I've been thinking about getting a GPS for awhile now but kept putting it off until prices dropped. Most of the GPS units with the features I wanted were around $500. I didn't want to spend that much on a GPS. Then I noticed that Buy.com was selling a refurbished Magellan RoadMate 2200T for only $167.99 (The price is currently $189 at Buy.com but I noticed that NewEgg is now selling the same refurbished unit for $169) along with a rebate of $20. $150 for a GPS with text to speech was mighty tempting.

The thing that made me a little wary about the Magellan RoadMate were some comments from a few people about the routing performance. Stories about GPS units giving bad directions make me hesitant. But then again no GPS is perfect and Garmin, Mio, Navigon, and TomTom units have also gotten similar comments in user reviews. Every GPS unit has their fans and their detractors.

For only $150, I decided to give the Magellan RoadMate 2200T a try.

After a few days, my order arrived. It came in a white box with a sticker stating it was “factory refurbished” and came with a 90 day warranty. Inside the box were the following items:

1. Magellan RoadMate 2200T
2. Suction Windshield Mount
3. AC Power Adapter
4. Car Power Adapter
5. USB Cable
6. Quick Start Manual
7. CD containing the Magellan PC Tools

The package and unit itself looked new except for a tiny “R” branded on the back of the unit. All the accessories looked new. On the back of the unit was a sticker indicating it uses Windows CE 5.0 as the operating system. I didn't have much experience with refurbished products but based on this experience I would have no problems buying another refurbished product. Overall I was very pleased with the condition of the product.

The following are the features of the Magellan RoadMate 2200T (copied from Magellan's website):

• Pocket-sized & Lightweight - Easily transfer between vehicles, pack it for a flight or carry it in your pocket (4.3" x 3.4" x 1.1") and 7.8 oz.
• CrossoverGPS Expandable - Easily upgrade to accept topographic maps for outdoor navigation
• Traffic upgradeable - Get LIVE traffic incident reports when you add the Magellan Traffic Kit. (Requires service subscription after introductory period)
• Turn-by-turn voice and visual guidance - BE THERE™ quickly and safely
• Waterproof to IPX-4 - Don't worry if you get caught in the rain, it's sealed to IPX-4 standards.
• Rechargeable battery - Best in class battery for use up to 8 hours without access to power
• SirfstarIII chip set for quick access to a satellite signal
• SayWhere™ text-to-speech - Hear the street name of your next turn
• Multi-destination Routing - Select up to 20 destinations
• SmartDetour - Automatically routes you around sudden slow freeway traffic using your own custom settings
• Built-in maps - United States, Canada and Puerto Rico
• Bird's-eye 3D view - Clearly see your surroundings
• SD card compatible - Insert outdoor maps, music and pictures
• Digital Music Player - Play your favorite music through the integrated speaker or your own headphones
• Photo Viewer - View your vacation pictures while you're still on vacation
• Auto re-route - Never miss a turn and quickly get back on track whenever you take a detour
• Auto night view - Adjusts color and contrast for easy night viewing
• QuickSpell™ - Easily enter addresses with efficient auto-complete feature
• 1.5 million points of interest (POI) - Easily find gas stations, restaurants, ATMs, airports, parks and more
• Interactive POI icons - Touch an onscreen icon for a nearby destination; see phone number and get an instant route
• 4 routing methods available - Shortest time, shortest distance, least use or most use of freeways, avoid toll roads
• Address Book and Favorites List - Create and store personal points of interest to easily route to places you go to often
• Instant locate - One touch shows your location; quickly advise roadside assistance or emergency services

As you can see, the Magellan RoadMate 2200T is very feature rich – offering features not found on many more expensive units. Most affordable GPS units at this price do not offer text to speech. The Magellan does. Most current Garmins do not offer multi-destination routing. The Magellan does. Most GPS units don't offer rechargeable batteries that last up to 8 hours The Magellan does.

The Magellan also is Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) enabled. This allows position accuracy of under 3 meters compared to 3 to 5 meters for GPSs using Typical differential GPS (DGPS) position.

I purchased this unit before Black Friday and I was worried that I would regret buying it after seeing some of other newer GPS units on sale. But I have no regrets. After using it for a few weeks, I would still buy the same GPS today.

So, how well does it work? Since this is my first GPS unit, I have nothing to compare it to but in the few weeks that I've been using it, it has worked very well and has exceeded my expectations.

The first thing I did was to charge the unit up and flash the firmware to the latest version (v1.72). The unit I received came with firmware v1.56. After flashing to v1.72, the Magellan RoadMate now reports the following:

Model Name = RoadMate

Model number = 2200NA

Firmware version = 1.72.18.01

Hardware version = 65535

Product ID = 125

OS version = 1.22

SH version = 1.37

Navigator version = 1.72

Music version = 1.17

Photo version = 1.10

Geographic Area: USA/Canada

Basemap NavStreets version: 21

Base map Date: 08/30/2006

Detailed map NavStreets version: 21

Detailed map Date: 08/08/2006

Map Library Version: v.0.20

Navigator Build Date: Mar 14 2007

It took a couple of minutes to get a satellite lock the very first time I turned the unit on inside my house but afterwards locking onto a signal was very quick (maybe 15 to 30 seconds). Once it locks onto a signal, I have never had it lose the signal. Even inside my house, I typically see full signal strength of 3 or 4 bars on the display all the time.

I didn't want to mount the GPS on my car's windshield so I purchased the Bracketron Nav-Mat Dash Pad. This is a weighted pad made with non-skid material that you can attach a suction windshield mount to. Then you place the pad on top of your car's dash. It is heavy enough so that it does not slide on the dash and works extremely well with the Megallen RoadMate's windshield mount. After attaching the windshield mount to the pad, you just clip on the Megallen RoadMate to the mount when you're traveling.

Speaking of the windshield mount, I thought it was well designed and sturdy. You can easily adjust the angle and position of the GPS and I found it easy to attach and remove the GPS from the mount by simply depressing a little tab.

I set up the unit by entering my home address and was pleased to discover that my address was in the maps. I was a little worried about out-dated maps since it is an older GPS model. I then entered my parent's and brother's home address. Both addresses were in the map. Then I tried entering my aunt's address. I was surprised that her address wasn't in the map. She has lived in that house for quite some time. It wasn't a new road or anything.

One thing I liked was the RoadMate's ability to make typing of addresses quicker and easier by enabling only those keys that spell an item in the database and once it has figured out what you wanted to type it will display a list of the best matches. I found that it worked really well.

I tried searching through the Points of Interests (POIs) and noticed that the keyboard help did not work in this mode. I guess it only works on entering addresses. You search through POIs by first selecting a category (Gas Stations, Banks, Restaurants, Shopping etc) and then entering a specific name to search for or instead you could just get a list of all points near your current location, a specific street address, or the City Center.

I tried searching for Chinese Restaurants near my home and noticed that my parent's restaurant was not among the list. I later discovered it was listed under American Restaurants. Weird.

I tried searching for Best Buy but it was not in the database. In fact, it seems to only list shopping centers and not specific stores. So overall, I found the built-in database of POIs to be a little lacking.

Luckily this is offset by the ability to add custom POIs using the Magellan RoadMate Tools and Magellan POI File Editor. What I do is use Google Maps to enter the address of my custom POI and get the longitude and latitude of the address. I then enter this information into the Magellan POI File Editor to create a new POI. After entering my POIs, I save this information into a POI file. Then I connect my Magellan RoadMate to my PC, start up the Magellan RoadMate Tools and transfer my POI file to my RoadMate and the new customized POIs are now available. Neat! I tried searching the web for free custom POIs that others have created but didn't find any. As GPS's become more popular, I wouldn't be surprised to find these appear on the web for others to use.

After familiarizing myself with the RoadMate, I decided to test it out by driving to several known locations. I didn't think it was safe to go to unknown locations until I got familiar with how it gave directions (This was my first GPS and I wouldn't want to drive myself into a lake by mistake).

I first tried going to my parent's home. The directions and routing were excellent! It picked the exact route I normally take and I liked how it chimed before every turn. I was really impressed with how well it worked. It was like having a knowledgeable friend beside you giving directions. The screen was very nice and readable and adjusted itself depending on the amount of daylight. Very impressive.

On the top of the display it showed the current street you are on and on the bottom of the screen it showed the next street along your route. Also on the bottom was an indication of your next move (right turn, left turn etc.) and the time and distance remaining on your trip and to the next move. The layout was very intuitive. The graphics looked a little dated compared to some of the newer GPS's but it was still very functional.

Then I drove to Best Buy. Since it wasn't in the POI database, I decided to enter it manually into my address book. All I had to do is tap on the “current location bar” at the top of the map screen. This brought me to a new screen showing the latitude and longitude of my current location. There is also a “save” button that will store this location to my address book. Once it is entered into my address book, all I needed to do was to edit the name to “Best Buy” and now it is in my address book. I wonder if the ability to know your current longitude and latitude would make this GPS suitable for the “geocaching” sport.

Then I used this GPS on my drive to work. It suggested a different route than the one I normally take. I didn't want to try out the new route so I drove my normal route to see how well it handles re-routing. As soon as I took the “wrong” turn, the RoadMate started re-routing. It was very quick and soon established the route I normally take to work.

During the drive to work, I noticed that the RoadMate will chimed and say “continue on the current road” whenever there is an exit to a main road. I haven't quite figured out the pattern – it doesn't do this for every exit encountered. Some might consider this too chatty and on a familiar route I would agree. But if going to someplace I have never gone to or traveling through unfamiliar roads, I would find this chattiness to be reassuring.

For the last test to a familiar location, I decided to try it out for a trip to Charles Town Racing and Slots. I had trouble entering the address into the RoadMate. It didn't like U.S Route 340. I had to enter it as US-340. But I realized this address was too vague and so I decided to look at Charles Town Racing and Slots website which conveniently gave the longitude and latitude of its location. I entered this into the Magellan's POI File Editor and imported it into my unit. I then told it to route to this location. The route it gave turned out to be better than the route I normally take (maybe about 5 or 10 minutes faster) and I found the directions it gave was excellent. I did encountered one glitch during the trip however. The text to speech engine seemed to get stuck saying the same road over and over again. So every time I took an exit to a new road, it would say something like, “right turn on route 29 north” no matter which road it actually was. Luckily, the screen always displayed the correct road. On the trip home I did not encountered this problem again. Maybe rerouting to my home cleared out the problem.

Finally, I needed to find a part to fix a leaky bathtub faucet. According to Lowe's website this part was available at a new Lowe's in Severn, MD. I have never been there before. What a perfect test to see how well my Magellan RoadMate performs on an unknown location! I tried entering this location into the unit but was disappointed that the street wasn't in the maps. I later discovered that this was a brand new shopping center located on a brand new street. So, I used GoogleMaps to get driving directions to this Lowe's and I entered the nearest known street to the store (which was supposed to be only 0.1 miles away from the store according to Google) into my Magellan RoadMate.

I then hit the road. Again, the Magellan RoadMate exceeded my expectations and gave me excellent directions. I was able to arrive at my destination without any problems.

Overall, I am extremely happy with the Magellan RoadMate 2200T. It has exceeded all my expectations.

Pros:

1. Performed well in terms of position accuracy, routing and directions.
2. Very quick rerouting.
3. Bright and clear display. Easily seen during the day and night.
4. Speaker volume was loud enough to be heard in my car.
5. Long 8 hour battery life – did not need to be connected to my cigarette lighter on long trips.
6. Accepts SD card for custom POIs, Music and Photos.
7. Provides a quick and easy way to get your current longitude and latitude.
8. Multi-destination routing
9. Upgradable (Traffic and Crossover GPS)
10. Waterproof to IPX-4 standards – a little rain won't hurt it.

Cons:

1. Graphics are a little outdated
2. Built-in POIs are a little lacking
3. Slightly sluggish when switching modes (Navigation, Photos, Music)
   
4. Encountered glitch with the text to speech engine during one trip.

Wishes:

1. I wish that Magellan would continue to support this model by providing updated maps.