GPS Episode Two

[ceagle]

I've officially (re-)entered the world of level_head, arokh, jonaswins, mortonfox and sayh, and anyone else who uses them... good and affordable are now on the same page when it comes to GPS units ^v^ .

Remember how they always seemed to be at least $300 to over $600 ?
Now arokh showed me that the Navigon unit is only $200 for a good one! And then suddenly, they had a TomTom on sale at Office Depot for just $120!! sayh had a lot of good words about the TomTom over the years, and so at that price, how can ya not get it? They're practically giving them away!!

A couple years ago I got a portable unit you don't need to use in the car, a Garmin iQue M3, for a bit over that $300 price, but for the portability it seemed worth it. Gotta say though, I do like this TomTom a lot better *warble*
It has evvvvvverything on the screen, approaching cities, compass, speed, estimated time of arrival, etc etc etc... nice!
Would be neat to show altitude, but heh... guess we can't have it all :D

Comments

[rcoony.livejournal.com]

I got a TomTOm last December from Best Buy for $140. I never thought I'd get one, really, since I like navigating myself. Then again, I never thought I'd get a cell phone either. But it was cheap, and I was about to take my long road trip. And I was very glad I had it. :)

[sayh.livejournal.com]

I said I can recommend Tomtom for Europe, but they do have issues with the US, first of all because Telealtas, their map provider, is not as up-to-date on US maps as Navteq, that provides for Garmin and others.

Though I think you will be more happy with tomtom than navigon. It is very easy to navigate the menus, and the screen is very readable. I navigated down into Oslo today with my garmin, and I am so missing my tomtom. But do NOT trust the POI's in tomtom! They can be very outdated! I guess that can improve a lot with their new share-system where you report out-dated data, and can update based on reports.

[jamesb]

I've owned a few Garmin handhelds for over 10 years, so I have a bias towards Garmin equipment.

I had a Garmin StreetPilot C330 in the rental I had last weekend in Halifax. It impressed me enough to consider buying exactly the same model for myself (the one that came with the rental would have been even better if a manual had come with it and it had been set up correctly).

The local Wal*Mart has the next model up (the StreetPilot C340), for around $188, so I'm just a bit tempted. The Garmin Nuvi 250 (which seems to be almost functionally identical to the StreetPilot 350 is about $30 more than the C340. I'm still looking, but I'm also considering the Nuvi 650 and Nuvi 660 models.

[sayh.livejournal.com]

I just can not stand the map rendering on the Garmin. It does not compare to many other GPS's, and looks like they did not do any work on this for a long time. Also, the screen updates like once a second. For down-town city driving this is way too slow. TomTom and many other GPS's update the screen on much more frequent intervals, giving a smooth following of your turns. Garmin also lack a few things on voice guidance. Tomtom says "in 500 metres, at the end of the road, turn right", Garmin say "in 500 metres turn right", not stating that it is at the roads end. Tomtom say "turn left, then take Take second right", garmin just say "turn left then take right", leading you to think you should take the first right turn. Tomtom tells you what direction to exit a roundabout, Garmin just tells you the number of the exit (tomtom does that in addidtion). You have to press way more buttons to get what you want on Garmin than on Tomtom.

All in all, Garmin needs to update a few things, it seems OvO

[warphammer.livejournal.com]

Severe bias here. Been using their stuff since the GPS III+ and, well. Never had the slightest issue.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Tom Tom's are the most popular and well regarded downunder :)

[titanic.livejournal.com]

I almost got one of those when I was working for the mobile vet who wanted me to navigate from one appointment to another one in the middle of the night without maps.

Fortunately I escaped from that job, but it still sounds like a neat thing to have once my commute is once again longer than 3 miles.

[arokh.livejournal.com]

YAY! awesome! hehe yep your reaping the benefits of the recent GPS wars. The navigono i bought by the way dropped in price even more. theres an outright war between companies all the sudden for whatever reason. *WINGY HUGS*

oh hope ya got the new pic. ive others to share with ya too.

but yeah enjoy the tomtom it a wonderful unit. :)Mine NEVER did me wrong. i just liked the navigon after seeing the sheer ammount of tricks it can do. hehe.

[awalker1829.livejournal.com]

Same here. I've got a baseline Garmin and we have exclusively used Garmin avionics in our aircraft. Once you get used to working it, it's no big deal. Their big box avionics units are extremely user friendly and accurate-better be considering they cost something like $50k per unit. That said, avionics is where Garmin makes the big money so it's not surprising (unfortunately) that they don't focus as much on the automobile users versions.