Planning a road trip to Los Angeles, the first thing I knew I needed was a GPS. Usually my driving is limited to work commute and around the city. My trips being over the weekend, to save time I end up flying to the destination and then rely on local public transport or local friends. This time, I wanted to do a road trip! But, I often get lost when driving on unfamiliar roads, as a result of one wrong turn or just because I missed my exit.
I have AT&T cell phone and tried their turn by turn navigation. Unfortunately, I found a lot of patches on freeways and in national parks where coverage is weak and AT&T navigation is non-existent. So, I decided to invest in my first GPS with a daunting task ahead of choosing the right one for me. This blog entry is to help people like me, trying to figure out which GPS is right for them. The 2 conflicting concerns for me were:
- Low budget: Don’t want to shell out too much money as technology changes rapidly and soon there will be a new feature that I would want. So, get a device that would serve my purpose for now and get it at a reasonable price
- Useful GPS: Buy a GPS with positive user feedback’s and with features I know I should have. Concern here was that too low a budget would drive me down to a featureless GPS that will very soon become a junk.
- GPS & Navigation under Electronics
- Avg Customer review of 3 Stars and above
- Vehicle GPS
Manufacturers
It was easy to spot the best brand names as:- TomTom
- Garmin
- Magellan
Features
Interface
- Screen Size: Customer complained for screens less than 4’’ in size, so greater than 4’’ seemed like a good decision
- Wide-screen: I would opt for it if the price doesn’t increase by more than $25
- Touchscreen: Should have, otherwise it will just look like a huge PDA with lot of buttons, and touchscreen GPS aren’t that expensive anymore.
- Voice recognition: Nah! Good to have, but so far I have had a hard time getting my pronunciations understood by machines. So, I wouldn’t pay more for this feature. Even if it works, it is just a convenience feature.
Instead of “Take next left,” it would say “Take the next left on North First Street” - That would avoid a lot of confusion, most likely you would be relying on GPS in an unfamiliar area, so every little detail would help. This feature is must have.
Routes
Shortest based on time of the day - Could be very useful in avoiding busy traffic routes.
Best route for fuel economy - That would be cool. Go Green!
Multi-point routing - Go from starting point A to destination B, then to destination C, and so on. This feature is nice to have, but not necesarry. I won’t pay extra for this feature.
Lane Aware
Will tell you which lane you should be in to take the next turn or exit - Oh! This one is important, especially where a freeway forks into multiple other freeways. I know I need it. This feature is also called as Lane Assist.
Traffic
Some models come with free traffic updates. Traffic updates would be good for people who commute long distances during heavy traffic, like during commute hours to and from work, and road-trips during peak traffic around long-weekends or holiday season. You could choose for subscription based traffic updates depending on how much use you have for it. I want this feature.
Map updates
Some models come with Free Lifetime updates, otherwise updates can be costly. But, how often do the roads change? It might be OK to just pay and update after couple of years, that is, if you are not ready to upgrade to a newer technology. With time, new models will at least have better accuracy, more features, and faster processors. GPS models with lifetime free updates are expensive, so I will skip this.
Other features
Speed Limit - will show speed limits for roads where you are. Not necesarry as for safe driving you should be reading the road signs anyway.
Bluetooth - if you want to make hands free call from your bluetooth enabled cell phone through GPS. I would rather use my cell phone on speaker or use a separate bluetooth device just for cell phone.
FM transmitter - to have GPS hooked to the Car speaker system, a nice to have feature if the volume of GPS is low or your car’s drive is noisy. However, customers have reported that it frequently mingles with the radio channels and is hard to tune.
Selection
Now that I understood the features GPS should have, I found the following charts that were very helpful in deciding the models I was interested in:- Which Garmin Nuvi is right for you? - this link is from 2008, but still very helpful
- Garmin Nuvi comparison chart
- I was able to narrow it down to 14 models based on my requirement of “Speak Street names”, “Traffic”, and “Lane Assist”
- Customer reviews suggested Garmin factory refurbished is very reliable and you get 60 days for free map and software updates, so I looked for the lowest price on factory refurbished version of the 14 models
- The W and T notations in model number stand for Widescreen and Traffic update free for lifetime, respectively. Make sure you look at prices of the correct model number
- Looking at the prices and available features on the 14 models, a price under $150 seemed reasonable for a good GPS
- At the time, I narrowed down my interest to 755T (most features), 1350T(good price)
- If they seem out of your budget, you may have to let go of some features that are less important to you. Like, nuvi 265T seems like a popular product without Lane assist feature.
- Update Sep 2011: A new nuvi with most desirable options and free lifetime maps and traffic is 1450LMT for about $150 for new.
- TomTom comparison chart
- XL340T, XXL 540T
- Similar products to the selected Garmin products above
- If you are not comfortable with Garmin’s refurbished models, go for these TomTom’s new (non-refurbished) for about the same price.
- Otherwise, Garmin’s customer satisfaction is a tad bit higher, so I am going for Garmin 1350T (refurbished) at this time
- Magellan comparison chart
- Cusomter reviews in general appeared lower than the Garmins
- Factory refurbished is not as reliable as that of Garmin, so overall seemed pricier. Also, the traffic update is free for only 3 months and $40 per year thereafter
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