Magellan Maestro 4040 In-Depth Review

The Magellan series is the latest in the Magellan product line. I took a look at the 4040. Lets see how well it worked but first I will give you the “gist” of it.

Positive: Partnership with AAA was great, beautiful screen, “Exit Authority” feature is great for long trips / highway travel, loud speaker, sleek design, easy to use. 4.5 million POI
Negative: No external volume controls, just average battery life, hard to get GPS off windshield mount, a little slow when calculating routes
Bottom Line: With a large POI database that has AAA information, a great price, great design and real fast text input-the Magellan Maestro 4040 is the best in its class. This model is great for someone that also doesn’t like to read manuals because setting up and getting going with the Maestro…was a cinch.

After buying this GPS, I couldn’t wait to get it out of the box and try it out. The 4040 came with a quick setup guide incase you would need it…but really, I never did. The Maestro was so easy to set up and get it going that I never cracked open the manual once. Everything on the screen was neatly laid out, easy to read, and easy to use. This model retail’s for around $499.99 but on the internet you should be able to find it cheaper. (Amazon.com) This model includes the Text to Speech functionality which is pretty important. Text to speech allows the GPS to actually speak street names. For example it will say “Turn right on Bright Road” instead of “Turn right.” But what really makes this GPS stand apart is that it has partnered up with AAA. This means that the 4040 will have all the listings from the AAA tour books inside including-hotel amenities, food, prices, events, phone numbers and a whole lot more! Another thing that I really do like about the Maestro is that Magellan has concentrated on the main features of any GPS. This means that it isn’t including a picture viewer, and a media player, etc. Magellan just has a GPS inside and Bluetooth. I personally don’t even thing a music player is that useful on a GPS anyway.

Screen size	4.3 inches
Unit size	3.7 inches high, 5 inches wide, 0.8 inch deep
Weight	8.5 oz
Exterior	3.5mm head phone jack, reset button, USB

This GPS comes with preloaded maps of the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. This unit also has the SiRF Star III GPS chip which is almost standard in today’s GPS.

Misc. Notes

· Once in a route we missed a turn and the new route said to turn NOW when I was just one foot from the turn and couldn’t stop that fast. Eventually it gave us good directions but that only happened once.

· This model has QuickSpell which makes letters dim out when there is not a city that could be used with the certain letter. For example…F…X…in that case X would be dimmed out.

· This model also has “True View 3-D” this means that .5 miles away from your next turn the GPS will make a split screen with half being the map and the other half showing you what type of maneuver you will be making. This is really helpful when trying to make a hard maneuver.