GPS Devices Life

Well Designed - Nicely Done, Garmin - Garmin StreetPilot® c330 Car GPS Receiver Though I've only had mine a few days, first impressions are terrific. The screen clarity is superb, the user inte...

Get a Garmin StreetPilot 2620 and never ask for directions again. - Garmin StreetPilot® 2620 Car GPS Receiver When I bought my new car, I passed on the GPS system from the factory. As the next year wore on, I was regretting...

Considering getting GPS in your next car? Impressed by the system your friend has in his buff new car? Did you know he paid about $2,000 for that option, but you can get almost the same functionality for about $700, and use it in multiple cars and rental cars. Here we go…

I work as an analyst in the mobile technology industry, and Location Based Products (like the 2620) is one of the areas I cover. I believe this unit to be extremely well designed, and a joy to use. That’s from a guy who has tried about 12 similar products.

The package I bought was actually the 2610 with 128MB of memory, which is adequate for many users. But people who either travel more than 300 miles from home regularly, or people who are not comfortable with quirky software on a PC will greatly prefer this 2620 model. That’s because the 2620 is sold with a 2Gig hard drive which has ALL the US and Canadian data already on it…Your Garmin never needs to be connected to your computer to download maps.

Out of the box, the 2620 is ready to route you instantly. The default settings allow for very intuitive use, although geeks may choose to tweak the unit based on personal preferences. I tweaked mine for about 20 minutes to get the settings I prefer. This is stuff like choosing what you like displayed when the unit is guiding you (ETA, distance to turn, etc.), or when it is not (speed, time of day, current address, etc.) But since the defaults are all sensible, most people can totally skip this step.

I installed mine directly to the car’s power supply, and drilled a hole in the dash for the power/speaker wire. Unfortunately, the speaker is located in the 12v plug (to save space on the 2620 itself), so for my install, I had to install the speaker under the dash as well as tap power. The speaker should have been integrated into the unit. Connected thus to switched power, as soon as I turn the key, the Garmin always powers right up. And it’s fun! Ever since I put it in, I’ve been like a 16 year-old again: looking for any excuse to go for a drive.

One of the things that most shoppers aren’t aware of with GPS is processor speed, but believe me, it matters just like on your PC. Some GPS units I’ve tested take way too long to calculate a route, or they cannot draw a map in an acceptable time, or when you are finding an address the search is too slow. Not the 2620: it powers through all those tasks and doesn’t keep you waiting. If you’ve used an older StreetPilot, or the current Magellan routing devices, you’ll understand why a slower processor is a drag.

The 2620 also has a good, bright screen that is easy to read night, day, and bright sun. But it’s not just a screen, it’s an input touchscreen that’s easy to use. The functions are very intuitive: you want to zoom? Touch the ’scale’ display on the map. Want to move the map? Use your finger to ‘drag’ it. On models with more buttons, there are always difficult key sequences to remember, but with the touchscreen it’s much easier. Entering a destination address with just 4 buttons on older models is a tedious task, but with the 2620 touchscreen it’s easy and fast. A ‘keyboard’ appears on the screen. When entering a destination address, you do NOT enter the city, or zip, or state. You only enter the street number and the street. Then the unit’s fast processor kicks in and finds all the matches for that address within the dataset. Fast. Usually there are a few matches (200 Main could be in multiple cities) and you touch the right one. Then touch “go to” and you’re off.

Ease of use: after I installed it, my wife could use it in 5 minutes, and never looked back. Better, my in-laws used it and then bought one online the next day. My mother came to visit, and used during her entire visit and loved it (but said she doesn’t need one), then my aunt and uncle… My wife is technical, so her using it is no surprise, but usually I need to explain how to work the toaster to our parents, so if they can use the 2620, it must be easy!

The remote was an accessory I thought I would not use, but as it turns out, I use it a fair bit. I velcroed it to my center console, and use it to zoom in or out mostly. I also like the joystick on the remote for moving around maps and menus. For serious tasks, though, there is nothing like the touchscreen.

The driving directions are darn good, but not perfect. That’s a function of the raw data. The data comes from the same place as Yahoo Maps, or Mapquest (Navigation Technologies Inc), so if you’re familiar with those, then you know the level of accuracy. It’s right 95% of the time, but you may occasionally need to over-ride using the brain inside your head instead of the one on the dashboard.

Routing: With the turn-by-turn function, I particularly like the automatic zooming in and out, which seems to do a great job of showing me just the level of detail I want. When you’re on a straight highway segment of a trip, the unit will zoom out to show you a high level view of the map, but when you are making frequent turns in a neighborhood, it will zoom in to give you local street names and a detailed map. I also like the “Estimated Time Of Arrival” display so that I can call people and tell them how late I’m likely to be

When a turn is coming up, the unit tells you about it using *the exact same* wording as the road sign, so there will be no confusion. They actually have teams of people driving the country’s streets reading the road signs and entering them into the NavTeq dataset that the Garmin uses.

I love knowing the distance to my next turn. I use that all the time on the expressway, and city streets and I only have to worry about making my next turn when I’m less than a mile away. None of the old “Is my turn coming up now? Is it coming up now? Now? Now?…”

Some people have complained that the unit cannot take batteries, but there are good reasons for this. A device with a fast processor and a bright color screen uses a great deal of power. Any battery-powered device requires the product engineers to compromise speed and screen luminosity for battery life. Garmin chose to optimize the device for powered, in-car usage, which means they could pop in a hungry processor and a bright screen. If this thing were battery powered, it would be: bigger to hold batteries, slower, and dimmer… Does that sound good?

I’ve seen a new device that will be coming to the US soon from a company called Tom Tom, who make this kind of GPS device in Europe. I checked it out briefly at a trade show, and although I liked their 3D map display, and loved the look of the device, I didn’t find it as easy to use as the Garmin. Also, cellular phone turn-by-turn solutions are coming out now, with Nextel already having launched theirs. These are great, and highly portable, but they cannot provide the flexibility, display, or detail of a dedicated device. The product team really did their job when they released the 2620.

Get one of these. I promise you it will help you in ways I have not mentioned, and you would not even expect. Want an example? When you were driving to meet a friend at a restaurant you had never been to, and you had an old-school paper map and an address, you could pull over and find the street on the map, but you never knew where the restaurant was on the street. So you phoned your buddy and asked for a cross street. “North of King St.” Great. You passed King and then slowed down, looking for street numbers on every building, you’re looking for names on building signs, you don’t know how far North to go. You stay in the right lane, since you may need to stop anytime, but some jerk is doing 20mph in that lane. Do you have time to pass? No, keep looking for a number. Turns out you’re doing this for over a mile. Doesn’t anyone put there freaking numbers on their buildings anymore @#$@#!!! How far North of King is this place!! By chance, is there someone in the passenger seat offering you kind assistance. Hmmm…sometimes passengers are not much help at all. Now ask yourself: Are you focused on your driving, or is an accident more likely than normal? Now consider instead that you have a 2620 and you go North past King St. You don’t even bother look at numbers because the unit tells you the restaurant is 1.3 miles ahead on the right side. Focus on your driving instead. When you get really close, the GPS will tell you, find parking ‘cuz you will probably see the restaurant sign right where the Garmin indicates. Safer, stress free, and faster.

UPDATE: (Jan 2005) Garmin also offers models 2610, 2650 and 2660. The differences are:

The 2650 and 2660 use “dead reckoning”, which requires an installation connection to your speedometer and reverse lights. With dead reckoning, these units are more capable in areas without clear views of the skies (cities, forests, canyons, tunnels.) Dead reckoning just uses the map, your speed, and your direction (forward or reverse) to estimate where you are when the satellites are out of sight. My 2610 does have trouble when I am in downtown San Francisco or on a road with dense forests. City folk should get the upgrade.

The 2620 and 2660 models have an upgrade which shows Garmin is listening. Recall that I said the PC software is the messiest part of this product. It’s like the team that designed the in car unit was on the ball, and the team that designed the data transfer and PC software was on crack. Well, these two units have a built in hard-drive which ships with full US detailed map data, so you don’t have to involve your PC at all! Great improvement, but a few more bucks.

Other thoughts after a year of use:

- still love this product

- great for travel. When I move around the country for business, I take my 2610 with me. I have to update a CF card with the right map data before I go (2620 and 2660 users will not even have to do this step), but it’s totally worthwhile once I plug this into the rental car, and start driving around any US city like a local.

- when I’m driving our other car, which only has a Garmin eMap in it…I MISS the 2610! We use it a lot for our routes, but also for finding stores or restaurants along our way.

- one additional negative: the darned thing doesn’t know the speed differences between a regional highway and a neighborhood street. It assumes the average speed on any street is the speed limit, but that’s not the case. On neighborhood streets, you don’t actually go 30 mph because of the constant stop signs, while on an interstate, you actually might go 65 mph or more. It also doesn’t account for time lost at red stoplights. These are beefs I have that affect routing, and the ETA usually underestimates by a few minutes.

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