GPS Devices Life

Bought it at Sam’s Club - Magellan Meridian Gold Handheld GPS Receiver Okay I was influenced strongly by the special on the Magellan Meridian Gold being on sale at Sam's Club for $302 i...

Magellan 800 Good and Bad - Magellan RoadMate¿ 800 Car GPS Receiver I purchased my Magellan 800 over a month ago and have been using it every day testing it and becoming familiar wit...

Updated 12/25/06 Merry Christmas. I apologize for any confusion, but when I searched for a Nuvi 660 the day I tried my unit out, there were zero reviews written. I wrote the first one, but there was an error in how it was indexed, so now it shows up as a Nuvi 360. Just to reiterate, this review is for a Garmin Nuvi 660! Thank you.

Blah blah blah, Jerome’s obsessive history with GPS

(Go down to the asterisks if you want to read about the Garmin!)

I have found the ultimate. I have had factory GPS systems in 2 of my personal vehicles, a BMW and a Mercedes. Both of these paled to the factory GPS in my wife’s Odyssey.

I purchased a 2005 GMC Sierra after realizing that the truck that I wanted did not exist. Extended Cab, 8 foot long bed with a GPS system. The Toyota and the Nissan were the only trucks that had GPS, but did not offer an 8 foot bed with an extended cab. I decided to get the truck that I wanted, and then add a GPS system to it.

I was going to get the Pioneer Double Din but learned that most of the GPS functions are disabled while the car is moving. While I realize that this may be a safety issue, I had become accustomed to entering new destinations while driving in my cars and my wifes car with factory GPS. The Pioneer was out.

I purchased a Nav-Cam from Sams Club and returned it in one day. Main reason, when entering an address, you could not enter the number. If your destination was on a 20 mile long street, you could not enter the precise destination.

My next unit was a Cobra 4500 from Costco. It was returned in about 4 weeks, although I packaged it up to return it THAT NIGHT! It had no battery so it needed to be plugged in to operate, It was as big as a semi(OK maybe not a semi, but it was huge!, and my biggest disappointment: no matter how hard I tried, it would not attach to the windshield. Upon reading the manual, it clearly stated a flat surface was needed, so for all of you with Model A Ford’s, this is your nav system!

My next unit was a Magellan 3050T from Costco. I actually liked this unit, but not well enough to write a review about it. It was A LOT smaller than the Cobra, it attached to my windshield and it had a great interface. I have found in my Epinions history, I am motivated to write reviews on products that I hate, and products that I love. The ones that are alright, or that I merely like, never get reviewed. I would heartily recommend the Magellan to anyone looking for a basic GPS that is easy to use.

Wow, dude, are you ever going to talk about the NUVI 660? Yes, here I go.

********FINALLY, the review on the NUVI 660*********

This unit is AWESOME. I was wandering around Sam’s Club one day, and saw a display for the Garmin. WOW. This GPS was expensive! but WOW! this unit was terrific looking. It had a huge screen. The Magellan had a 3.5 inch standard ratio screen while the Garmin had a 4.3 inch wide aspect screen. The Garmin has a much higher resolution. To those of you familiar with computer monitors, the Garmin is able to show more detail. The Magellan would show a curved street as a series of jagged straight lines. The Garmin shows a curved street as one continuous curved line. The Magellan screen was fairly bright, but the Garmin was significantly brighter and was clearly visible in ALL conditions during the day.

What is really appealing about this unit is that although it has a larger, brighter, higher resolution display, the unit is much smaller than the Magellan. How small? This unit will fit easily into a large shirt, or any jacket pocket. How small is it? The unit is 7/8 of an inch thick by 4 7/8 inch wide by 3 inches high. The magellan is .1 inches narrower, almost an inch higher and almost twice as thick! Seriously, You could almost stack 2 Garmins together to equal 1 Magellan 3050T!

Traffic:

Antenna for Traffic; Both the Magellan and the Garmin have traffic but I could not stand the traffic on the Magellan. Have you ever seen a dipole FM antenna that comes with most home stereos? You know, that wonderful beige antenna that you are supposed to tack up on your wall to get great reception. The only problem is that your wife will let you keep the antenna up for a nanosecond before you are told to take that hideous looking thing off that Behr Comfort Zone satin semi gloss wall! Now imagine the same gross wire tacked onto your windshield. The beautiful thing is that it is hideous from both sides of the glass. From the outside, it looks like you have a cracked windshield. The Garmin has no external antenna, other than the Power wire that supplies power to the unit. The power adaptor has LED’s that indicate power and another that shows the status of your FM Traffic reception.

Traffic Alerts: The Magellan pops up a traffic alert (Slow traffic ahead) and that’s it. If you weren’t looking at the display at the time (3 to 5 seconds) you missed it. The Garmin has a screen that shows all the traffic alerts in your area. Mine found slow or stationary traffic problems up to 250 miles away! Hands down, the Garmin was more useful.

BLUETOOTH! Although I knew that this unit had Bluetooth, I wasn’t planning on using this feature. I bought the unit because of it’s compact form factor and large display and didn’t really care that it had Bluetooth. For those of you that do not know, Bluetooth is a wireless standard that is finding it’s way in more and more phones. Originally, Bluetooth was only available in higher end phones, but now almost every phone except for the entry level phones, have Bluetooth. With Bluetooth, you can have a headset, or in the case of the Garmin, a car speakerphone, without having to hook up any cables.

So even though I wasn’t planning on using the Bluetooth, I had to try it out. After a super easy pairing procedure which basically tethers the device to your phone, I made a test call and checked my voice mail. It sounded very good. By the way, the unit has an FM Modulator and you can hear all your calls through your Car Stereo! What really sold me was when I received a call. In huge letters across the display of the Garmin was the name of the person calling me! I didn’t have to take the phone out of my pocket to see who it was! I just had to touch the Answer button! I was starting to realize that this Bluetooth was going to be a super cool feature of this unit. I then learned that the Garmin has access to your phone, and it’s phonebook. Simply go to the menu screen, touch the phone icon, press the address book and there are all your contacts. Scroll to the right one, and voila, the call is made. Want to talk convenience? The Garmin has 6 million points of interests, such as banks, restaurants, gas stations, etc. Lets say you want to know when a restaurant closes. Touch the “Where To” Button, Spell the name of the restaurant, and up pops the address and the phone number. Tap the phone number, and the Garmin calls the number for you. Totally awesome and once you try it, you will never go back to the old way.

SD CARD FOR Photos, Music and Audio Books

Most units have this so I will just mention that the Garmin leaves nothing out. I inserted a 1 Gigabyte SD Card, and was able to play music that I recorded onto it, and also was able to view pictures that were on the card. Nothing super, but the unit will facilitate this.

This unit does so much more. I have not uploaded any of the custom travel assistant programs, nor have I even connected it to my computer, yet. The Garmin comes with a car charger, a Computer USB link cable, a HOME AC Charger!, a CD, a Carrying case, a windshield mount, and a dash adhesive disk.

Magellan Pet Peeve that was not a problem with Garmin. One of the things that annoyed me about the Magellan was when I got in my car and took off. The Magellan would sometimes take 1 to 2 minutes to acquire the Satellite signal. I went to the Sema show in Las Vegas, and went the wrong direction, because I thought I knew where I was going, but had to guess because the unit was still “acquiring.” The Garmin takes about 20 seconds to load up and the map is ready to use! Normally, by the time I back my tank of a truck out of a parking space, the unit is ready to go.

Price Updates: The Magellan 3050T cost me $499 from Costco. The Garmin retails for $999.00 but I picked it up for $789.99 at Sams Club.

Updated December 9:2006 9:16am PST:

I forgot to mention a couple of things in my haste to get this review published…

1. This unit gives you turn by turn voice prompts as most units do. Unlike other units, this unit pronounces the street names! Although it mispronounces a few of the obscure names, it is very helpful because now you can keep your eye on the road, and without looking down at the display, know which street to look for. Genius! All others will pale in comparison that does not have this feature.

2. Easy removal. The Magellan was very difficult to remove from it’s cradle. You had to use two hands, and one had to go behind the unit in between it and the windshield. It also took a lot of pressure to release it. The Garmin was extremely easy to remove. you put very little pressure on a button in the front while pivoting the unit down.

Updated December 10, 2006 12:55am

I still love the unit, but thought this may be of interest to some of the members. There is no way to select which Icons appear on the map. The Magellan had a menu item and you could select individual icons, such as gas stations, restaurants, hotels, etc. On the Garmin, there is no way, that I know of, to select which Icons you can have on the screen. To make matters worse, the icons are only viewable at the two highest zoom levels, 200 ft and 120 ft.

On the positive side, this unit has a very intelligent and user friendly search for Points of Interests. Here is some more background, as much as I like the factory GPS in my wife’s nav system ( touch screen, huge 7 inch display, etc) I hate looking for a point of interest. For example, if you want to find a Costco, you have to know exactly how the Costco is spelled, and which category it is in. Let me explain, is the Costco that you are looking for that is 5 miles away listed as a Costco, or a Costco Wholesale, or worst of all Costco-Wholesale? Unless you spell it exactly right, it will give you the Costco several thousand miles away. This happens more often than not. The problem is that the priority on the Honda is exact spelling, not proximity. The Garmin handles this the right way. Proximity first, spelling second. It will show me all the Costco’s, no matter how they are spelled or categorized, closest ones first. Combine this with the dialing with Bluetooth feature that I mentioned earlier, and this system can not be beat!

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Tags: ACR, car gps, Cobra, Garmin, Magellan, Pioneer