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GPS and Navigation AssistanceOEM Car, Aftermarket and handheld navigation discussions.
This is a discussion thread titled "Reasonable portable GPS", within the GPS and Navigation Assistance forum, part of the Technical & Vehicle Assistance Forums category.
I second the Nuvi 200W. For the price, it's outstanding with spoken names for upcoming turns and such.
What I find annoying with any GPS is the year or so update waits for new streets and subdivisions. Parts of Phoenix and other fast growth areas are a PITA.
In older areas the GPS Maps are fine with conveniences that are so much nicer than wrestling with a paper map.
I added Canada and Alaska to mine with an $80 card from Garmin. Check your model for the maps you plan to use most.
I have to agree with the poster about brands. It comes down to the individuals likes and dislikes. All of the units around 400 and above are great. It is when you get down to the 350 and below range that you see where one company must cut corners to reach the price. Tom Tom has some very nice prices, good maps, and a easy to use layout. But they have the largest return rate of all the units. Magellan is makes some very nice units as well. The maps are well updated, and 350 dollars will give you a unit with intelligent key pads. A very nice and usefull feature when in the car. It predicts your selection and removes letters or numbers from the screen as you type. Making it much faster and safer for the driver. The Harmon Kardon is very good at this as well. A feature lacking in most tom tom and garmin units. My personal choice, is the garmin 200w nuvi. It has a larger display and can be purchased for as low as 220 from some online sites. I found the garmin maps to be the most up to date out of the tom tom, megellan, and garmins I have used. The menu is very well laid out, but so are the others. My unit does not have the spoken street, but I do not find that to be a must per cost. The units inform the driver to turn left or right prior to the intersection. If the driver does not know the area, they will not be aware of what streets are where. And if the units maps are wrong, then telling the driver to turn right in twenty feet or turn right at madison in twenty feet will not matter. You will still end up with wrong directions. The two features that I would suggest looking for in a unit is the predictive key, and the capability to broadcast the information to your speakers. The units do a great job with the small speakers, but you still have to keep your radio turned down. I have nearly perfect hearing, but I do like to keep the radio at a fairly high level. My garmin 200w does not have a audio out on that model. The 300 does and I do miss that. Alot. Either way, you will find all navi's to be worth the money. Two years ago, I would have so no. They were too costly, slow, and lacked the maps to be worth it. The car Head unit navs were much better, but much higher costs. Now, I see no reason to purchase a car Head unit nav over any portable navi. Just my 2 cents. Good luck, Mike G.
Costco.com is selling the Garmin Nuvi 360 for $249. MSRP is over $500. With shipping and CA. tax, it came to $279 and arrives next week. I got the garmin bean bag mount from newegg.com for about $30 includding shipping.
i started out with a usb gps connected to my laptop and ran some software. that was a pain but had many more bells and whistles. unfortunately really only good for war driving or with a co-pilot.
moved to a garmin i3 because i liked the idea of using AA batteries for portability. the other plus was that i could create & edit my points of interests on my computer using ms excel. i visit geocoder.us: a free US address geocoder to get the lat/lon of an address.
now i'm running a garmin c330 with the only complaint being the reflection. for some reason, i can see the reflection of my shirt on the display at certain times of the day and angle of the sun. no spoken word, but i'm really just using it to see outlying streets of where I am for any potential shortcuts.
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I've heard some good and bad things about Tomtoms, but those I've used seem pretty good personally. I've used Garmin handhelds that I've really liked also. I found a deal on amazon for a factory refurbed Magellan Roadmate 2200T for around $170. Then for another $50 I got a software upgrade from the Magellan site that upgraded it to basically make it a model 2500NA which is a Crossover. The 2200T is a little smaller than the Magellan 4500s but the beauty of it is that it's got topographical mapping along with marine mapping. I doubt I'll ever use the marine part on a boat, but the topo side has the same functions as the smaller handheld topo units along with the standard auto mapping and it's got voice. It's also got MP3 and picture capabilities, but I didn't buy a GPS for that crap anyway. It does very well at route adjustment if you move off of the track it's given you while driving, usually only taking a few seconds to adjust the route and get you back on track. It's got a few cool features like being able to tell it that you want to swing wide a certain distance to avoid a certain area for reasons like traffic, construction, etc... It will remap a new route from that pretty quickly. It's got Points of Interest functions and you can load up your own from an SD card in the side. You can enable the Exit POIs so that if you're driving down the highway, it'll announce when one of the POIs is nearby, like a hardware store or a restaurant. Overall I'm very happy with it. This is my first true auto unit, but I've been using the smaller handhelds for years.
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Costco.com is selling the Garmin Nuvi 360 for $249. MSRP is over $500. With shipping and CA. tax, it came to $279 and arrives next week. I got the garmin bean bag mount from newegg.com for about $30 includding shipping.
Good Luck!!
Zappos price match 110% of the difference and include free overnight shipping. Comes out to $242. This is by far best deal for nuvi 360. Costco has lifetime return policy. Both are great deals!
nuvi 650 is $299. I read that 4.3" screen isnt really a huge different btwn 3.5". I prefer the portability of the nuvi 360 (bluetooth) over 650.
Re: Reasonable portable GPS
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