I am not a big fan of Garmin.

My GPS has tried to kill me a few times.

I wouldn't blame the GPS............................................... ...............................................;)

Your right. My wife might have something to do with it. She has been trying to kill me for years

I use a Tom Tom I bought several years ago and keep updated. I find it accurate and useful. I would not want anything that was on my phone, the separate device is distracting enough.

PP

There will always be map errors with any system. You have to apply a little common sense, such as the time it told me to turn down what turned out to be an unmaintained road.

Better than Apple's mapping that tried to take a relative 3 states away rather than a few miles. At least my Garmin tells me how far away possible matches to my request are, it's immediately obvious when it found someplace in the wrong city.

A year ago I needed to update the maps on my ~4 or 5 year old Tom Tom, which would cost about $98 a year. I was getting ticked off paying this when the new ones give you free updates. So I contacted Tom Tom and told them I was switching to Garmin with free updates unless they waived the fee for the one I had. Instead, they offered me a 25% discount on a new Tom Tom with free updates. Like an idiot I took it. Piece of crap!

Go with Garmin.

Garmin it is folks!!

I guess I'm not getting the difference?

How is the separate unit any better?


*I had a garmin for YEARS before the cell phones caught up. Seems silly to me to pack another piece of equipment, having to move it from car to car, etc. The phone is quick/easy and with the voice recognition/hands free its easier than my garmin ever was.

Do the newer garmins have real time traffic? Waze has saved us countless hours and money because it reroutes us on the fly.

That's where I find the most benefit.

One device is strictly navigation. If you're looking at your cell for the maps, estimated arrival time, etc, you will quickly get distracted by the barrage of text messages and emails they continuously hit your phone.

The more expensive ones do

Free is free... as well, I don't have email coming in - I get it periodically. But my husband does get them on his work phone and they don't interfere with the navigation screen. All we here is the ding of an email coming in.

Nokia maps ;)

I really like the CoPilot app for ios. I have it loaded on an iPod touch and use an external Dual XGPS150A Bluetooth GPS Receiver to give the device GPS capability. Maps are downloaded and stored on the device, so no need for either WiFi or cellular signal while traveling. In the past, I've had it loaded on my iPad, which has a bigger display than any standalone GPS I've seen.

I went this way after my third "standalone" GPS unit in three years failed. Never had a problem with the app/Dual GPS combination.

The basic navigation app (and maps for one selected "region") is free. A ~$14 upgrade gives 3D display and turn-by-turn spoken instructions.

Caveat: the maps can take up a lot of space, but one can choose to download only specific regions of N. America, Europe, etc. as needed.

No, like which one? They have multiple automotive systems, some with better capabilities than others. Some have better traffic receivers & mapping algorithms, and some have better or worse GPS receivers.

I had one ~3 years ago (nuvi 780) which was great until I had to send it in to Garmin for a warranty-covered issue. They replaced it with the same model, but with a different GPS chipset (the model utilized two different chipsets). It went from great to unusable, as the 2nd chipset often took 3-5 minutes to get a GPS satellite lock, compared to under 30 seconds for the 1st one. They refused to exchange it again, unfortunately.

I had another at one point (a much earlier model) which was almost useless in urban cores, as its GPS receiver favored the satellites on the horizon rather than those directly overhead--this is a feature of the antenna and the chipset, IIRC.

My current Garmin unit (a nuvi 2595) is pretty good, FWIW.



If your charger can deliver, or your phone can only accept, say, 10 watts, but the screen + CPU + radio are consuming 12 watts, you'll lose charge even with it plugged in. This is not uncommon with typical car chargers and larger phones.