Magellan’s Premium GPS Car Kit ~ Wish it was Cheaper

The Magellan Premium Car Kit is a feature rich mounting solution with a lot of promise, but for $130 it ultimately leaves you wishing for a bit more. We’ll break these attributes down in detail later on but a brief overview shows the kit boasting a Bluetooth speakerphone, adjustable 360º bracket, GPS booster (with iPod Touch support), and in car iPhone charging through a 12v port. Built similarly to TomTom’s mount, Magellan’s Car Kit is designed to be used in conjunction with the company’s own $90 (currently on sale for $60) turn by turn navigation app, Magellan RoadMate 2010 (reviewed separately). Other navigation apps can be used successfully with this kit but some of the unique features may not function fully, more on that later also.

Bracket & Mounting Performance:

Using a suction-cup system the MPCK (Magellan Premium Car Kit) can be mounted very securely to any part of your windshield without fear of it falling or slipping. The only issue with this is one of aesthetics, being that the kit is powered off of the car means it needs to be plugged in 100% of the time and this results in an ugly cable hanging down from your windshield. To help with this MiTAC includes an adhesive dashboard disc for the mount to attach to, which while It doesn’t get rid of the cable entirely, it certainly does help with concealing it. The bracket attaches to the mount via a ball-joint which allows for a smooth 360º rotation. Be cautioned though, since the power cable hangs down rotating the mount too many times in one direction causes the cable to become taught and tangled.

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GPS Summary – Comparison of all iPhone GPS applications

Last week, I worked my way through all of the currently available iPhone on-board GPS applications. I stuck with just the applications that held all of the maps on-board — meaning that you didn’t need to have a network connection to use the maps or routing. CoPilot came out as our winner as it has the best features, though some very confusing, for it’s price.

But we thought it would be a good idea to do a re-cap and compare all 5 of the GPS I looked at last week and include the first iPhone GPS application, G-Map.

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TomTom first announced their GPS app at the 2009 WWDC in June. Hotly anticipated, it’s finally here. But, it came in at the most expensive option available. $100 seems to be a lot for an app these days. Is it worth it?