GPS Devices Life

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If you’re evaluating the Garmin GPSV, GPS 60c, Quest or 2610/2620 units for auto-navigation use, this review might be of interest to you…

I work with the sales staff of a software company whose territory is the entire US and Canada. As such, it is common for us to take short business trips, with little time for getting lost between appointments. For this reason, we’d often rent Hertz vehicles just to take advantage of their NeverLost navigation system.

About two years ago, I got tired of plunking down $8 per day for NeverLost and bought a Garmin GPSV. (I paid $400; current mail-order price is around $300.) While the GPSV had a built-in base map of the US and functioned satisfactorily overall, it’s fixed 19MB of RAM could store only a handful of detailed local maps, and it was very slow at re-calculating a route when you went off course. Still, the GPSV had a solid feature set and I was sure that Garmin would release a unit that would make a logical upgrade to the GPSV if I waited long enough.

Sure enough, about six months ago, Garmin started releasing new units rapid-fire: first the 2610, then the GPS60c, then the 2620, then the Quest. These units are all appropriate choices for automotive navigation at one level or another, so how to choose? Well, after some research, I determined that:

The GPS 60C (current mail-order price $450 with automotive kit) was the “spiritual successor” to the GPSV: a battery powered unit with built-in base maps of the entire US, automatic re-routing with faster re-calculation speeds and a color display. Like the GPSV, it can handle a variety of tasks, such as hiking, biking and auto navigation. The only problem is, while the GPS60c may make a decent automotive GPS, its non-expandable 64MB storage is only sufficient to store detailed regional maps for a single major metropolitan area.

The Garmin QUEST (current mail-order price approx $500) is designed for automotive use, and addresses most of the basic shortcomings of the GPSV: it too is a battery powered unit with built-in base maps of the entire US, automatic re-routing with faster re-calculation speeds and a color display, but with 115MB of (non expandable) RAM it has enough storage to cover most metropolitan areas. As an added bonus, with the car adapter plugged in, the unit can provide turn-by turn instructions.

You might ask, what’s wrong with the QUEST? Two things: the built-in battery is not user-replaceable, and there’s too little fixed memory. This basically means that you always have to carry car adapter with you when traveling “just in case.” In addition, users who travel extensively would still need to periodically download maps when traveling about the country. Indeed, if the QUEST had 512MB of built-in RAM and used rechargeable AA NiMH batteries, it could have been a category killer.

Which brings us to the Garmin 2610 and 2620 (mail-order prices $625 and $850, respectively, after $100 rebate). Both are portable yet feature-rich, competitive with many built-in car navigation units on the market. Both offer quick calculation speed, sharp displays that are larger and have more usable area than their Garmin siblings, audible turn-by-turn instructions, and the usual Garmin bells and whistles (i.e. average speed, altitude, routes with multiple waypoints, etc.) They can also do tricks that the other units discussed here can’t do, such as showing points of interest along a route in the direction you are heading and learning your driving habits on various types of roads. Both units include a remote control that simplifies some tasks, such as zoom in/out and panning a map, but function adequately without the remote.

The main difference between the 2610 and the 2620 is that the 2620 comes with a built-in, proprietary 2GB hard drive with detailed maps of the US and Canada pre-loaded, while the 2610 comes with a built-in base map of the US and Canada and uses a 128MB compact flash card to store detailed regional maps. After some research, I went with a 2610 and swapped out the 128MB CF card for a third-party 2GB CF card, as this setup provided the same functionality as a 2620 for less money, with no moving parts to break.

How does this setup function? For the most part, the 2610 has proved an excellent travel companion. It combines the best of what one might expect from a car navigation system, along with the ability to custom-tailor the unit’s display and behavior to user preferences, all in a package that’s small enough to take with you. For example:

Users have the option of spoken directions and/or playing a tone with viewable directions for each turn on a route. I prefer the tone by itself as it interferes less with other things going on in the car (e.g. cell phone calls, music, etc.), but the tone can be supplemented by voice instructions by configuring the unit to provide spoken information about the next turn when you hit the the “speak” button.

The unit can display up to four user-configurable “tabs” of information when the unit is in “map” mode or “navigation” mode. Several useful pieces of information can be shown, including current street address, heading, speed, distance to next turn, distance to destination, time to next turn and time to destination. These tabs can be made transparent, and even individually hidden, to allow more of the map to be visible on the screen.

Route re-calculation options include automatic (with or without a warning tone) and manual. In automatic mode, the unit tries to get the driver back on course three times, after which the entire route is re-calculated. The first few calculations typically take less than 5 seconds; it’s rare for re-calculation of a complex route to take more than half a minute.

While most of the unit’s configuration options are available off of the menu key, and there are detailed sub-menus which allow users to further custom-tailor the unit. One example of this is routing functions: on the main routing preferences screen, you can specify whether you want to avoid toll roads, u-turns and non-paved roads. There are two additional “drill-down” menus available from this screen as well: one for roads/areas to avoid; another with routing preferences relative to highways, secondary roads and back roads (if you push the “automatic” button on this screen, the unit sets route preferences automatically based on its observation of your driving habits on various types of roads - a very slick feature.) While all of this is laid out in the manual, the default settings are a good starting point for most users.

So, with the above in mind, do I have any gripes about the 2610? Besides the fact that the included memory card is too small, my main issue is with the remote, or rather that certain functions (such as zooming in and out of a map) are MUCH harder to do without the remote handy. Also, being able to run the unit on AA NiMH batteries, with the option of using alkaline batteries in a pinch, would be very helpful. Finally, a CF card reader should be included with the unit, because detail maps transfer much more quickly this way (routes and waypoints still have to be transferred via the included USB cable, but they take less time to transfer so this is less of an issue.) Other than that, the 2610 is a well engineered unit which is a joy to use.

In summary, my recommendations to someone looking for an automotive GPS would be:

- Get the GPSV if you travel infrequently and/or are on a tight budget

- Get the GPS60c if you are less budget constrained and use your GPS for multiple functions

- Get the QUEST if you want an automotive GPS and usually drive within a single large region

- Get the 2610 with a 2GB CF card if you want an automotive GPS and travel extensively

Hope this helps and happy navigating!

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Tags: automotive gps, car gps, Garmin, garmin gps