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Closer Look
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The GPS itself is pretty normal looking from the outside. The overall size and weight is neither tiny nor massive. There is a power button on the top, a USB port on the side, and a speaker on the back.
The mount is plastic and very basic but feels pretty solid. It mounts to the windshield with a suction cup. By loosening the dimpled disk on the back you can turn and pivot the GPS however you want.
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Now to the more interesting stuff. When you turn the GPS on you are first given a prompt telling you to basically keep you eyes on the road, good advice. After that you will see the main map.
If you are getting directions somewhere, at the top you will see the name of the road of your next turn, how far away it is, and which direction you will be turning. To the right of that is the “One Touch” quick access menu.
At the bottom center is a “+” and “-” for zooming in and out. The bottom left can display current speed, ETA, direction, time, and elevation. At the bottom right we have the main menu button.
In the center right portion of the screen is a speaker icon which allows you to adjust the volume.
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Aside from the main map, you will probably be spending most of your time in the main menu. From here you can input an address to get directions, access the Points of Interest (POI) menu, go to a previous address, intersection, or city center, access your contacts, and get to the settings menu.
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One nice thing about the 2230T-LM is the Quickspell feature. When you start typing a city, road, or address number, it will grey out all of the invalid choices and when it narrows it down it will bring up a screen where you can just choose the name from a short list. This ends up a saving a lot of time.
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A key feature of the 2230 is the Points of Interest or POI menu. This allows you to search for a business or store rather than just typing in an address. You can either search by category or by a specific name. This is really nice to have when you are somewhere you may not be very familiar with. For example, maybe you were on the way to a friends house in another town and want some Chinese food. You can find a Chinese restaurant that is either close to you, close to your friend, or even along your route. I particularly liked being able to string together multiple POIs and having the GPS optimize the best route so I could save the most amount of time and gas.
The One Touch menu is pretty handy in reducing the amount of time it takes to find your most-used places. For example, by clicking the “Gas” button you get a list of the nearest gas stations. You basically just get a shortcut to a POI that you assign.
Great… Now, I have an idea to buy this for my car. Thanks for your post.
I have already Magellan product the Watch GPS one. It’s so nice, I’m comfortable wherever I am, and I’m sure this Magellan Roadmate 2230T-LM it’s also nice and really users friendly. I want to have this for my car very soon.
Had 3 Garmins. 1st one died in the middle of a trip (returned), 2nd one also had iessus, (returned) 3rd one flew off dash, hit who knows what and cracked the screen (not Garmin’s fault, but they want $99 to fix ,only had for about 6 months, I guess I understand but not happy about it) Bought a new different one instead for a little more. So after nothing but problems with Garmin, I chose this one. Boots up FAST! Garmin does not. With Garmin you can drive for blocks before it catches up That is very annoying. LOVE the traffic feature on the Magellan. Gotten me out of more than one traffice jam in Chicago. Often gives more than option, how far do you want to go out of your way? The lane assist is helpful too. So far the difference in time of sitting in traffic or taking a new suggested route is less than 15 minutes or so. If you have ever sat in Chicago traffic and gone a whopping 3 miles an hour or like a parking lot, you will know how nice that is. You may spend way more time getting to your destination when you sit in traffic. The unit talks a fair amount, and tells you EXACTLY where to turn. If you have several options in a city, this is also helpful. For my money, this is a much better buy than Garmin.
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