GPS Sat Nav Recommendations & Experiences

GPS Sat Nav Recommendations & Experiences

by

I show you something fantastic and you find fault.
Published on August 31st, 2007, 12:36 pm
Rift: Travel

Interesting read here. Guy working for National Car rental follows his in-vehicle navigation system, only to get stuck in the mud. He calls a tow truck, and it gets stuck in the mud. Then an Army vehicle shows up to help... and gets stuck. Then a farmer and his tractor shows up, .... and damages the vehicles. After 14 hours, the guy finally gets out of his vehicle and walks to the local bar.

I recently bought a Magellan GPS. It's OK, and not very expensive. But it does have its drawbacks.

There's one intersection in Graham that I invariably can't get right when I approach it under this thing's direction. I have no idea why. But of course, the biggest problem I have with it is that its map of the US is antiquated. Roads that are all of two years old don't appear on it. That's a pretty big problem that will only get bigger.

Hopefully in a few years, when I'm ready to buy a more robust machine, I'll get everything I want... or fairly close to it.

I've been using Microsoft's street and trips the last few years on our trips with the laptop. I cannot state how valuable it is to be in the middle of Philadelphia looking for Gina's steaks, and whipping out a map on the laptop with no internet connection.

We got GPS in the trucking industry several years before smaller and cheaper GPS units became available to the public. Those early GPS units were as big as suitcases and required their own air conditioning. Learned some very valuable GPS lessons very quickly. Seems GPS doesn't grasp the difference between say Interstate 80 and an Amish farm road in western Pennsylvania. Nor do they understand the concept of low bridges. Or no bridges. Or narrow mountain roads. Or railroad tracks.

Once I had a GPS unit insist I was to drive my rig across Lake Michigan. I refused, the GPS unit reported me to dispatch and I got a warning letter for being off route. Company policy was 3 warning letters and you go job hunting.

And then there were the tales our dispatchers told us of the GPS units who thought we were in Russia when in-fact we were in Kansas.

But the funniest one of all was when the dispatchers checked their screens and watched two of our trucks drive from St. Louis to South America. They ignored it for several days until a terminal inspection reveiled 2 trucks had been stolen from the St. Louis terminal and were never heard from again after crossing the Mexican Border.

Once I had a GPS unit insist I was to drive my rig across Lake Michigan.

In the winter you probably could have... Then you would have been an "Ice Road Trucker!"

So I'm thinking... err... down the road a bit... I might buy a GPS unit. I really love Sanjuro's Knight Rider GPS, and when we were considering going cross country (which I believe is currently ixed-n)... I really became fond of Dash. Now I'm thinking, I'd like something a bit more hand-held, and something which can be loaded with maps like if we were to go back to Europe, so I could carry it in my bad. Unfortunately I know very little about GPS devices other then using one time in the land rover. So any advice?

I have just bought a new GPS (on Friday) so i have an opinion

I have owned a few, from some early B&W units with no base maps which were useful in conjunction with a good paper map. I like the Garmins; the Magellan, Tom Tom have inferior mapping and route finding.

I had a car GPS from LG that came free with a fridge, but it was not very good. The route finding was crap, it tried to route me 200 miles out of my way because it thought a 10 mile ferry trip was going to take 8 hours. It died when I plugged the 12v jack from my radar detector into its 5v socket which were both the same size.

I bought a Garmin 60CX a year ago and it's an excellent trail/off road unit. I have given it to my son for that purpose. They have been superseded by newer models, but are an excellent & robust general purpose off-road GPS

After a lot of soul searching I decided on the Garmin Nuvi 550 This is a cross over car/hike/bike/boat unit. I was leaning towards two seperate units but this looks like it will do everything I need. It's expensive for a car unit ($450), but it is waterproof, with a big battery.

I ordered it on Friday so it should be here next week. I'll give an update when I get it.

This is a new model so it's priced at a premium. Garmin keep bringing out new models and discounting the old ones, so buying last years model saves a bundle

If you only want a car GPS the Garmin Nuvi 260 are really cheap ($125) - Garmin are discounting them by $100 - and pretty good. For a hundred more you can get the Garmin Nuvi 760 with bluetooth hands free phone and wireless traffic updates.

Maps are the hidden expense in GPS units. They are very expensive to buy if your GPS doesn't come with all the ones you want. Of course you can find torrents and key code crackers but that would be illegal. So don't go to ThePirateBay.org and search for Garmin.

E.g. You can buy the Blue Chart Americas CD for $150 - but that doesn't include the key code to actually download the charts to your GPS. Key codes for a particular area can cost $100 or so. If you paid for all the key codes you can rack up thousands of dollars - and those key codes are tied to the individual GPS. If it falls overboard you start again

Now marine charts are unusual since they are expensive anyway, but most US GPS units sold don't have road maps outside the lower 48. If you want Europe (or Mexico or Canada) you'll have to buy extra maps and download them. It might even be cheaper to buy a cheap GPS in Europe than buying a US model and buying the maps.

I want one linked into Google Earth but that's a few years away.

Thanks... I'm going to keep an eye out.... I've been saying since Philly I'd buy one, but never did... and every year I end up regretting it in some form.

We bought a Magellan about 3 years ago now, and we've had one map update to load in so far. It's pretty basic, and does the job it's supposed to do, but it leaves a few things to be desired. Sometimes it misses turning directions when the road you're following turns -- for instance, when US 421 turns a corner in a small town, it assumes you're going to follow the road signs rather than listen for its turning directions. The other issue I've encountered with it is that sometimes, it doesn't match zip codes with town names properly. Makes hunting for a street/zip combination problematic at times.

I expect you will be able to do better.

I'd love to find one that works "on foot" as well as "on street."

I got my Knight Rider GPS from Navtones. They do real celebrity voices for GPS and I like that.

Even though I got the KR GPS I would recommend a TomTom Go. TomTom are the second biggest GPS manufactures in the US and the biggest in Europe, this will give you the best of both worlds.

Like I said, I use to have a TomTom and still do. From that Navtones place I mentioned you can download real celebrity voices onto it. I got Mr. T, Kim Cattrall and Dennis Hopper. Check it out, I think it is navtones.com.

Good luck!

Tom Tom score poorly in routing tests, often taking longer, slower routes and ending up on the wrong side of the road for the address given - requiring a U-turn or overshooting and going round the block.

Magellan and Garmin have better routing engines - which is important.

Again Garmin chooses the best route, Magellan chooses the second best route, and TomTom's GO 920T chooses the least effective route. While Magellan and Garmin both route us along the 101 highway from San Jose to San Francisco, TomTom's GO 920T instead routes us along highway 880 North to 80 West -- an odd choice that adds around 4 miles (~6 minutes) to the journey, assuming there's no traffic 880 (which there usually is). Even worse, TomTom again has us arriving on the wrong side of the street, with our destination address on the left.

Both the Magellan Maestro 4250 and the Garmin nuvi 880 arrive with our destination address on the right side of the street, but only the Garmin actually announced us what side of the street our destination will be on. Occasionally the Magellan unit would verbally announce what side of the street the destination was on, but that was the exception and not the rule.

In North America Garmin owns the market (2007 numbers)

In Europe it's TomTom that has the larger share

Oh - and you can download voices to both.

I wonder what brand that was in the Land Rover... I thought that one was pretty good...

I believe LandRover uses a Denso GPS

I got the Nuvi 550 on Thursday and have been playing with it. It's not what I want so I will be returning it. It's really a car GPS, the trail/boat functions are limited

As a car GPS it's fine although too expensive for it's feature set. For less than half you can buy a better car GPS.

As a trail GPS its biggest problem is visibility in bright conditions. It has a backlit TFT screen (unlike say the 60CS with has a relective TFT screen. Even at it's maximum brightness - which is bright - it's not visible in direct sunlight. On a sunny, snowy day there was too much ambient light to read the screen. It also does not manage tracks.

A crucial feature of a trail/boat GPS is to be able to record your track with breadcrumbs and be able to backtrack or mark a point. A trail GPS (like the 60CS) does this as a matter of course, the 550 does not do it at all. The tracks are there - you can upload them to MapSource and view them there, but by then you are back home. The 550 only shows the last track - and I discovered that if it is in your pocket the touch screen picks up all sorts of false presses which can truncate your track

Considering all this I will be returning it and I will buy something like the nuvi 760 for in the car - which is less than half the price and has lots more features - text-to-speech, Bluetooth phone, traffic etc.. At the moment it seems that the 60cx is still the best bet for a trail unit. The Oregon looks pretty good but from the reviews the screen visibility is an issue. I may wait and see if Garmin come out with an Oregon with a better screen

There seems to be a shakeout coming in the GPS world. In 2007 Garmin walked away from a multi billion bidding war with TomTom for the acquisition of TeleAtlas. Garmin bid up TomTom from 2.8 billion to 4.2 and then walked away - considered a strategic loss for Garmin, especially since Nokia purchased the leading mapping provider NavTeq for 8.1 billion shortly after

Now TomTom are in financial straits and may go into bankruptcy. Garmin are looking a lot smarter to have hung onto it's cash.

Well I finally decided... based on your advise, and features I needed... and of course price....

I ended up with a Refurbished Garmin Nuvi 370....

It's got the FM crap like Dash, it's got both North America & Europe maps.... which was one of my requirements, and it's compact enough I can stick in a small handbag or purse....

out the door I got it for $149.00... which seemed reasonable to me...

That's a good price. That unit retailed for $900 in '06, but the technology hasn't changed that much since, the screens have got bit bigger and they've got rid of the flip up antenna. You have text to speech, Bluetooth phone anf Fm traffic

If you go to Garmin's website and download the free MapSource you can upload tracks from the GPS and download routes and waypoints. You can also get the POI loader to add your own points of interest

That's great... what sold me was the reviews of people on foot in Europe using it.... That's exactly what we want.... the size was the other key point... I actually prefer the smaller screen... because of carrying it with me.... We shall see, it's supposed to be here in a few days.... I'll have to take it out and play....

Well got it last night, and drove to the Oral Surgeon today.... works really great... It's simple, and knew some roads I didn't think it would. It's the perfect size, and it included all the cables I need, including european adapters for the a/c adapter....

The only bad part is my cigarette lighter is always on so it doesn't shut down on it's own automatically... I would have thought for a top of the line GPS unit they'd have a voltage sensing circuit in it to shut it down when voltage drops from 14v to 12v....

I think the whole cigarette lighter as a power source thing is nonsense. It's too bulky and inflexible. I've long thought that the car manufacturers should agree on a standard power socket, like say a 4mm barrel connector. It would take a fraction of the space and they could put them everywhere. Some could be tied to the ignition and some could be on all the time.

I've never come across anything with the feature you suggest. It shouldn't be too difficult to build though

If memory serves me right some of the head-units used is aftermarket car stereos use that technology... although I can't quite remember for sure if that's where I got the idea....

It's not bad though... they were smart enough to include a button on it, so I can power it down, and technically I could rewire the lighter to a switched source... I've done that a few times.... but, I'm frankly too lazy these days....

I agree on the outdatedness of the cigarette lighter.... I think eventually we will see some changes.... and if it wasn't for the 5v to 12v difference, the USB connectors out there would be perfect....

Then again... a lot of people still smoke....

The rental SUV we took back to Toledo actually had a 110v plug in it which was really cool as Chance could plug in his laptop and watch movies....

Ran into my first prob tonight... went to go register the device at Garmin and it's showing already registered.... tried to email them using their "form mail" and it wouldn't submit.... too tired to mess with tonight, so I'll work on it this weekend.

It really blew my mind that the Taurus could go that fast.... even blew out a few windows...

My GPS Suction cup keeps falling off when the car gets hot... is this normal? Anyone got a fix? Besides duct-tape and clothes hangers?