Design

The Magellan Maestro 4050 is probably the best-looking portable navigation system we've seen from the company to date. Unlike the somewhat bulky and uninspiring Magellan RoadMate 2200T, the Maestro 4050 sports a classic black-and-silver color scheme and a more refined and streamlined design. It's got a sleek profile and compact dimensions--at at 3.7 inches high by 5 inches wide by 0.8 inch deep, and weighing 8.5 ounces--for easy portability between vehicles.

Another attractive aspect of the Magellan Maestro 4050's is its minimalist design. The device isn't bombarded by external controls. There's just an SD/MMC expansion slot, a power button, a mini USB port, and a Reset button on the left spine, and a 3.5mm headphone jack and power connector on the right side. That said, we're fans of having volume controls on the exterior of the device for easy audio adjustment, so if we could add anything to the Maestro 4050, it would be dedicated volume up/down buttons.

Fortunately, the Maestro 4050 boasts a spacious and responsive 4.3-inch diagonal touch screen with a friendly user interface that makes adjusting the volume and general operation an easy affair. Magellan, thankfully, has updated the interface since the archaic-looking menus of the RoadMate 2200T. The Maestro 4050 now features attractive icons, and the menus are really simple to understand. We were able to use the device right out of the box without even having to read the user's guide.

The display itself is satisfactory. The resolution wasn't the sharpest we've seen, but it's nothing that prevented us from using the device. Maps were bright and colorful, and there's a night mode and backlight adjuster. In addition, the screen has an antiglare coating that did a pretty good job of keeping the display readable in various lighting conditions.

Magellan packages the Maestro 4050 with a vehicle mount (windshield and dash), a car charger, an AC adapter, a USB cable, and a protective pouch.

Features

The Magellan Maestro 4050 is equipped with a SiRF Star III GPS chip and comes preloaded with Navteq maps of the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. If you don't need help getting to a specific destination, you can just tap the Show Map icon to get an overview map of your location, otherwise you can select Enter Address to input a specific address or intersection to get directions. If you're planning a trip with multiple stops, use the Trip Planner option, which can handle up to 20 destinations. Like many of Magellan's other GPS devices, the Maestro 4050 has the QuickSpell feature, which helps speed up the process of text entry. As you start to punch the numbers and letters of an address on the virtual keyboard, QuickSpell dims out any characters that don't match the city or streets located in the system's database. It's quite handy and worked well during our test period.

Like many of today's portable navigation systems, the Maestro 4050 can calculate routes based on fastest time, shortest distance, least or most use of freeways, and toll-free roads. There's also a Detour option if you want to avoid a certain part of the prescribed route. The Maestro 4050 doesn't give real-time traffic updates, but there is an upgrade option if you want to add this capability. (At the time of this writing, Magellan had not finalized the pricing of the TravelKit for the Maestro 4050.) Alternatively, the Magellan Maestro 4050 offers this functionality out of the box. The system provides text- and voice-guided turn-by-turn directions, plus text-to-speech functionality, which Magellan calls SayWhere, so the system will speak actual street names. Other features include 2D (north up or tracking up) or 3D map modes with night or day colors, automatic route recalculation, and a trip computer that shows your average speed, trip time, drive time, and trip distance.

The Magellan Maestro 4050's points of interest (POI) database contains a healthy 4.5 million entries, and includes everything from gas stations to casinos. You're probably thinking, "Yeah, so? A lot of other GPS devices offer the same POI features." Sure, but the differentiating factor is Magellan's partnership with AAA. This gives you access to AAA TourBook listings for AAA Diamond-rated lodging and restaurants, complete with information such as hotel amenities, restaurant description and hours of operation, admission prices for certain attractions, and so forth. Of course, you can instruct the system to route to that POI from your current location. AAA members will get even more out of the Maestro, as it provides listings for establishments that offer discounts to AAA members, AAA-approved auto repair facilities, and details for roadside assistance. More specifically, the unit will display the AAA member toll-free help number and your exact location, so you can give the operator all your information--a really nice safety feature.

Even better, the system has integrated Bluetooth, so you can pair your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone and use the Maestro 4050 as a hands-free speaker system. With it, you can place and accept calls, view your call history, search the device's address book, and redial. We ran into some problems trying to pair the Maestro 4050 with the Samsung Upstage. Though the two appeared to be connected, the Upstage wasn't showing up as paired on the Maestro. We had to repeat the process several times before the nav system finally recognized the cell phone. Once they were paired, though, we had no problems making or taking calls. Unfortunately, you can't wirelessly transfer contacts from the phone to the Maestro 4050 at this time.

Finally, we want to comment on the Maestro's lack of multimedia capabilities. While some might criticize Magellan for not including a media player or image viewer, we actually applaud this move. We've always been a bit critical of the inclusion of such features on a car GPS system, because we don't think it's all that useful or relevant--not yet anyway. As such, we're glad that Magellan chose to concentrate on the essential and most helpful features to the driver.

GPS Signal Strength: The Mighty SiRF

All three Magellan Maestro models use SiRF's high performance SiRF Star III 20-channel GPS receiver. This chipset is extremely sensitive and able to maintain solid signal reception even when driving in challenging situations, such as dense urban environments (behind tall buildings), bridges, and canyons. In fact, in my testing I was able to get a strong signal even indoors. The integration of SiRF's chipsets into the latest generation of in-car navigation systems has been a watershed event for GPS manufacturers and made GPS navigation significantly more reliable.

Prior to SiRF, line-of-sight to the sky was required to receive GPS signals, resulting in less than optimal GPS performance in many situations. SiRF's chipset has ushered in a new era of GPS performance, allowing signals to be acquired quickly and maintained while driving. Make sure to check that any new GPS you buy uses SiRF's chipset. I'm always amazed that people continue to buy GPS devices that are old and outdated and sometimes even cost more than the newer devices with SiRF chipsets -- even from the same manufacturer.

Despite the enormous success of SiRF's chips, there has been a recent shift away from SiRF, as manufacturers continue to search for ways to cut costs. I'm pleased to see Magellan has used the more expensive (and highly effective) SiRF StarIII GPS receiver on the Maestro.

Conclusion
  
Magellan's new Maestro 4050 is a full-featured GPS that offers turn-by-turn navigation with voice prompts that announce the actual street names, new 2007 maps, SiRF's high performance GPS receiver, real-time traffic, Bluetooth for hands-free speakerphone, and voice recognition for operating the GPS via voice commands. Magellan also throws in some unique features not found on other GPS devices, such as Magellan's excellent text-entry system (QuickSpell), Exit POIs, multiple routing options, and the inclusion of AAA's TourGuide data.

There's a lot to like about the Maestro 4050. The screen is bright and can be seen even in direct sunlight. The interface has been refreshed and sports a more modern look and feel over previous Magellans. The 4050 is fast and responsive - you can literally input text as fast as you can type. Routing is speedy, and the built-in speaker is extremely loud (you can easily hear the instructions even when traveling at highway speeds. 

Magellan's Maestro series are the only GPS units currently on the market that include AAA's TourBook information - a feature I found extremely useful. I also appreciated Magellan's well thought-out system of notifying the driver of upcoming turns, visually and audibly warning you at several intervals before the turn with enough notice that you're not making sudden maneuvers.

However, it's not all good news with the Maestro 4050. The windshield mount and TrafficKit cradle are too large, creating a bulky, heavy GPS that vibrated around slightly when driving. Worse, the release button is awkwardly located behind the GPS and isn't visible from the driver's seat, so you have to fumble around each time you want to remove the 4050 from the docking cradle.

Magellan spent a lot of money overhauling Maestro's new interface and the results are less than perfect: the map's muted, pastel color scheme and smallish text can be hard to see, as are the transparent icons superimposed on the map. Longer street names sometimes get line-wrapped in a bizarre way, making the names confusing to read. "Night Mode", which uses darker colors on the map for night driving, only changes the map screen -- all other menus still use the bright daytime blue background, which is blinding at night in a dark car.