Cheap and cheerful Magellan?

[wildduck]

Can anyone help with info about the Magellan 1200, please? I have 2 vehicles and have a Garmin 300 in one. I like the sensitivity of the Garmin, the way it charges from the laptop and the customer support, but I've been unable to make it talk to me in a way I want.

My old Medion PDA from Aldi has just lost its power of speech, but I loved it because it warned of POI's with words, and I never looked at the screen. I hate the way the Garmin goes Bong, and to see what the bong means I have to stop the car, find my glasses, look at the screen and find the tiny icon. Ok, I don't really do this, but all I get are bongs as I drive along.

In a taxi yesterday, the driver had a TomTom, so I asked about this, but it just bongs as well, he said.

The Magellan 1200 is around at a reasonable price, so can it do sensible speech and does it charge from usb? Do I have to look for something that does Text to speech? I assume this Magellan doesn't do this.

Ideally, I'm after 4 things.... Low price, ease of charging and of use, emphasis on speech rather than the display that I rarely look at (and find distracting) and simple switching to a basic marine display so I can retire my old Magellan Meridian XL which has always had a hard time seeing satellites. Any suggestions gratefully received!

[Andy_P]

Can't help with the Magellen, but your Taxi driver was NOT a fount of all knowledge!

The entire TomTom range can use any sound you like as the POI warning, including pre-recorded voice alerts. (See THIS PAGE for some examples, mostly of camera warnings but there are some others at the bottom).
If you buy a TomTom with text to speech capabilities, then you can type your own speech that it will read out as a POI alert.

[wildduck]

Thanks Andy, that's very useful. I must really look again at my Garmin to see if I can get it to work more usefully with audio.

I've been seeing this Magellan unit at about half the price of the cheaper TomToms, which is why I was considering getting one. It was almost as cheap as buying a second car mount to use the one satnav across 2 vehicles.

I'll probably look out for a special offer on a TomTom. I was really impressed with the Garmin support when I needed it. I assumed it was good because they make "proper" satnav for aircraft etc., and thought Magellan might be a bit similar.

Thanks again.

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