I am looking to maybe get a GPS unit for my truck. (I do not want an in dash one.) I have a friend who says Magellan is good. I also hear Garmin is good.
My friend says he is able to plug his Magellan into his computer, and update its maps for free. He never has though. And I do not seem to see this option listed for any GPS unit. They either seem to say that updated maps will be available at a future date, or you need to pay to update them.
I am looking for the $200-$250 price range.
Anyone here have one? What would you recomend? What should I look for in a GPS unit?
I just got a TomTom Go 720, which cost around $430 (a sudden influx of money for which I felt I deserved a treat). Literally just got it, as in 3 days ago, so I’m still trying to figure out what’s good and bad about it.
From what the sales guy told me, both Garmin and Magellan charge approximately $60-70 for map updates. TomTom charges for their downloaded maps as well, but you can set the system to download user-added updates and corrections for free. You can further set it to only accept certain types of corrections, up to those only verified by TomTom, so it’s pretty handy.
Being in Washington where one’s no longer allowed to use a hand-held cell while driving, my system is also Bluetooth-enabled, so when I get a Bluetooth phone (soon), I’ll be able to make and receive hands-free calls.
Text-to-speech is great. Newer systems have computer-generated voices that tell you the name of the street you want to turn on. Frexample, mine’ll tell me to turn on 75th street, rather than just turn in 200 yards. It lets you keep your eyes on the road, and in relatively dense areas, it helps to know exactly where to turn.
There’s an accessory I can buy for the system that’ll update it with current traffic (from a 3rd party for free) so I can avoid that if I want. Alternatively, I can subscribe to the TomTom traffic system for $14/month for their “guaranteed” traffic update system if I so choose. There’s a weather subscription plan, too.
And that’s all I’ve got so far. I’ve noticed that the routes it plans for me are sometimes somewhat counter-productive, but I’ve read that that’s an issue for all systems. I figure if I know where I’m going, I don’t need to use it. If I don’t, then I don’t care if it takes me 10 minutes or 15, as long as I do get there. So I’m not too concerned on that front.
Mrs. R has a Garmin and is very happy with it. It’s one of the ones that tells you the street name, which is a feature worth paying for, in my opinion. Aguecheek is correct when he says that Garmin charges for map updates; Mrs. R did an update a little while ago and everything seemed to work okay.
We have found a phantom hobby shop, though–we drove to the address and it was just a quiet residential neighborhood; no sign of a hobby shop anywhere. I suppose it’s the electro-equivalent of those phantom streets the paper-map-makers use to detect copyright infringement.
I got a Garmin Nuvi 360 from Amazon in June for $230 (which qualifies it for free shipping). It has bluetooth for handsfree phone calls, and I was able to update to the 2009 maps for free, though I know future updates will cost money. I was even able to customize it (via some files I found on the web) so the car on the GPS unit is the same as my car (a Mini Cooper, even though the blue is a little more purple than my car actually is). It announces the names of roads (“in .5 miles, turn left on Elm St.”) and I can choose from different voices - American English, British English, Australian English to name a few.
I bought a Mio 250 for the SO last Christmas. I paid $119 for it. It’s a great bargain with features of much more expensive brands/models. It speaks the actual names of the streets, eg: “Make the next left onto Belle Road, then a left after a quarter mile onto Steele Street”, with surprisingly good pronunciation, even for multisylabic names. There are multiple views of the road, e.g.: follow, flyover, 3D, and you can set the angle of view. It automatically saves all your previous trips so you never have to re-enter a previously entered address; just go to History and scroll to the address you want. The directions are amazingly accurate and give you enough lead time to actually follow them. The display is crisp, easy to view, and uncluttered, with everything you need on a single screen. It even has a road type indicator.
The Mio is also extremely easy to use. It took about two minutes for my SO to figure out all the main features.
My sister has a Garmin that cost her about $450. The Mio has the same features, cost about $300 less, and is much, much easier to use.
The one downside to the Mio is its dearth of POI. I believe it has 30,000 POI for the entire United States and Puerto Rico. If POI is important to you than you probably want to pass on the Mio. My SO and I could not possibly care less about POI as the only thing we use the GPS for is to get from one location to another, the quickest way, and without getting lost.
I have a built-in GPS in my Boxster. It has a larger screen than the Mio, but in every other respect the Mio blows my Boxster’s GPS away.
Correction - The model of my SO’s Mio GPS is C230, not 250. There is no 250. The full name of the model is Mio Digiwalker C230 and, as its model name suggests, does have a walking mode. It’ll actually give walking directions for those without a vehicle, and is great for when you’re on foot looking for an address.
I have a Garmin Nuvi 750 that I love… I have never used a tomtom though and it seems that they might have some cool features that Garmin’s don’t (like user map updates mentioned above.)
One thing I would suggest is to shop around, the Nuvi 750 has a retail price of 535 dollars, I got mine online for 250.
I just got a new Gamin nuvi after a friend recommended it. I really like it. I sent my wife out with it last weekend to take her to the camp where our daughter was staying for band camp. It took her a slightly different route than the camp gave her as directions, but it selected roads with higher speed limits too. Best of all, it got her there.
Somehow, I doubt I will ever see that GPS again now.
I have a Garmin Nuvi 200W (the lowest-end model except for the wide screen (worth paying for)). Love it, just got another one for the GF’s car. About $180 on Amazon. Get the friction mount, too.
It’s the only one I’ve ever used, so I can’t compare it to the others mentioned. My dad has both a Garmin and a TomTom, and prefers the Garmin FWIW. No idea which models.
I’ve been considering getting a GPS unit myself. (I thought I could get the new iPhone and use it for directions, but David Pogue in the New York Times said that it can’t do turn-by-turn directions, so it’s less useful to me.) There’s a new startup called Dash that has a GPS unit with an interesting feature. It’s Internet-enabled and transmits location and speed data back to the company, and gets the same information from other units. That could be a killer feature, although the unit costs $300 and the traffic service is $10 per month, according to this article from Slate. The article does note that the shared traffic information feature could be built in an applet for the iPhone or another GPS-enabled cell phone. But in general, this may be the next big thing.
I 've purchased and used Garmin’s, TomTom’s and Mio’s. The units were the Garmin NUVI 350 and the TomTom 910. I forget the MIO’s number.
Here’s the upshot - Dollar for dollar the TomToms will generally will give you a bit more bells and whistles for your money, but I would still choose Garmin. The reason is the built in search algorithms and the maps. Garmin has (in my experience) substantially more accurate and up to date North American maps vs the TomTom. I cannot stress how critical this is to the performance of a GPS. The mapping company Garmin uses has more up to date and comprehensive data than TomTom although TomTom has considerably more comprehensive European coverage.
Almost any GPS will work OK in the more densely populated urban areas as the maps for those sections are checked more carefully. It’s when you travel to more outlying areas (such as where I live) that map quality makes a large difference. I also found the Garmin search algorithms slightly more efficient with respect to determining the fastest route vs the TomTom. Tomtom wasn’t bad however, and the latest units may be at parity.
Regarding the MIO the hardware was OK (a great deal for the price) but the search algorithm and the map quality was incredibly bad. I tried a simple A to B mapping scenario and it gave me the most bizarre and time consuming route imaginable. MIOs might work OK in the big city but I was not impressed. I returned it the next day.
Remember a GPS is only as good as it’s hardware and it’s maps.
I would suggest getting a GPS with the talking turn by turn feature that actually says the real (synthesized) name of the streets not just “turn right - left” etc. This makes a real big difference (IMO) when you are trying to focus on driving in an unfamilar area and need to take you eyes off the GPS. It costs a bit more for this feature but it’s worth it (to me) .
