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The Magellan SmartGPS is a portable navigation device, but it’s also part of a larger system that, at the time of publication, has parts that give users multiple ways to navigate, search for destination, and manage their favorite places. At the core of this system is the SmartGPS hardware, which can be used as a standalone navigation device. However, the hardware works best when used in tandem with Magellan’s smartphone apps for iPhone and Android devices and a cloud syncing service called MiCloud that is accessible via any Web browser.

Design
The SmartGPS hardware looks about like you’d expect a portable navigation device to look. It’s a plastic slab with a touch screen on one side that gets suction cupped to your windshield.

The device measures about 6.75 inches from corner to corner, but has a diagonal screen size of only 5 inches. There’s a lot of glossy black bezel around that screen, which seems like a lot of wasted space — particularly on the horizontal — for those of us used to seeing smartphones, tablets, and even other portable navigation devices push their screens closer and closer to being edgeless. Imagine a device that’s about the size of a small tablet with a screen the size of an average Android phone and you’ll have an idea of the potential for extra display real estate. To be fair, 5 inches is a respectable screen size for a navigator, but when you consider the amount of information that Magellan tries to cram onto the SmartGPS’ screen, this seem like a missed opportunity to go bigger or wider.

The screen is glass and features capacitive sensitivity, enabling swiping, pinching, and tapping gestures. The glossy black bezel is home to a capacitive home button located near the upper-left corner and a pinhole microphone for hands-free calling.

Flip it over and you’ll find a speaker on the SmartGPS unit’s back side and a power button on top edge.

The bottom edge is home to all of the ports and connections supported by the SmartGPS. There’s a microSD card slot for updates and increasing available memory for maps, a 3.5mm analog output for connecting headphones or plugging into your vehicle’s auxiliary input, and a micro USB port that connects to the 12-volt-to-USB charging cable that embeds in the suction cup mount for one-handed connection and disconnection. The included suction cup mount is a sturdy one, once mounted properly to a glass windshield. The mount only has one point of articulation — a ball joint with a locking ring at the base of the cradle — so there’s not a lot of flopping around once you’ve got the SmartGPS locked in.

Finally, there’s an 3.5mm AV input that makes the SmartGPS compatible with Magellan’s rear-view camera add-on.

The SmartGPS also hosts invisible connections for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for data synchronization and, for the former, hands-free calling.

Standalone navigation
The SmartGPS mixes up Magellan’s familiar interface by adding smart “Squares,” which are live-updating tiles that occupy part of the map screen and provide auxiliary data at a glance and quick shortcuts to destinations. On the default home screen, four of these squares are displayed, showing shortcuts to nearby destinations pulled from Yelp and Foursquare, nearby gas stations and live fuel prices, and nearby traffic events. When navigating, the map (which normally only occupies half of the screen) expands from to occupy three-quarters, pushing two of the smart squares off of the right edge of the display.

Along the bottom edge of the home screen are shortcuts for settings, Bluetooth calling and messaging, destination search, an address book of stored destinations, and Magellan’s OneTouch menu of quick shortcuts to searches and destinations.