Strengths:Great GPS, good reception, sturdy design, lots of nice features, is fairly configurable, comes with a pretty good world map set, is pretty much self documenting and tends to do what you want.
Weaknesses:Price, maybe compute power, documentation, Points Of Interest , registration with the street guide and general information on the unit.
Posted Jul 25, 2006 - Finding one of these units is hard. I found one in stock in a high-end marine shop that specialized in navigation equipment. It was expensive and they did not have the maps, which they promised would be direct shipped in a week or two (street guide took 4 months and 6 months later I am still waiting for the marine guide). Also, the shop had no idea what this unit was capable of.
I made a cross country trip with this unit and the stock world map and basic street map set. The details of the shore line were pretty crude, but the highways were more than sufficient for travel.
There are lots of great features. From a PC you can plan a trip with stops as well as custom Points of interest (like places you may want to go and see along the way). There is a mode where you can pick a point and have the GPS plot a navigation solution that works on the PC as well as in the unit. Once set on the trail, the GPS alerts when approaching a turn, gives a he-haw when you miss and then will compute another solution, given your current direction (great at 3 AM in a labyrinth heading into a city).
The unit uses any standard AA battery (NiCd, NiMh, et cetera), but does not allow charging in the unit (probably a safety thing). The NiMh batteris are good for about 30 hours of continuous use (with the backlight used all night – which the unit can select at dusk and turn off at dawn). When connected to a computer (for up or down loading of maps, tracks and such) the unit takes power from the USB port. There is an optional 12V car adaptor. The connector is a 4 prong arrangement that seems too fragile for a field unit. I’d allow a slow (low risk) trickle charge of the batteries and redesign the external connectors to use more common and less fragile technology, add a mode for Lithium batteries and maybe even a modest sized solar cell in the unit.
The case and mechanical design of this unit are great. The ergonomics are a bit clumsy, but there are shortcuts, lots of configurability and it is not that hard to learn the ins and outs of it. I’m a fan of resolution and more dots on the screen would be nice, but not necessary. The screen is great for a hand held unit, but for driving, consider a larger one.
Garmin does not seem to be able to put out good information on the performance on the unit (beyond marketing hype). They also do not seem to be able to give straight answers on compatibility with external components, like the memory or even batteries (the unit self describes quite well, thank you).
The micro SD devices that are supported is another mystery. The complete North American street guide needs just over 1 GB of memory. There are uSD cards that are 1 GB, but Garmin can not say if it will work. They also do not say if the Ultra interface will be a benefit.
When loading a large map set (64 MB) the download was straight forward, but afterward the unit seemed to be busy for a long time (over night). It was probably compiling the map data somehow. I wonder if 64M took hours, what would a Gig or two take?
This is a great piece of equipment and you get what you pay for. ;^)
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