Can You Hear Me Now?

As for the audio part of the 760's navigation instructions, you may choose either a male or a female voice in 12 languages. One aspect of the audio we both liked and found a bit disconcerting at the same time was the text-to-speech technology that Magellan has named Say Where. With Say Where, a user can have the unit announce street names. Most portable in-car GPS devices provide only simple voice prompts like, "bear left", "exit right" or "right turn"—each phrase being an individual audio file. We were impressed that the 760 can provide complete spoken directions, such as "bear left, New Jersey Turnpike cars-only lane," or "right turn, Meadowlands Parkway." What's perplexing is that the text-to-speech portion of the directions were all spoken in a female voice no matter what voice/language we had selected for the unit as a whole. Thus, in our configuration, we selected a male American voice, which provided the turn distance and direction instructions, while the spoken street name followed in the female voice.

While most portable GPS devices are based on the same NAVTEQ navigation database, the 760 adds several new features that set it apart from others. It supports multisegment trips, with a special optimize function. In addition to a map view, the 760 provides a list view for turns on your route. If you change a direction instruction, it recalculates the route. Should you lose the satellite signal, it automatically switches from map view to turn list view after 15 seconds. The only other in-car receiver we've reviewed to date with this latter feature is the TomTom GO, which was the first to offer this capability.

The 760 also adds a feature called Smart Detour. If you're stopped in traffic on a freeway for more than a couple of minutes, a detour icon appears on the screen. A touch of the detour icon will reroute you around the delay. You can personalize Smart Detour and tell it how many miles you'll let it detour. The feature is also available during navigation on city streets with a touch of the Enter key, allowing you to reroute around closed or congested roads.

Once a destination has been programmed, the map screen displays a wealth of information (though none of these fields are customizable). From left to right across the bottom of the screen, icons show you direction of travel, distance to next maneuver, estimated time to destination, direction of destination, and distance to destination. The direction-of-travel icon also doubles as a GPS signal-strength indicator. On the second line from the bottom, an arrow shows the direction of the next maneuver and the name of the next road. The current road is displayed across the top of the screen.

Several other features set the 760 apart from similar units. It has a CompactFlash card slot, so you can back up your address book and customized POIs. Unique among the other dedicated in-car products we've reviewed, it has an infrared sensor, so that you can beam addresses from your PDA directly into the 760's address list.

We were disappointed to discover that, like the RoadMate 700, the 760 lacks a 3D map view. We forgave the 700, since it was a trailblazing device that we first reviewed back in November 2003. Today, however, a 3D view is a common feature on in-car navigation products, and we consider its absence here unacceptable. Your view choices with the 760 are limited to either North up or Track up. While the 760 does have a feature called TrueView 3D that provides a 3D perspective on your next turn or maneuver, it's not a substitute for this view on the main map. Our PC Magazine Labs' GPS experts agree that the 3D view is generally more comfortable to use and is a closer approximation to the driver's actual visual perspective than 2D maps.

Viewing the field as a whole, we still consider the Lowrance iWAY 500C a better device, and it's available for significantly less money. The TomTom GO and TomTom GO 300 have routing capabilities similar to the 760's, as well as simpler and extremely intuitive interfaces. You must, however, rely on SD cards with these models (remember, the 760 has a hard drive), which means you may have to load additional map data for new locations (TomTom's new 700 model has a hard drive with preinstalled, detailed street-level maps for the U.S. and Canada, and we'll be bringing you a review soon.).

If the lack of a 3D map view doesn't bother you, the excellent navigation options make the Magellan RoadMate 760 a worthy, if expensive, product. On the whole, though, we still find the Lowrance iWAY 500C superior and a better bargain.