Magellan introduced three new device yesterday dubbed the RoadMate family. All three devices feature huge seven inch screens designed for safer driving and navigation in larger vehicles. With screens this size, the days of squinting at the map while driving down the road are long past.
The three new devices introduced are the RoadMate 9400-LM, 9412T-LM and 9465T-LMB. All three have brightly colored touchscreen displays and spoken street names. Here are some of the other features the GPS family shares:
- Traffic Camera Alerts along the route
- Speed Limit Warnings
- Junction View and Highway Lane Assist for tricky freeway navigation
- Landmark Guidance for easier navigation
- Best Parking to help you find parking garage locations, hours of operation and directions to entrance
- OneTouch Favorites Menu to save your frequent locations
- QuckSpell to find destinations easier depending on where you are
- 7 Million POIs so you can always find what you’re looking for
- Highway Exit POIs to find gas stations, rest stops and more off of highways
- Multi-destination Routing
- Preloaded Maps of the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada
In addition to the features above, the RoadMate 9400-LM will retail for $180 and features lifetime map updates; the RoadMate 9412T-LM adds lifetime traffic alerts and retails for $200; while the RoadMate 9465T-LMB features all of the above and adds traffic alerts and Bluetooth connectivity to sync with your phone or other devices. It is expected to retail for $230. All three are available now on Magellan’s website or through Amazon.com.
Just got a couple of the 9412T-LM units. The larger screen (compared to my Maestro 4040 and 4250 units) is nice but takes up a lot more dash/windshield space. I miss the current speed display which was available on the earlier units when used in “normal” mode but the speed limit display (which appears to be available only on state roads and freeways) is handy, as is the red light camera warning feature. Particularly pleased with the “lifetime map update” feature, as map updates were few and far between and rather costly for the 4040.
The Content Manager PC interface software is a bit on the mysterious side – address edits can be tricky, as is attempting to manually transfer addresses from older units into the new PC “address book.” Conventions for older units don’t seem to be recognized in the new system – got a lot of conflicts when attempting to validate addresses which worked as-is on the older units, and there isn’t much info available for resolving conflicts. It seems to be one of those old “grind ’em till you find ’em” things. Also missing on the 9412 is the Bluetooth phone interface I used often with my 4040, particularly on long trips.
I may wind up wishing that I’d popped for a slightly higher priced model, but I’ll give these a few weeks and see how they do. Couldn’t beat the price though, and I still like the larger display/touch pad area.
My ten year old Garmin GPS finally died. Summer of 2015 I purchased the Megellan 9412 with the 7 inch screen for about $160. I would take my old Garmin back in a heartbeat. This Megellan takes forever to boot up. We have to enter everything 10 min before we leave on a trip. While it has some cool bells and whistles, it really doesn’t matter when the darn thing keeps turning off by itself about every 30 minutes and then reboots, which requires you to press buttons while your driving. This is really inconvenient when you are ready to exit from one interstate to another, and you miss your exit because it went off. We pretty much decided to put it back in the box and toss in the closet. Using Waze on our smart phone is so much more efficient. 1 star for Megellan.
how can you switch it to truck mode?
is it possible to change the Magellan RoadMate 9412T-LM 7″ from car mode to truck mode?
I know this post is a few years old, but I’ll tell you this was and is my favorite model of Magellan gps for vehicle use. The 7 inch screen was a game changer and really blew me away with its user-friendly features.