You can have my TomTom when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
“Unless you consistently travel over 100 miles to unknown areas with little or no notice I can’t see the use of a GPS device for your car.”
As a musician I often have to go places I’ve never been before to play a concert. The GPS enables me to drive directly to the address thereby avoiding potential stress from getting lost. It saves time, leads me directly to my destination and improves driving safety as I’m not looking at maps.
I’m fond of my Nuvi. I could think of a few UI improvements (make the city I’m currently in the default when I’m searching for a location instead of making me spell it, etc.) but over all it’s good.
I think a lot of the features being added to these units nowadays are superfluous, as the higher-end models do not seem to offer any improvements in their actual mapping capabilities. I would much rather have an improved system for getting map updates to market more quickly and inexpensively than a photo slideshow, mp3 player, or bluetooth interaction with my phone.
What someone needs to come up with is a way of mounting a GPS so that it can’t be stolen, and you don’t have to take it out of the car with you.
It’s fine for newer cars with built-in GPS, except that you are obviously locked in to whatever cut-rate system they bought, but there is a definite need for more secure mountings in most cars.
One thing to be concerned with is leaving your charger in your car overnight. My car got broken into and the charger was stolen. They rummaged through my glove compartment looking for the actual Nuvi, but it wasn’t there. I figured that I would be fine leaving the charger in the car, but it’s not. Leaving the charger visible is just asking for your car to get broken into. I now make a point to hide the charger when leaving my car outside overnight.
I have a Garmin Nuvi and a Magellan 3100. It only took a couple of days for me to regret buying the Garmin. If your job requires you to drive, the Magellan is the one to buy. My co-workers and I have learned this in locations from Passaic NJ to San Diego CA.
On a trip from San Diego to Claremont CA, the Nuvi wanted me to drive the last 20 miles on surface streets. On a trip back to San Diego, it wanted me to go through a gated neighborhood to get to the office, after taking me past the closest offramp.
No, I’d have to say that all you have to do is use the Magellan a couple of days and you’ll grumble everytime you have to use the Garmin.
The ultimate geek toy is a GPS mounted on your bike handlebars (I am looking at the Garmin Edge 705). You get all the benefits of confusing reality for a video game plus a way to get from A to B without stopping every few meters in an unknown area to ask for directions while adding “no, not using freeways; really”.
“Unless you consistently travel over 100 miles to unknown areas with little or no notice I can’t see the use of a GPS device for your car.”
I use one all the time, even when I know where I’m going.
Why? It is useful to know when you’ll arrive some where (the ETA is typically very accurate), it pings when I accidentally drift over the speed limit, it warns me about speed cameras and it is useful when I suddenly get diverted due to roadworks or accidents.
By the way, they ARE illegal to have on your dash OR your window in California and a few other states. You can still use them, just not in a distracting position. Both my Garmin Nuvi and my Magellan 3100 came with warning sheets listing these states.
From a gadget loving geek perspective you haven’t even mentioned the fact that the Garmin’s are much more ammenable to loading your own custom maps into these devices. That allows you to load topographical maps which makes these much more useful IMO.
In Australia for example we have two great sources for these.
Unless you consistently travel over 100 miles to unknown areas with little or no notice I can’t see the use of a GPS device for your car.
I bought my Nvi 350 T with Traffic Message Channel two months ago and even if I do the same commute everyday to work it has already saved me lots of hours by signaling me traffic jams and offering me alternative routes to my destination.
Mom had a nuvi last time she came to visit. I don’t know what model, but she paid 280 for it. I thought it was very nice.
However, for her trip back to VT I entered a specific route with about 8 way points to make it take her on the roads I thought best. I was disappointed that I could not find a way to save this “user-entered” route. Maybe that feature is there - but it wasn’t obvious to me… I tested it by turning off the car and on restart the way points I’d entered were gone. The “save” button only let me save the destination… If it had this feature I’d think a lot more highly of the unit.
That said, when we were in rural eastern NC on back roads and needed gas - it directed us very nicely out of the woods.
My only regret with the 200W is that I do wish it read the street names instead of just saying “turn left” or “turn right”. The street names are on the screen, of course, but it’s helpful to hear the street name so you look for street signs to confirm you’re making the correct turn.
The Garmin Nuvi 260 does that, it was one of the first models to do so. I sell these, along with TVs and stuff, and its great to see someone enjoying them so much. Its why I consistently reccomend the Garmin models to everyone. The TomTom and the MIo models have QA issues, where 2/3 of them fail to work properly in some way, so cost our company a lot. Tis why we stick with Garmin now.
Amen Dave! I dont know how we ever got anywhere without them. I see them on everyones dashboard on my daily commute. Have we de-evolved to the point where we forget our daily commute?
In my experience Nuvi (mine was, before it was stolen, a Nuvi 660) is a pretty expensive and underperforming GPS. Both, the interface and its navigational abilities lagged behind a 5 year old Magellan Roadmate 500 that i bought the Nuvi to replace. Stellar reviews on Amazon and other places led me to buy Nuvi - which only served to teach me a lesson that you just can’t trust the reviews: people who paid for an overpriced toy will do their damnest to like it.
Anyway, after it got stolen - i bought a cheapie Magellan (something 2000 or 200 is the model) and couldn’t be happier.
Its why I consistently reccomend the Garmin models to everyone. The TomTom and the MIo models have QA issues, where 2/3 of them fail to work properly in some way, so cost our company a lot. Tis why we stick with Garmin now.