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SD Transplant.
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February 18, 2008 at 10:31 AM #11854February 18, 2008 at 3:06 PM #155031
Anonymous
GuestAs someone who just bought two different GPS navigation systems — and returned them both — I think I can offer some help.
I had been researching GPS devices for about two years before I thought the price point/feature set balance was optimal.
First, I bought the Magellan Maestro 4250 at Costco for $350. The quick summary is that although it has some very nice features, it is a very buggy unit (see Amazon reviews for more validation of this), and implements some of its features very strangely (e.g. in order to find a POI off of your current route, you have to cancel the route, search for the POI, navigate there, and start your original route again).
I had read about the reliability issues, and thought I might be one of the unaffected, but no such luck.
About the same time, I noticed that Costco dropped the price of the Garmin nuvi 680 to $399, which is a great deal, so I returned the Magellan, and bought the Garmin.
The Garmin is very stable; the map is very clear, text-to-speech is fairly accurate, and I found that it is quite fast at acquiring satellites. However, contrary to your post, you can add custom POIs, but I was disappointed that the Garmin didn’t seem to have what I would consider to be very common POIs.
For both units, my biggest gripe was that the routes it chose to calculate were consistently inefficient. Both units favored surface streets (even with the Magellan setting of “use freeways”), and grossly miscalculated the estimated time of arrival, because they didn’t seem to take into account any stop lights. So, it favored surface street routes that were much slower than their freeway equivalents.
Both units also have support for traffic incidents, and Garmin’s implementation is better on this front, but I did not own either unit long enough to take advantage of this feature. In my limited experience with it, I was very impressed.
After dealing with the negatives I mentioned, I decided that because I do not need to get to unfamiliar places on a regular basis, I just couldn’t justify spending $400 on a fun toy, so I returned the Garmin as well.
But, for a realtor or anyone who travels to many locations in a single day, it is a very useful tool.
Best of luck in your search…
Noah
February 18, 2008 at 3:06 PM #155408Anonymous
GuestAs someone who just bought two different GPS navigation systems — and returned them both — I think I can offer some help.
I had been researching GPS devices for about two years before I thought the price point/feature set balance was optimal.
First, I bought the Magellan Maestro 4250 at Costco for $350. The quick summary is that although it has some very nice features, it is a very buggy unit (see Amazon reviews for more validation of this), and implements some of its features very strangely (e.g. in order to find a POI off of your current route, you have to cancel the route, search for the POI, navigate there, and start your original route again).
I had read about the reliability issues, and thought I might be one of the unaffected, but no such luck.
About the same time, I noticed that Costco dropped the price of the Garmin nuvi 680 to $399, which is a great deal, so I returned the Magellan, and bought the Garmin.
The Garmin is very stable; the map is very clear, text-to-speech is fairly accurate, and I found that it is quite fast at acquiring satellites. However, contrary to your post, you can add custom POIs, but I was disappointed that the Garmin didn’t seem to have what I would consider to be very common POIs.
For both units, my biggest gripe was that the routes it chose to calculate were consistently inefficient. Both units favored surface streets (even with the Magellan setting of “use freeways”), and grossly miscalculated the estimated time of arrival, because they didn’t seem to take into account any stop lights. So, it favored surface street routes that were much slower than their freeway equivalents.
Both units also have support for traffic incidents, and Garmin’s implementation is better on this front, but I did not own either unit long enough to take advantage of this feature. In my limited experience with it, I was very impressed.
After dealing with the negatives I mentioned, I decided that because I do not need to get to unfamiliar places on a regular basis, I just couldn’t justify spending $400 on a fun toy, so I returned the Garmin as well.
But, for a realtor or anyone who travels to many locations in a single day, it is a very useful tool.
Best of luck in your search…
Noah
February 18, 2008 at 3:06 PM #155331Anonymous
GuestAs someone who just bought two different GPS navigation systems — and returned them both — I think I can offer some help.
I had been researching GPS devices for about two years before I thought the price point/feature set balance was optimal.
First, I bought the Magellan Maestro 4250 at Costco for $350. The quick summary is that although it has some very nice features, it is a very buggy unit (see Amazon reviews for more validation of this), and implements some of its features very strangely (e.g. in order to find a POI off of your current route, you have to cancel the route, search for the POI, navigate there, and start your original route again).
I had read about the reliability issues, and thought I might be one of the unaffected, but no such luck.
About the same time, I noticed that Costco dropped the price of the Garmin nuvi 680 to $399, which is a great deal, so I returned the Magellan, and bought the Garmin.
The Garmin is very stable; the map is very clear, text-to-speech is fairly accurate, and I found that it is quite fast at acquiring satellites. However, contrary to your post, you can add custom POIs, but I was disappointed that the Garmin didn’t seem to have what I would consider to be very common POIs.
For both units, my biggest gripe was that the routes it chose to calculate were consistently inefficient. Both units favored surface streets (even with the Magellan setting of “use freeways”), and grossly miscalculated the estimated time of arrival, because they didn’t seem to take into account any stop lights. So, it favored surface street routes that were much slower than their freeway equivalents.
Both units also have support for traffic incidents, and Garmin’s implementation is better on this front, but I did not own either unit long enough to take advantage of this feature. In my limited experience with it, I was very impressed.
After dealing with the negatives I mentioned, I decided that because I do not need to get to unfamiliar places on a regular basis, I just couldn’t justify spending $400 on a fun toy, so I returned the Garmin as well.
But, for a realtor or anyone who travels to many locations in a single day, it is a very useful tool.
Best of luck in your search…
Noah
February 18, 2008 at 3:06 PM #155309Anonymous
GuestAs someone who just bought two different GPS navigation systems — and returned them both — I think I can offer some help.
I had been researching GPS devices for about two years before I thought the price point/feature set balance was optimal.
First, I bought the Magellan Maestro 4250 at Costco for $350. The quick summary is that although it has some very nice features, it is a very buggy unit (see Amazon reviews for more validation of this), and implements some of its features very strangely (e.g. in order to find a POI off of your current route, you have to cancel the route, search for the POI, navigate there, and start your original route again).
I had read about the reliability issues, and thought I might be one of the unaffected, but no such luck.
About the same time, I noticed that Costco dropped the price of the Garmin nuvi 680 to $399, which is a great deal, so I returned the Magellan, and bought the Garmin.
The Garmin is very stable; the map is very clear, text-to-speech is fairly accurate, and I found that it is quite fast at acquiring satellites. However, contrary to your post, you can add custom POIs, but I was disappointed that the Garmin didn’t seem to have what I would consider to be very common POIs.
For both units, my biggest gripe was that the routes it chose to calculate were consistently inefficient. Both units favored surface streets (even with the Magellan setting of “use freeways”), and grossly miscalculated the estimated time of arrival, because they didn’t seem to take into account any stop lights. So, it favored surface street routes that were much slower than their freeway equivalents.
Both units also have support for traffic incidents, and Garmin’s implementation is better on this front, but I did not own either unit long enough to take advantage of this feature. In my limited experience with it, I was very impressed.
After dealing with the negatives I mentioned, I decided that because I do not need to get to unfamiliar places on a regular basis, I just couldn’t justify spending $400 on a fun toy, so I returned the Garmin as well.
But, for a realtor or anyone who travels to many locations in a single day, it is a very useful tool.
Best of luck in your search…
Noah
February 18, 2008 at 3:06 PM #155316Anonymous
GuestAs someone who just bought two different GPS navigation systems — and returned them both — I think I can offer some help.
I had been researching GPS devices for about two years before I thought the price point/feature set balance was optimal.
First, I bought the Magellan Maestro 4250 at Costco for $350. The quick summary is that although it has some very nice features, it is a very buggy unit (see Amazon reviews for more validation of this), and implements some of its features very strangely (e.g. in order to find a POI off of your current route, you have to cancel the route, search for the POI, navigate there, and start your original route again).
I had read about the reliability issues, and thought I might be one of the unaffected, but no such luck.
About the same time, I noticed that Costco dropped the price of the Garmin nuvi 680 to $399, which is a great deal, so I returned the Magellan, and bought the Garmin.
The Garmin is very stable; the map is very clear, text-to-speech is fairly accurate, and I found that it is quite fast at acquiring satellites. However, contrary to your post, you can add custom POIs, but I was disappointed that the Garmin didn’t seem to have what I would consider to be very common POIs.
For both units, my biggest gripe was that the routes it chose to calculate were consistently inefficient. Both units favored surface streets (even with the Magellan setting of “use freeways”), and grossly miscalculated the estimated time of arrival, because they didn’t seem to take into account any stop lights. So, it favored surface street routes that were much slower than their freeway equivalents.
Both units also have support for traffic incidents, and Garmin’s implementation is better on this front, but I did not own either unit long enough to take advantage of this feature. In my limited experience with it, I was very impressed.
After dealing with the negatives I mentioned, I decided that because I do not need to get to unfamiliar places on a regular basis, I just couldn’t justify spending $400 on a fun toy, so I returned the Garmin as well.
But, for a realtor or anyone who travels to many locations in a single day, it is a very useful tool.
Best of luck in your search…
Noah
February 18, 2008 at 3:36 PM #155334kev374
ParticipantThe Garmins below the 700 series do not have a very basic ability to add waypoints, so you cannot create custom routes but rather have to stick to a direct route. This is quite BS.
February 18, 2008 at 3:36 PM #155342kev374
ParticipantThe Garmins below the 700 series do not have a very basic ability to add waypoints, so you cannot create custom routes but rather have to stick to a direct route. This is quite BS.
February 18, 2008 at 3:36 PM #155357kev374
ParticipantThe Garmins below the 700 series do not have a very basic ability to add waypoints, so you cannot create custom routes but rather have to stick to a direct route. This is quite BS.
February 18, 2008 at 3:36 PM #155056kev374
ParticipantThe Garmins below the 700 series do not have a very basic ability to add waypoints, so you cannot create custom routes but rather have to stick to a direct route. This is quite BS.
February 18, 2008 at 3:36 PM #155433kev374
ParticipantThe Garmins below the 700 series do not have a very basic ability to add waypoints, so you cannot create custom routes but rather have to stick to a direct route. This is quite BS.
February 19, 2008 at 12:34 AM #155380cashflow
ParticipantLast year I went with a Garmin Streetpilot 2730. Bought from Costco online. We are really happy with it. You can subscribe to satallite radio which also gives you traffic and reroutes around traffic. The accuracy has been good and I love the punch in screen (wouldn’t ever by a model that didn’t have this).
On another note, when shopping for this I looked to see if their were mobile phones with this capability yet, and didn’t find anything. Now verizon and others have GPS enabled phones….just something to think about…
February 19, 2008 at 12:34 AM #155660cashflow
ParticipantLast year I went with a Garmin Streetpilot 2730. Bought from Costco online. We are really happy with it. You can subscribe to satallite radio which also gives you traffic and reroutes around traffic. The accuracy has been good and I love the punch in screen (wouldn’t ever by a model that didn’t have this).
On another note, when shopping for this I looked to see if their were mobile phones with this capability yet, and didn’t find anything. Now verizon and others have GPS enabled phones….just something to think about…
February 19, 2008 at 12:34 AM #155667cashflow
ParticipantLast year I went with a Garmin Streetpilot 2730. Bought from Costco online. We are really happy with it. You can subscribe to satallite radio which also gives you traffic and reroutes around traffic. The accuracy has been good and I love the punch in screen (wouldn’t ever by a model that didn’t have this).
On another note, when shopping for this I looked to see if their were mobile phones with this capability yet, and didn’t find anything. Now verizon and others have GPS enabled phones….just something to think about…
February 19, 2008 at 12:34 AM #155683cashflow
ParticipantLast year I went with a Garmin Streetpilot 2730. Bought from Costco online. We are really happy with it. You can subscribe to satallite radio which also gives you traffic and reroutes around traffic. The accuracy has been good and I love the punch in screen (wouldn’t ever by a model that didn’t have this).
On another note, when shopping for this I looked to see if their were mobile phones with this capability yet, and didn’t find anything. Now verizon and others have GPS enabled phones….just something to think about…
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