The wife is looking for lat minute gifts and I'm thinking about a GPS unit for the truck...at this point, I'm leaning towards the Magellan's because I like the fact that they have campgrounds right in the POI's and I haven't noticed them on the others.
Help me narrow my choices... what do you use and would you buy another if the opportunity was there?
I have two Garmins, one for the vehicles and one for geocaching. I guess my opinion would be one sides as that is all I have ever owned.
The Garmin for the vehicle has been screwy since the day I got it. The DW ordered it from Amazon for Christmas about 3 years ago and the Bluetooth has never worked on it. Just too big a hassle to send back. I did call Customer service and the where more than willing to make right with it but I didn't see myself using the bluetooth technology so I opted not to. Map updates are the next hassle. A person can almost buy a new unit for the price of a map update.
My handheld for geocaching is great just for that. It is an older model I bought off of Craigslist to try out geocaching. Works fine, does have problems reaching the satelites in heavy cover and is hard to read in direct sunlight.
Overall I would probably get another Garmin it either were to die on me. Hope this helps.
I've had 3 Magellans. An early model that lasted 3 yrs and many miles (from discount bin at Sears) and two same newer models. The first crapped out with a programming error and wouldn't load. This was within one year of buying it. I wrote to the company, they checked to see if I had activated it through them for warranty purposes. I hadn't; the old one was still on file. They said, "No bother, send it back.". I did and had a new/rebuilt in hand within a week. Customer service saved them.
As for the preloaded campgrounds, most of them are commercial.
The Bluetooth feature, while great on paper, leaves a lot to be desired. Any call in or out sounds like crap. I'll stick to my little ear thingy.
Even with my newer model not all maps are updated. I suppose that's a problem with progress and technology.
I will say, in 3 months last year I logged over 8000 miles of running the roads. Maggie didn't fail me - much.
G/f has a TomTom. She doesn't use it much. I don't think she much cares for it.
We have a Garmin etrex handheld (about 4-5 years old) and a Garmin Nuvi (about a year old) for the vehicles. Both perform well, although the etrex does some funky things with route mapping from time to time, like telling you to get off a turnpike exit, go around the block and get back on. I guess it's testing to see if everyone is awake! The Nuvi has real-time traffic alerts around cities which has come in handy already.
There are a lot of custom POIs that can be loaded in the Nuvi, including state parks and recreation areas.
DW's brother has a TomTom that he's been happy with. It doesn't have as many features as the Nuvi, but it's a few years older.
John
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