Magellan RoadMate 760 Automotive GPS Receiver

User friendly menus and software - reasonable find for new locations, but does not have SEARCH BY ZIP option - if you don't know the correct city name, you may have multiple choice locations... But easy to find NOW location, and to save that for future trips... Easy to NAME your address locations, with alphabetical list when searching, but you cannot fix an incorrect address... Fast routing and rerouting as needed... Overall - GOOD UNIT !

MAGELLAN RoadMate 760 GPS continues to help you find your way where ever you are. Imagine having a personal assistant in your car, guiding you turn by turn, with a friendly voice and visual signals, even when you don't know the address. Magellan RoadMate 760 is another step towards refining GPS vehicle guidance to help optimize your driving experiences. With advanced software and a larger memory to support it, travelling new byways and highways and getting where you want to go has just reached a friendlier, easier level. Whether you're going across the country on vacation or across town for dinner, you'll get there with a new level of assurance using this advanced auto navigation system. It's the only system built on technologies road-tested and proven by over 4 million drivers in rental cars with Hertz NeverLost navigation systems. And it's truly easy to set up and use. When compared to the RoadMate 700, the 760 has a built-in hard drive that has a 20GB capacity instead of 10. That allows space for more mapping software. Advanced software is also included and adds the convenience of synthesized 'Street name' anounce as part of the voice guidance system. This helps make following the directions from RoadMate 760 easier and more intuitive. Trust Magellan to continue making GPS a greater wonder and more powerful tool. Turn-by-turn navigation Route recalculation calculates new route when car deviates from route Dynamically tracks progress on the onscreen map QuickSpell technology pre-determines letters when spelling street and city names Enhanced Voice Guidance adds street names to directions as a friendlier reference to help you reach your destination Includes universal mount & cigarette lighter adapter

Pro
Just turn it on and go. All the maps and points of interest are preloaded

Con
No integration with a PC address book

For more information on this product go to www.kdsgrp.com/shop.php?c=Elec​tronics&n=172282&i=B00​09MFQ12&x=Magellan_RoadMat​e_760_Portable_GPS_Vehicle_Nav​igation_System

The RoadMate 760 is no longer a current product. Used ones are selling for extremely reasonable prices (just slightly over $100, 1Q08 prices), making them a very good buy. It does exactly what it is supposed to do, letting you know exactly where you are, and exactly how to get to where you want to be. I've grown to depend upon it in my limousine business. I won't go through all of its specifications and options because you can find that elsewhere.

I rate it good. I would have rated it excellent, only because of these few problem areas. None of these are show-stoppers, but just minor inconveniences:

1) Once in a great while, it will freeze up and none of the controls will work. It took me a long time to realize that this is a heat build-up problem, and it happens only in the winter and only when the GPS is close to the hot air vent (for side window defroster) on my cashboard. Moving it to a cooler spot eliminates this problem.

2) There are a number of minor S/W bugs, such as: a) scrolling down a menu with the menu bar doesn't work properly, and getting to the very last item on a menu is sometimes very difficult. b) sometimes when you cancel a route, it pops back up again and you have to cancel it a second time. c) when icons are close together on the map, its very difficult to touch the icon you really want and instead you accidentally get an adjacent one. d) when expanding the map with + keys, it will often forget its center point, and its orientation, and will rotate the map to some other nearby location and completely different compass orientation and you become temporarily disoriented. I consider these all minor problems, and 99% of the S/W was done right!

3) It only works on car 12V DC or house 120V AC. It can't be used when walking or biking or on a tour bus.

4) It's heavier than the current (but more expensive) models.

5) I've noticed a few of the brand new roads are missing from this unit, and some intersections have been redone. Magellan wants $100 to update the database. This is unreasonable. I've already licensed the database. $25 would be more reasonable. So I continue to use the original database and override its directions in these new areas, or look up those new addresses online before setting off.

We went to Sononma and Napa for wine tasting recently and there is no way you can find these wineries easily. I bought the Magellan 760GPS before we left. It gave us the directions and with pin point accuracy.I felt like one of the locals. We went to Muir woods national park and asked to give us the shortest direction to the main road. It did, the road was a little bit scary but it is the shortest. We went to Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf, all were a breeze. I would not have traveled far from were we stayed, if this device were not as dependable. If you were starving, finding restaurants by scrolling through lists is easy. It categorized them by cuisine and gave us the time of arrival from where we were in real time. How can you beat that.
The problems I had with the Magellan was when we were in California, drivng through the bridges,I lost thes ignal quite a few times but it automatically switched to text instructions giving the directions without the voice promp.Heavy foilage is also a problem with the signal. But time and again, it switched me to text format. You get spoiled hearing the voice telling you the next road ahead.
Overall, I am happy with the Magellan 760. In fact, I have recommended it to my friends.It is user friendly and without complicated instructions. The text are big enough to read. The night mode is also excellent. It is not glaring. Please, make some improvement on the support bracket. It tend to shake at times so I have to mount it touching the dashborad to avoid the vibration.Thank you for making this trip a less stressful one.
Cua Family

I had been toying with the idea of buying a GPS unit for some time, but the prices were too high to justify the purchase. Finding a reasonably priced one on ebay changed all that.

The Magellan 760 is a well-regarded unit -- something I hadn't realized until after I purchased it. I had originally been looking for the Lowrance 500C, but subsequently learned that a major consumer magazine prefers the Magellan product.

My personal experience has been excellent, but there have been drawbacks. Although I have the latest version of the software (maps), I still have found that they are about two years behind in mapping my particular part of the country (a mid-sized city in Canada). There are many times when the addresses I search for are not in the database, so I'm left looking for the nearest major intersection. I would also agree with previous reviews that state that directions are not always the most efficient, specially when you know the best routes yourself.

There seems to be a preference built-in to this unit to stick with any road until it reaches a major intersection. For example, my home is located on a local road about equidistant from two freeway exits. Because of the disparity in speed limits on the freeway vs. local roads, the Magellan unit always advises me to drive to the further freeway exit and backtrack to my home, rather than exiting at the prior interchange. By exiting at the prior interchange, it shaves nearly 2 miles off the total trip, and I would argue that the total travel time is comparable. Other times, the shortest time route may take me on streets with a higher posted speed limit, but with traffic lights at nearly every corner, vs. a more direct route down a road with a lower posted speed limit, but no traffic signals.

Except for these small annoyances, the unit performs beautifully, and I don't regret my purchase at all.

If I had a wish-list, it would be that mapping was kept more current -- perhaps through the use of a user-contributed *mapping mode* that could record the presence of new streets and allow a file to be uploaded from the unit into a computer file for transmission to Magellan.