New Magellan RoadMates Announced
Magellan officially announced its new RoadMate line, consisting of the 3000T, 3050T and 6000T. These new units are sleek and compact, with a 3.5" color touch screen, a handful of buttons on the sides, and little else. This is an improvement over the old RoadMates, which had a bulky design that took up space needlessly. The 6000T is particularly exciting because it comes with a traffic receiver, has text-to-speech voice prompts and 3D maps, and interfaces with your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone for hands-free calling. This brings Magellan up-to-speed with its competitors at Garmin and TomTom, who have been featuring text-to-speech receivers and 3D maps on the same unit for a while. Magellan's current RoadMate 800 has 3D maps but no text-to-speech; the RoadMate 760 has text-to-speech but no 3D maps. This inability to keep up with its competitors is one of the reasons Magellan saw its market share drop last year; if these new units are all that they seem, this should help vault Magellan back to the forefront.
Magellan has not indicated whether or not the traffic receiver will be plug-and-play or hard-wired into the car radio. Garmin, Cobra and a few others have plug-and-play traffic receivers, so there's no (good) reason why Magellan shouldn't.
FYI: "Text-to-speech" indicates a unit that says not only the turn but the name of the street and/or exit as well. For example: "Turn right in 300 feet onto Mulberry Lane" instead of "Turn right in 300 feet" and "Take Exit 3South-A" instead of "Take exit in 100 feet."
