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Old 02-10-2010, 09:54 AM   #1
Gerry 1950
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Default Best GPS unit

We are traveling to the west coast on a months vacation and need advice on the most suitable GPS unit. This will be our first trip with our 2720SD and am presently outfitting needed items. Have the Woodalls 2010 travel guide and the Good Sam Travel guide.
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Old 02-10-2010, 12:57 PM   #2
Bill
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When you ask about a GPS, presumably you mean the kind that you use in the car, to guide you down the streets and roads (as opposed to the handheld kind that you use for hiking, geocaching, etc).

There have been previous discussions of these street-mapping GPS units, and a search will turn up some of them for you. I think the general conclusions have been
1. Almost all of them are very good
2. Probably more than 50% of users bought a Garmin Nuvi of one flavor or another. There are many models.
3. Any of them can make a mistake, so you should always have a paper map, and don't trust it if it seems to be doing something stupid (people have died from doing this)
4. If you want fancy, you can get fancy, but it will cost you. "Fancy" meaning spoken street names, Blu-tooth, traffic advisories, etc. If you can settle for plain, you can save some money. It is the same receiver inside. They are all equally accurate.
5. They are cheap enough that you can go with a name brand. There deosn't seem to be a reason to buy an ultra-cheap Chinese knock-off.
6. They are very useful.

In many cases, the manufacturer's web site is quite pricey. Shop around - many of us have bought from GPSCity, for example.

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Old 02-10-2010, 03:13 PM   #3
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If you want just a cheap basic unit, you can't beat the Tom Tom 130. They were on sale at Staples before Christmas for $80.

Like Bill wrote, you can't rely 100% on any unit. A paper map is still a good thing. But my Tom Tom has got me out of some difficult situations where paper maps would not have shown the details that I needed to find my way back to a main road.
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Old 02-10-2010, 03:56 PM   #4
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One of the advantages of my hand held Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx is that it works very well in dense redwood forests. If you will always be away from tall trees and tall buildings then this will not matter to you.

I take it with me when mountain biking or when riding my motorcycle. A dash mounted unit in the car may not be able to do this. If you do not go very far on bicycles then this will not matter either.

Mine does not talk to me. I have to stop and look at it.

For just finding my way around a strange neighborhood, my daughter's iPhone is adequate. We used it to find the hospital in Truckee at midnight a week ago.

Pay attention to memory capacity. I have all of the street maps for the 48 contiguous states, plus the TOO maps for all of California. If you want the TOPO maps for all of the US then you will need a very large memory capacity.
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Old 02-10-2010, 04:42 PM   #5
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I bought the TOMTOM 340 for $100 at Target before Christmas.

The really nice feature is an emergence button that offers to guide you to the nearest medical and other locations from wherever you are at.

I agree that backup maps are great. The ones in the major campground books are nice and help with choosing travel stops.
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Old 02-11-2010, 08:46 AM   #6
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To the above posts, I'd add that the points-of-interest database can be a major difference between some units. There've been occasions (especially when we were in New England) that the GPS was the only way we knew to find gas stations, motels, restaurants, etc. since signs were scarce or non-existant and even on the Interstate the blue signs with motel/gas/food/etc. info were lacking.

One thing Garmin has recently done (at least for my Streetpilot 2730) is to offer a one-time pay for a lifetime (for that unit) database update -- more than a single update, of course, but less than twice the cost.

Also, here's a site with a lot of information about GPSs, with forums for most brands/units.
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Old 02-11-2010, 09:32 AM   #7
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I've owned several handheld units mainly used when sailing unfamiliar areas. Recently my wife bought a Hyundai Santa Fe with a $1,750 combination stereo/XM radio/gps unit built in. I now keep a Garmin Nuvi in my truck and it is infinitely easier to use than my DW's fancy built in. As an example, the Garmin unit automatically changes the screen background color from white to black when it gets dark - the built in only dims the screen and you have to key in that change manually. The Garmin gives a much better representation of your vehicle progress and where exactly you need to turn. As I am frequently alone in the vehicle, having one that "talks" is important to me and the Garmin has a much larger vocabulary and more useful prompts. As we are both pushing 60, getting a unit with a larger screen was important to us - both in terms of seeing the screen and interms of inputting addresses, etc. so we spent almost $200 for our Garmin at Best Buy to get the big screen and wouldn't have it any other way. Particularly useful is the constantly updating "time of arrival" feature - returning from a trip to Ohio last week I was able to arrange to meet DW at a local diner and neither of us had to wait for the other to arrive. This may sound a little like a Garmin infomercial but I do have one complaint about the unit - it is so much better than the built in that DW frequently grabs it out of the truck to use instead of her expensive built in! - camp2canoe
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Old 02-11-2010, 01:25 PM   #8
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In lieu of making a model recommendation, I would like to make a general suggestions. Many of the units will get you from one location to another by either the fastest or shortest route. About half will let you plan a route at home on your computer and load it into the GPS where it will follow the route you planned ( with all the side trips etc). I strongly recommend one that allows you to plan a route at home and not be forced to take the route the GPS determines.
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