Magellan Roadmate 2200T

Along with my new HTC S620 the last of the big purchases I've made recently (see: Goodbye, hard-earned cash) was a portable navigation system, the Magellan Roadmate 2200T.

In deciding on which GPS navi to buy, I wanted something that was easily portable, reliable, with maps of Canada and the United States, with text-to-voice, and at a reasonable price. In addition to Magellan, I also looked at similarly priced models from TomTom and Garmin. I chose the 2200T because of various reviews I'd read, and it met all of my criteria. It doesn't have the most POIs out there (1.5 million), and I find it a little laborious searching for some specific POIs, but overall I'm satisfied.

The 2200T has several additional features I'm not interested in, like playing music, displaying pictures, upgradeable traffic updates and more, but I couldn't find any GPS navi that was just a navi and still met all my criteria (what's up with that?!). The worst thing about the 2200T is that it didn't come with an AC charger. There was a dash mount, windshield mount, and car charger, but no AC charger. Ugh. I had to fork over extra cash to get the AC charger. Unforgivable.

Some good points: it's small, light-weight and fits easily in my pocket (I might not want it in there all the time, but as a temporary thing it's fine), the rechargeable battery is rated for 8 hours, has an auto-detour feature to get around traffic jams, auto re-routing and multi-destination routing, the option to avoid toll roads when routing, and has an address book to store destinations for future use.

Anywhoo, previously I hadn't been impressed with GPS navis I'd seen at work, but I think that was do to my unfamiliarity with the system and how it works. The more I use the 2200T the more familiar I become with the voice, how it relates directions and how much time I have before having to perform the latest instruction. The more familiar I get with the 2200T, the more I realize just how useful this little device can be.