The Magellan Maestro 4250 originally came out near the end of 2007, giving it plenty of time to accumulate some refurbished GPS models. When it first came out, this device received lots of highly favorable reviews from places such as About.com and PCmag - both of which gave it a 4 out of 5 star review.

Right now on Amazon.com, this navigation GPS has around 270 different customer reviews and has an average score of 3.67 stars.

This is a lightly edited customer review. It has been edited to make it easier to read and the actual meaning of the review has not been changed:

I just had my "refurbished" GPS recently delivered and I am a little made. Apparently Magellan doesn't take the time to actually power on their returned GPS units and just slaps a "refurbished" sticker on them to be reshipped out to customers. The reason I say this is that they would have been blind to miss the TWO humongous, extremely obvious, and terribly defective areas on my LCD screen. They resembled a 4^th of July fireworks display of gnarled pixels that should have been picked up on instantly.

I'm returning this sucker and seeing if they will actually send me a working Magellan this time.

UPDATE Dec. 11

I received my new-to-me replacement Maestro 4250 from Amazon and it doesn't suck. It feels like it is new (looks it too) and has all the bells and whistles it said it would. I updated the firmware without problems. Having fresh maps also ran me an extra $80. I've never owned a GPS before and I absolutely loved playing around with it.

Cautionary note in my initial review should be considered but Amazon sends another fast if you want to roll the dice again. I will update this again in a month or sooner if something of note happens first.

Two things we can pick up on easily by reading this review - sometimes you get a bad apple and if you want to update maps it will cost you extra.

Here is a positive review, again slightly edited:

I bought this GPS not knowing what to expect. I got it in the mail and tried to play around with it a bit but realized that it was working pretty slow. That was because I hadn't updated the firmware yet. So I let it charge for a while and then went on the Magellan's website and updated the firmware for free.

After that, it worked really fast. This refurbished GPS exceeds my expectation in every way, and it did not have one aesthetic problem on the whole unit. I didn't particularly like the hands-free bluetooth feature - it isn't very good at picking up my voice - but that could be because I keep the unit a little far away and don't really talk into the unit when driving.

It is good to know that you can install the firmware for the refurbished Magellan Maestro 4250 for free.

Going with a refurbished can be a great way to save money on something that you were already thinking of buying. If you get a lemon, just return it and try it again or get another product. There are risks involved so make sure that you know what you are getting into when making a purchase of a refurbished product.  The Refurbished Magellan Maestro 4250 GPS should definitely be something that you consider.