As time goes on, GPS technology is quickly becoming ubiquitous, entering every point in our lives, from finding hidden treasure to finding Jesus, but GPS devices generally fall into one of two categories: handheld or vehicle-mounted. The Magellan Maestro 3210 offers a mid-grade vehicle-mounted device with a few quirks, but a smooth interface.

Form

The 3210, while designed for vehicle use, is small enough to easily fit into a pocket, being only slightly larger than an iPod. With plenty of user controls to customize the interface, volume, and other personal preferences, the device and menu system offers an intuitive interface that you'll be able to use without reading the included pdf manual. The interface also offers Night View, which blackens all but the streets, keeping glare to a minimum when your eyes need to stay adjusted to the darkness.

Finding your destination

The 3210 offers several methods to find your destination and can optimize a day of errands to prevent backtracking and minimize gas usage, very valuable with today's fuel prices.

When you're ready to head out, you can find your location by address or by searching the Points of Interest (PoI) database. The 3210 offers the option to find a destination by city or zip code, offering a list of previously used cities. Once you choose a city, as you start to enter the street address, the 3210 will only allow you to choose street names and address ranges in its database. While this is normally convenient, serving as an autocomplete system that's easier to use than the iPhone keyboard, even with my big fingers, the block my daughters' dance class building is on wasn't in the database, even though the street appeared on the map, so I had no way to even get it to guess the location--I had to settle for the closest number, which was only off by 1.

You can also find a destination by searching the Points of Interest database. Magellan uses the Navteq on Board® database, and while Magellan's website says the database is updated annually, one of the grocery stores in town that has been there for many years did not show up in the PoI database, and another grocery store that closed and has been vacant for a few years still showed up. Were I a tourist looking for some snacks in town, I wouldn't know where to go.

Trip Options

When finding a trip path, the 3210 offers 4 options: Fastest Time, Shortest Distance, and Least or Most Use of Freeways. It also includes an option to Avoid Toll Roads on any path. Most routes can be calculated in a matter of about 5 seconds, a trip halfway across the country (1255 miles) being calculated in 18 seconds, although Avoiding Toll Roads, Shortest Distance, and Least Use of Freeways are only possible on a trip of 600 miles or less. That's not a huge loss, since any trip that long would most sensibly use the available options. During the trip, the 3210 offers Exit PoI's so you know where to find a gas station or a hospital from your mid-trip location.

We put the 3210 through its paces as we travelled to visit family over Christmas, and as we went, we were glad the 3210 would recalculate the route shortly after we deviated from the suggested path, and we were glad it doesn't have feelings, or it would've given up. When we saw that the course it suggested was quite different from our normal route, we looked at the estimated time of arrival (very convenient when calling Grandma and saying, "We'll be there at 8:37.") and then took our route to see how the time compared. Our route took about the same time, but we found that, when the 3210 would suggest a route, subsequent suggestions seemed to stubbornly try to get us back on the previous route, even when that was no longer the fastest path. At one point, it was suggesting that we get back on the previosu course, and once we passed the next exit, it rerouted to the way we planned on going and knocked 20 minutes off of our time. Sometimes, "fastest" isn't always fastest.

The 3210 also offers extensive AAA travel information, including the AAA TourBook, which can lead you to approved AAA repair locations and places that will offer AAA discounts.

I have a long list of suggestions that I'd like to see in this device, most prominently a feature recently added to Google Maps: the ability to reroute by telling it, "I'm taking Hwy 151--take that into account." This can be done using the trip planner, but adding that point in mid-trip would be convenient.

Computer Interface

The 3210 offers the ability to upload a separate PoI list via USB, but we were disappointed that we couldn't charge the battery via the same USB port, since the car charger uses this port.

All-in-all, the 3210 offers a mid-level option that will get you where you need to go with an easy learning curve. You may not always agree with the directions it offers, and you may occassionally need to use Goog-411 to find a given business, so you'll have to balance an easy interface against a slightly outdated database. As long as Navteq can find your destination, you'll find the 3210 to be a good purchase.