Now Magellan have a good name in handheld GPS systems for ramblers or as we like to call them beardy weirdys, but the car based systems haven't exactly made it over here in the UK, so the Roadmate 300 system didn't really have a lot of pedigree when it hit our desks. First up its a pretty attractive bit of kit, well styled and sort of wedge shaped, but looks alone do not make a good SatNav system and having the SD slot on the underside of the unit was our first sign that perhaps not all would be well with this new boy.

Mounting the Roadmate 300 to our test vehicle was a bit of a farce, the dreaded air vent prong was about as successful as trying to get a polar bear into a giraffe only nightclub, luckily the windscreen sucker system is quite sturdy and seemed to hold the 300 to the screen with quite a force.

This version of the Roadmate 300 is the UK and Ireland specific one and it has Europe wide motorway and major road maps plus detailed maps of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and North-western France. All this is shoehorned onto a 512mb SD card that sits in a slot on the underside of the unit, which was always obscured by something, but its not a big issue as its not as if you change the card that often!

We plugged the Roadmate 300 into the 12 volt cigarette lighter socket and the screen came to life, at 3.5" it's not a huge screen but what it lacks in size it makes up for in brightness, the colour screen is  quite readable in daylight if not direct sunlight. Having got enough satellites (a process that took around 2 minutes) we set in a route using a full UK address, the Magellan system uses a familiar shortening list of places as you type more of the address, its works well and we quickly found our London destination.

The route was planned quickly enough and selection of the roads required was very similar to the TomTom and Navman systems, the on screen displays are a bit small and the touch screen took a few attempts to register some button presses which is frustrating if you are in a hurry. Never mind we were soon off and running with audio guidance doing its stuff well through an acceptably loud speaker, one of the strengths of the 300 is it's 320x240 screen which makes it easy to check for that vital extra reassurance alongside the spoken instructions.

Our first trip was without incident and along a well selected route, the second journey to Kingston On Thames was a more tricky affair with the Magellan Roadmate 300 getting a little upset in the one way system and not giving much help regarding which lane you needed to be in. Deliberately taking a few wrong turns didn't manage to shake off the Roadmate it just calmly got us back on track after briefly recalculating, a couple of times it just went for the simple U turn which isn't always the best choice and not as intelligent as the tom-tom's method of turning you round in a side road.

On pulling over to get some petrol we discovered a rather annoying feature, one where you lose the route planned when the ignition is switched off, its fairly easy to tap the address back in but quite infuriating when you are in a rush. being in a rush at the end of a journey is a bad plan too as extracting the Roadmate from it's sucker mount is a tough task requiring both hands to slide it from the mounting plate which is both grooved and a very tight fit.

The UK maps are all quite up to date from our weeks worth of tests and there is a range of POI add on's available for download via the supplied USB lead and a broadband connection, interestingly it seems Magellan do release software updates giving the product a longer life than you may have expected.

Priced currently at a jaw dropping £279.99 the Magellan Roadmate 300 makes a tempting proposition, sure its not as good as the TomTom go 300 but its easily on a par with the Navman iCN510 and convinced us of its worth over the whole weeks worth of journeys.

Published - 11/07/2005

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