Magellan has chosen a very cautious specification for its entry-level Maestro 3100. The 3.5-inch touch screen has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, GPS lock is handled by the ubiquitous SiRF Star III chip and Navteq supplies the UK and Eire mapping software. No-one could possibly complain about that little lot, although you might prefer to pay extra for a widescreen 4.3-inch unit.

Using the Maestro 3100 is simple enough provided you are sat in your car. The review unit supplied by Magellan has an atrocious battery life so the only way to get the thing to work was by plugging in the cigarette lighter power cord, and that despite the fact it also has a USB connection so you can connect the thing to your PC. We had to forget about the idea of familiarising ourselves with the Magellan in the comfort of the office and took to the road to find out what it's like.

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The mounting kit is workmanlike and you can attach the bracket to either the windscreen or dashboard with a suction cup that is secured and released with a locking lever. The installation is a bit messy as the power cable plugs into the right-hand side of the unit, which isn't ideal in a British right-hand drive car. The sliding mount for the GPS unit is a bit stiff and we had to wrestle with the Magellan when we were getting out of the car as we had no intention of leaving the hardware on show to potential thieves.

Entering your destination is simple enough as the Magellan unit supports seven-digit postcodes, however the screen is quite small and we hit the wrong button on the virtual keyboard on a couple of occasions. As you key in a place name the unit speaks your selection out loud and greys out the letters that you won't need. On the downside you have to toggle between alpha and numeric characters as the keyboard is too small to display the whole lot at once.

You select a preference for the type of route using ‘most motorway' or ‘least motorway' or the fastest or shortest route before each journey is calculated, which is easier than digging around in the depths of the settings.

Once you're on the road the Magellan does a decent job of getting you to your destination, although the voice prompt doesn't give street names but instead tells you to take ‘the second exit' or the ‘next left'. There's a decent one hundred metres or so of warning accompanied by an electronic 'bong' and then an alert as your turn approaches.

Any time you fail to follow the designated route the Magellan has to re-calculate the route and, as it does so, it tells you out loud what it is doing. You're not exactly being told off by the electronic unit but it rather feels as though the Maestro 3100 is expressing its disapproval.

It's a horrible expression but Magellan ticks all the boxes with its Maestro 3100 and at first glance it supplies every feature you could possible need at an incredibly low price. Take a second look and you'll see that you actually get a fairly basic unit that is lacking any refinements, but it does a decent job and is undeniably cheap. The thing is, cheap is not necessarily the same thing as good value.