Garmin 2720 is awesome.
Maps, audio, display, quickest recalculate, ease of use, mount, estimated time of arrival.
No battery, occasionally misses the best route, manual.
Posted Jan 6, 2006 - I have been checking out GPS units for work for a few weeks. I have tested the TomTom Go 700, Magellan 760, Lowrance i500C, Navman iCN 550 and the Garmin 2720. We are buying the Garmin 2720. Maps - Not as much detail in 3D mode as other units but that turned out to be a strength. The route is purple, turns are white and because there aren't that many roads it shows more of the route than any other unit in 3D mode. I never have any problem determining exactly where I'm supposed to go. It shows things like the local Ball park (none of the other's did) and only it and the Magellan 760 found it's way through the shortcut I use to get home. If you enter 2D mode the number of streets can increase dramatically. There are 5 levels of streets so you can pick the amount of detail that suits you best. One thing I really liked was that as you expand out (it goes all the way to a continental view showing Canada the US and Mexico at one time with major roads (lots if you have "Most" selected. Voice Prompts - It tells you to turn at an appropriate time. I never got confused about which road to turn on. The Magellan has a Ding when it's time to start turning the wheel that the wife loved but it had other problems that dropped it out of contention. Audio - Audio was weak on most of the units. The 2720 was the only one that could be easily heard over the radio. It has the speaker built into the D/C plug putting it closer to you and allowing a larger speaker. Display - The Garmin has a 454X240 display. Very easy to read day or night. Has automatic night mode. Extra width allows adequately sized map with Next turn info, Speed and Arrival Time displayed all the time. I really like the Arrival Time being part of the main 3D display. Quickest recalculate - Most of the units recalculated quickly, however the Garmin often recalculated in 2 or 3 seconds and never more than about 15 seconds. Ease of use - Menu's are intuitive. (This was the achille's heel of the Magellan 760. I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to bring the main menu back up after the first trip). I didn't need the manual to figure out any of the common tasks which is fortunate since it didn't come with one. There are many, many options. This was the only unit that had a modes for different types of vehicles. One reason we selected this unit for work was due to the "Truck" mode. This is where the manual is needed and the downloaded manual could be better. Mount - The mount is awesome. It is a non-slip bean-bag affair that allows the unit to sit on the dash and not move around during turns and acceleration. I much preferred this to the windshield mounted units that tended to get in my field of view and often caused me to look at them when I really wanted to check my rear view mirror. What would I like to be different? I would like a battery and for it to be thinner so it could be put into a pocket or purse when not in use. Then it would be available whereever I was to setup the next route or just to play with. I almost bought the Nuvi for my wife. It has a battery and is small and has the same software as the 2720 and it also has an audio book, MP3 player, optional language tutor, calculator, etc. I really liked the idea of having the audio book. Why didn't I buy it? The mount and the speaker. The best I could tell the Nuvi didn't offer the bean-bag mount or the D/C cord speaker. If it had I would have bought it. Another pet peeve. Nowhere in the specs could I find out the memory size of the 2720. While I was writing this I tried one last time and finally found out from bizrate.com that it has 2Gb of intermal memory. I can only assume that it is SD memory like the Nuvi uses, although at 2Gb it may be a hard drive.
99% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?





Rated 

Comments - Post a comment