Magellan has made a big return to the GPS world with about 13 new models released in the passed two years. They have also recently announced their large line up of new GPS devices that will be adding to the Magellan Maestro line. It will offer something for everyone with 13 different models in four separate series either already released or coming out in the next month. There is the 31×0, 32×0, 40×0, and 42×0.

The Magellen Maestro 3210 falls in the 32×0 group. It is possibly the smallest GPS device on the market with a 3.5″ touchscreen and is reasonably priced. If you are looking for more features you might want to wait for the 3250 model to be released later this month but for under $300 the 3210 is a great buy. It comes with around 6 millions points of interest which is the highest in the industry right now and has an amazingly sleek design. At only 0.7 inches wide it is the slimmest in the industry as well. For the new Maestros Magellan has put together a new intuitive interface that is simple to use while driving. It has all of the features of the Maestro 3100 that was released not too long ago plus maps of Alaska and Canada, the smaller design, eight times the number of POI’s, and the AAA travel information for the same price. That’s right, if you waited out buying the first wave of Maestro’s this one adds on way more for the same cost the 3100 was when it came out. It even offers more features than the 3140 did and that one was more expensive.

Getting Started with the Maestro 3210

When you open up your Magellan Maestro box you will find:

• Magellan Maestro 3210 receiver
• Windshield mount
• Adhesive disc for dash mounting
• Basic cradle
• Cigarette lighter power adapter(12-24 watts)
• Quick reference guide, reference manual on CD
• USB cable

The adhesive disc kind of sucks for putting in your car I think, I just use the suction mount to stick it on the windshield. I find it’s easier to see up there and it isn’t permanently stuck but I guess they give you the option because some states like California and Minnesota don’t allow anything to be on your windshield. As long as you pick a spot on your windshield that won’t obstruct your view you should be safe. There is a level on the mount that will tighten the suction cup so you can get a solid grip on the glass and it won’t slip. The mount bends so it can be nice and long so it is nice and close to easily be seen by the driver. The USB cable can be used to add POI’s or update software.

The first time you turn on your Maestro 3210 you’ll need to set the language first. You have three language options, English, French, and Spanish. After selecting your language you’ll need to select your time zone (so it will help to know which time zone you are in) and then choose your units of measurement (miles or kilometers).

Design and Technical Specs of the Magellen Maestro 3210

The new intuitive interface on the Maestros is much easier to use than what the old RoadMates and CrossOverGPS’ used. They have unified the menu so it is much simpler. There isn’t a separate menu system for all the various applications. The Main menu has six options main options. Show map, enter address, points of interest, trip planner, exit POI’s, and user options. It also has a home icon and a tow truck icon at the bottom of the screen. The home icon will take you to your programmed home address from wherever you currently are. The tow truck icon brings up the AAA travel information. Show map does exactly that, it shows you the map and your current location. Enter address will let you either enter an address you want to go to or pick an intersection. The QuickSpell feature will give you options as you are typing so you don’t have to type out the entire address. You can stop once it has narrowed down the options enough. The points of interest lets you pick a point of interest like gas station, restaurant, or hotel. The trip planner lets you program in a trip with up to 20 stops. It can be used immediately or saved for later. Exit POI’s is a really neat function that only Magellan offers. If you are on a highway and press it, it will give you a list of all the POI’s off of any upcoming exits. The last choice off the menu was user options, which allows you to customize your settings.

As for the technical specifications of the Maestro 3210, it comes with a 3.5″ QVGA full-color, anti-glare, touch-screen display. It’s a beautiful easy to read screen that has become standard with GPS devices. It is very bright and has daytime and nighttime modes. The nighttime mode uses a different color scheme that is easier to see in the dark. Something special to the new Maestros is their size. At only 3.2 inches by 3.6 inches it is hardly bigger than the size of the screen. A depth of only 0.7 inches makes this the smallest device on the market. It weighs in at less than 5 ounces which means it easily fits in a pocket or purse and it won’t be weighing you down so there are no excuses for leaving it in your car to get stolen. It comes with a lithium ion battery that can last at least three hours before needing a recharge.

Navigation and Performance of 3210

The Magellan Maestro 3210 comes preloaded with Navteq maps of the USA, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Navteq maps are the undisputed best in the industry. They are much more up to date than their competitor TeleAtlas’ maps. This might just be the most important part of the Maestro because without accurate maps the device would be useless.

Another extremely important part of the device is its 20-channel SiRFstartIII WAAS enabled GPS receiver. It is an extremely sensitive chipset that can maintain a solid reception of the signal even if you’re driving through tall buildings or under a bridge. Before SiRF came out with these chipsets you needed a direct line-of-sight to the sky. Signals were hard to acquire and easily lost. You won’t have to worry about that though. The signal is always picked up quickly and is very hard to lose. You will never find a time where it will be more than 49 feet away from your actual position. Usually you will find it to be a lot more accurate than that.

When inputting a destination to create a route to you have four options on how you want your route to be. You can choose the fastest time which will calculate the route that it thinks will be fastest factoring in things like speed limits; you can choose the shortest distance which won’t factor in anything else besides the actual distance you will cover; and the last two options you can choose from are the most or least use of freeways which will either try to use freeways as much or the least amount possible. Once you have picked your destination and which route you want you will be taken to the map screen and your current position will be shown with your route highlighted. If you take a look at the picture of the map you’ll see how the name of the street you are going to turn on with the distance to it, direction of the turn, and distance to your destination are all along the bottom. When you get close to the turn you will get what is called the TrueView which is when the screen turns into a split screen with the type and direction of the turn on the left and the map on the right.

While following your route there are a few ways you can make adjustments to it. You can use the SmartDetour function which will bring up a screen that will ask you how many miles of the current road you are on you would like to avoid. This is helpful if say there is a traffic jam caused by an accident 3 miles up the road. You just hit the button, ask to avoid the next 3 miles, and it will find a way around. There is the route exclusion feature, this will let you exclude an entire segment of the route it chose for you. You can pick a segment of the maneuver list which lists all the turns you will need to make and press exclude. It will make a new route that doesn’t include this. Finally there is the route recalculation. All you have to do to activate this feature is stray from the path it gave you. As soon as you leave you route it will recalculate a new route from your current position in a few seconds. If you aren’t paying close attention (which you would probably have to be doing to miss a turn) you might not even notice it happened.

Extra Features

The Maestro 3210 is more of a high end no extras model. It doesn’t have much in the line of extra features, it just has the best maps and GPS chipset on the market which if you are just looking for something to get you from point a to point b makes it the best choice for you. If you upgrade to the 3250 you’ll get extras such as Bluetooth, text-to-speech, traffic services, and voice recognition, but nothing that really makes it operate better as a GPS device.

You will get the most POI’s available from any device on the market. There are about 6 million of them with addresses and phone numbers they can be reached at. The POI database can be searched by category, by name, or you can configure your map to show either certain categories or all of them with little symbols for each category. It’s really helpful to put the gas stations on there I find. When searching by category some of them even break it down to subcategories so say if you feel like Chinese food you can choose restaurants and then narrow it down to just the Chinese ones. Once your category and possibly subcategory are picked you can sort them by closest to your current position, in a certain city, or closest to a certain address.

A really cool feature Magellan has is the AAA tourbook. It comes with AAA tour book information, AAA member roadside assistance details, and AAA Show Your Card and Save discount locations. The AAA tour book information gives you reviews to a huge list of places very similar to the points of interest list along with information like parking and which credit cards are accepted by them. You need a AAA Membership to access the AAA member roadside assistance and the Show Your Card and Save discounts. These discounts are available to AAA members and are all listed on the device.

Concluding thoughts on Magellan’s Maestro 3210

I found the Magellan Maestro 3210 to be the top of the line in GPS navigation. There really isn’t anything bad to say about it. The best chipset on the market plus the best maps on the market with a redesigned much improved interface can only make for one great device. One thing I really like but isn’t available on this specific model is text-to-speech which reads you the name of the street you need to be turning on so you don’t have to look on the screen for it but it isn’t a huge deal. If it was I’d upgrade to the 3250 model and enjoy the Bluetooth and traffic services as well.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Review from: Chrisopther

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Review from: Peter

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Review from: Dwayne

If you look on both these Google websites the Navteq maps are much more complete and up-to-date, see for yourself! It also uses the SiRF star III chipset which is the best available, most high end devices I found also used this but they were more expensive.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Review from: Jonathon

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Review from: David