Magellan RoadMate 2200T Car GPS Receiver

Having read the positive reviews, I ordered the Lowrance iWay250c ($200) from TigerDirect last-minute (7 days before I left) before my trip across western Canada.
I was counting on the legendary fast shipping, but it didn't arrive in time, so I grabbed a Magellan RoadMate 2200T ($389) from the local Wal-Mart & figured I try it out. This was my first time ever holding a GPS unit. After the trip I unpacked the iWay250c and compared the two a little before returning the Magellan unit to Wal-Mart. This review compares those two units.
First off let me say, in the 1-2 hours I compared the two, the iWay kicked the RoadMate's butt in virtually every area I tested.
1) During the trip the Magellan unit annoyed me by not announcing some turns (although the map showed them correctly), instructing me to turn left under an over-pass (should have taken the exit ramp instead), and repeatedly guiding me down the bumpiest residential streets I've ever seen in my Truck & Camp trailer. All this despite selecting the "Most use of freeways" option. Of the 4 ways to calculate directions, they all seemed to take the same route. I've concluded that the Route Calculation needs a LOT of improvement. One time I even asked it to direct me to another location virtually on the same street. (The street was a major route and curved a slow 90 degrees around about 8 blocks) instead of directing me down that road, it directed me to take the bumpy residential streets which were no shorter and much less a "freeway" than the street I was already on. The map even showed it as a larger street. When I later simulated the same trip with the iWay, it directed me to take the large, curving street directly to the next point which would be a much better route with fewer turns than the residential streets.
2) At night the Magellan was too bright. Even with the "night map colours" and the brightness set to the minimum, it was way too bright and I had to turn it away to allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness outside so I could see better to drive. The volume and brightness can only be set by exiting your trip completely and then accessing system settings. It took a long time to figure this out and it was quite irritating to change every day/night. The menu was not very intuitive, but could have been worse.
The iWay on the other hand has excellent bright/dark settings on a slider that allow many levels down to completely black which allows the spoken directions to be heard, but there is no light from the unit. I think the iWay didn't get as bright as the Magellan, but I can't say for sure.
3) With the Magellan, I couldn't play music while using the Navigation system which makes that feature almost totally useless. The iWay does both easily.
4) The Magellan's menus were not very user friendly and I struggled a lot to set up options, find POIs and route to certain locations. The iWay was much easier to use and I enjoyed it, unlike the Magellan which I dreaded having to set another destination.
5) The Magellan could not find a Wal-Mart in Canada. I searched POIs for at least 30 minutes and could not get it to find a Wal-Mart anywhere... even when I was sitting in the Wal-Mart parking lot. The iWay found a Wal-Mart just by searching for "Wal" (Walmart doesn't work - it's "Wal-mart")
6) Magellan only has an A-Z keyboard that I could find. The iWay has a QWERTY option which makes it much easier to type a name or address.
7) I think the Magellan had stronger satellite reception, more accurate ground location, and faster route calculation. However these were all only slightly better and not really an issue when using the unit.
8) The startup time to locate satellites and ground position seemed a lot faster with the Magellan. (30 seconds vs a few minutes) However once locked on, the iWay had no trouble. It did weaken the iWay's reception when under the car roof as compared to out in the windshield, but not enough to loose the signal.
9) The map display on the Roadmate was terrible. I like to zoom out to have an idea of where it was taking me, but very quickly when you zoomed out to view a larger area the streets would disappear. Not just the little ones, but all the streets would vanish an you had just this pink line that shows where you ll drive, but no idea where that is. Zoom out farther and you just have a white page with a pink line of your intended route. Nothing else, even if you re in the middle of a city. The only thing it shows is the Province/State borders.
The iWay had superb map detail. It has many more zoom levels and showed the smallest of streets in a much more zoomed-out view. Then when it was impossible to show the small streets, the larger ones remained with the city outline, rivers, lakes, nearby towns etc all still showing on the map. This gives a much better sense of orientation when you can zoom out and see where exactly the roads will go in relation to where you are.
10) Battey life was much worse than the iWay. Probably only about half as good, maybe less.

In conclusion, I have to say that the Magellan RoadMate 2200T was very disappointing, even to a first-time GPS user. I would by far prefer a paper map and a phone book with YellowPages to get me around. The Lowrance iWay250c was far superior to the Magellan in Route calculation, map details (especially zoomed out), ease of use, and it looked nicer too. If you re thinking about a GPS, don t get this one. Save yourself $200 and get the iWay250c from TigerDirect. I ve also heard that the Garmin GPS are pretty good, but haven t tried one out.
I registered for Epinions just to write this review that s how disappointed I was with this unit.