16. Wrigley Field To O'Hare: Don't Miss The Exit

The last leg took us from Wrigleyville on the north side of Chicago to O'Hare. Again, both systems agreed on the same route: 14.5 miles and 24 minutes of travel time.

This time, we decided to deliberately miss our suggested toll way exits to the airport and check the rerouting capabilities of both units. Our previous experience had shown that the Roadmate unit would likely tell the user to turn around while the iWay would find alternative routes. Missing toll way exits from downtown to the O'Hare airport can be disastrous for a driver unfamiliar with the Chicago area, and we were anxious to see what it took to confuse our review units.

As it turned out, the Magellan system apparently was caught by surprise. It took the system four minutes to recognize that we missed an exit. Two miles past the exit we were caught in rush hour traffic and missed two possible exits to correct the mistake. In contrast, the iWay system recognized the missed exit after 300 feet and recalculated a possible route within 20 seconds. Once back on Interstate 90 and on our direct way to O'Hare, we again decided to miss the exit.

The Roadmate was significantly slower to recognize that were off the route (indicated in pink).

The result was the same. It took the Roadmate several minutes to recognize the error while the iWay reacted quickly and offered an alternative route. In the end, the only solution for the Roadmate's delay to recalculate the route was to cancel the current navigation and reprogram the destination. We observed this problem only on freeways and toll ways.

To be fair, we need to mention that the Roadmate's delay in recalculation was rather unusual. None of our editors who reviewed the unit over the test period complained about the units not recognizing off-route positions fast enough.