By Bob Gatton
If you find yourself hauling out a map to find a prospective customer's house or printing out directions from the Internet, here's a product that you should seriously consider. It can save you a lot of time, especially if your market area is large.
I have had a GPS receiver for about three years. It works fine and I am quite pleased with it, but three years is a long time in consumer electronics. The Magellan Maestro 4040 is a huge leap in ease of use and features compared with my receiver.
The Magellan Maestro 4040 system includes:
- The GPS receiver with a 4.3 inch widescreen color LCD display touchscreen
- AC adaptor
- Car cord
- Windshield mounting bracket. You can either use its suction cup or its adhesive disk if you want a more permanent installation.
- A quick-start guide and a CD with the owner's manual.
After charging the 4040 for the recommended three hours, I pressed the power button, which is the only button on the case; all other commands are entered on the touchscreen. A page warning you not to program this GPS receiver while driving is the first thing displayed on the screen. Press the "OK" icon on the screen, and you go to the main menu. On this screen there are three large and three small icons. The large icons are:
- Show Map displays a map of your current position.
- Enter Address lets you enter an address or access addresses that you have stored in the 4040's address book.
- Points of Interest (POIs) is a database of thousands of restaurants, stores, airports, gas stations, even wineries — just about anything that might be of interest. In most of these categories, there are sub-categories; for instance in 'home improvement', you can choose from Garden Center, Floor and Carpet, Hardware Store, Home Center, Home Specialty, Glass and Window, Lumber, Major Appliance and Paint to find the closest ones to your current position.
The smaller icons are:
- Home, if you have stored your home address, will calculate the route to your house.
- AAA Roadside Assistance for AAA members. If you have a breakdown, this icon will display your current location, previous and next exit or intersection, AAA telephone number and (if you have previously entered it) your AAA membership number. You have all the information needed when you call AAA for help.
- Bluetooth takes you to the Bluetooth menu, where you can link your Bluetooth cell phone to the 4040. You can use the 4040 as a speaker phone, originate and receive calls, and store phone numbers in the GPS receiver.
There are more pages, but most of the time these six icons were all that I needed.
How well does it work?
- The majority of time, the receiver locked onto the satellites almost instantly. And, during my use, it never lost its signal, as my old receiver sometimes did. The 4040 uses SiRF Star III chips, the current state of the art in navigation receivers.
- The menu system is very intuitive. The learning curve for most functions is close to zero.
- The system not only tells you the direction of your next turn, it tells you the name of the road or highway. If there are two or more turns to navigate in quick succession, it will forewarn you.
- If you miss a turn or want to take an alternative due to traffic congestion, it quickly and accurately recalculated the route.
- Linking my cell phone to the 4040 was easy, and the speaker phone quality was very good. (I cannot guarantee that it will work as well with other models of cell phones.)
- There is an internal battery if you want to use it away from your vehicle.
- It does not tell you the estimated time of arrival to your destination. My old receiver has this feature, and I have found it very handy for getting to appointments on time. According to a Magellan representative, a free download that will add this functionality will be available this summer.
- The text on the screen is small but very legible to me. I loaned the 4040 to a few people during the evaluation, and a couple commented that it was too small. A download for larger text will also be available this summer.
I am not going to go through all of the many features, but a couple more in particular caught my eye:
- Exit POIs. While on a highway, use this feature to find restaurants, hotels, gas stations and auto repair shops that are close to approaching exits. Make your selection and the 4040 will guide you to it.
- AAA TourBook. If you are a AAA member and register your Maestro 4040 with AAA, you'll have access to a database of AAA-approved repair shops, businesses that offer discounts for members, and ratings for many hotels and restaurants. I tested this on a recent road trip; it's a great feature to have.
Want more? You can upgrade the 4040 with Magellan's TrafficKit, a radio receiver that alerts you to road construction, closures and congestion before you reach them and calculates a different route. There is a subscription fee for this service. You can also add Voice Command, which lets you use the 4040 hands free. Each of these upgrades is about $100. Or you can buy the Maestro 4050 for $200 more than the 4040; it has both of these features.
The Magellan Maestro 4040 retails for $499, about the same as I paid for my first GPS receiver three years ago. The price is the same, but the performance and features are far superior. This is a full-featured, easy-to-use product. Highly recommended.
Magellan Maestro 4040
Bob Gatton is a consultant and freelance writer who covers home technology and home theaters.
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