Not helpful.
- Some of the set up functions are hard to follow. For example, it's not intuitive how to navigate around in all the menus. I'm sure I'll get used to it over time, but I felt Magellan could have done a better job here.

Over all, very pleased as it's a nice upgrade over my last unit. For all the features, I feel it's very well priced.