So my wife is insistant that we look into getting a GPS unit for the car. I’m personally not a big fan of them, but I also know that this isn’t nearly important enough to make an issue about. So, I turn to the Teeming Millions for advice on what GPS units are out there.
I realize that smart phones are gradually taking over this market as they can do street navigation as well, and Google will rapidly become a large player in this fight, but for right now we’re really only interested in a separate unit just for the car.
What I’d like is a GPS that will let me bring it into the house and pre-load a route into it. So if I’m making a road trip that has several legs to it, I can lay them all out on the computer in Google Maps or something (or I’ll even use some proprietary software) and download it to the unit. So it’ll give me those turn by turn directions for the first leg, then the next day allow me to do the second leg…and so on and so on. Ideally it would be great if I can also put in points of interest that I find and am interested in ahead of time then as we’re driving it can let me know “Hey, you’re only 15 miles from the world’s largest ketcup bottle”. So I’d know to stop by and gawk like a tourist.
So fellow dopers, anything like this on the market?
You would probably benefit by visiting www.geocaching.com and www.terracaching.com. You can probably find used GPSr units for sale on their message boards.
I have a Garmin GPSMAP 76CSx and absolutely love it. Check around Garmin’s site and look at what they have to offer. I stuck a 2gb chip in it and was able to load the entire map system for the continental 48 states, plus 1000 cache waypoints.
TomTom has a website you can go to to plan out your trip, then download it to the unit. You can program trips in at least two legs also; I’ve never tried to do three though so I’m not sure if you can do that.
I’m not particularly happy with my Tom-Tom, although it beats no GPS. I thought I would only use it for out-of-town trips, but now I keep it on all the time. This may be partially because I downloaded John Cleese’s voice for it.
the primary annoyance is that I can’t scroll the map to see what’s just off-screen. Using the zoom feature doesn’t solve this because often the features I’m interested in just disappear.
I do like the option of loading foreign cities into it - make sure you have that. Also, get the bean bag dashboard stand. The suction cup on windshield approach is completely useless.
I much, much prefer my wife’s Garmin to the piece of crap Tom-Tom One my mother-in-law unloaded on me after she won it at bingo. The Tom-Tom doesn’t show what the name of the next street you’re going to be turning on is, unless it’s a freeway exit. You also have to hit four “buttons” to cancel navigation.
A note on foreign maps: buy a used card off eBay or something, then sell it after you return home.
I have two Garmins, the GPSMap 76CSX and a Nuvi 185. The Nuvi is designed for car navigation and has a much larger, easier to read screen. Finding addresses is a bit easier. But, in all other ways, the GPSMap has a nicer route following interface. You can bring up a page showing all upcoming turns and their distances. For reasons that probably involve avoiding lawsuits due to driver distraction, the Nuvi doesn’t seem to have any such corresponding page. So there doesn’t seem to be any way to preview the route on the Nuvi, nor to anticipate more than one turn in advance.
I haven’t played with downloading routes or points of attraction on either machine, although at least the 76Csx has a menu entry that will show points of interest of various kinds based on your current location.
We find that feature very handy. Before we take a trip to, say, California to visit our daughter we’ll enter all of our likely destinations into the GPS (and ignore its helpful instructions on how to get to each of them from Pennsylvania). then we’ll hop on a plane with the GPS unit in our luggage, rent a car at the airport, pull out the GPS and give it one of those destinations. Works great.
Another feature that I wouldn’t purchase another GPS that didn’t have it is the ability to say turns by street name (“turn right at Main Street in 300 yards” rather than just “turn right in 300 yards”). That feature keeps you from staring at the GPS unit instead of the road when you’re driving in unfamiliar territory.
I agree with sevenwood – I got a Garmin Nuvi nav unit with text to speech, such as “In 500 feet, turn right on Main Street.” I strongly recommend this feature, regardless of brand.
The other major feature I like is an FM receiver for traffic status. Sometimes this works well, routing me around the worst of the traffic.
Finagle, I press the next-turn line on the screen, and that leads to the step-by-step list of directions.
TruCelt, is there a Ministry of Silly Driving Directions voice pack for the Nuvi?
I’m not aware of a GPS with a points of interest category for weird places but you can always look them up on the internet and enter the address.
As far as multiple legs go, you just create 3 destinations and navigate to each one as you go.
I would consider ease of programing one the criteria for choosing a GPS. One of the features I like about my Magellan is that I can use zip codes as a city choice. This is handy if you are navigating to some long weird name.
Most GPS’s will visually show you the next street, the direction you will turn, and how far away it is. In addition you should be able to pull up the written directions with one touch.
Other features to look for:
-Simulated views of lanes
-traffic routing
You can do this with TomTom, you can also download from Google Maps (which makes route planning a breeze!) and download “special” points of interests from the web site. Everything from “adult points of interests” which will point out all strip clubs/adult book stores etc. to 7-11’s or A&Ws are whatever you want. (In addition to the “normal” points of interest that are in all of them).
That depends on the model. I have a TomTom that does indeed show the next street name, it also reads aloud the street names, and I only have to hit one button to cancel so I am not sure about that. Well two buttons I guess because first I have to tap the screen to pull it up, then tap the cancel button, but that has never been an issue for me.
With a TomTom you can just open up the TomTom at home program, with the unit plugged into the USB port and download many different points of interests, including “weird places”, “haunted places” and many, many others. You can also download user-shared map updates in addition to the normal things such as different colors of maps (mine are pink) different pointers (mine’s a puppy and a kitten) different voices, different opening and closing pictures (mine are Tigers) etc.
I believe that not all of these features are not available in the base (cheap) model TomTom, but in the next one up (mid-price). I am sure I do not have the top of the line, but I have been very happy with it.
Ok, so it looks like Tom Tom is the most likely candidate for more research. Although I’ll take a look at the Garmin options as well.
Quick follow-up question, do you have to use the Tom Tom website to program it? I’d hate to buy a device that depends only on the company staying in business with a web presence. Or is there some other way of getting the data onto Tom Tom?
