Top 5 Portable GPS Systems
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Garmin Oregon 200 Portable GPS System |
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This is my second Garmin GPS. The first one, an Etrex Legend, starting giving me problems just out of the warranty period; the joystick stopped working. This unit was gently used, never dropped, never got wet or abused in any way. I contacted Garmin about repairs and found it was hard to justify the cost of repairing it vs just buying a new one. I ended up selling it on Craigslist as a non-functioning unit. In December, 2008, I purchased a Garmin Oregon 200. Just this month, the unit failed; the screen showed nothing but a bunch of horizontal lines and then would not do anything else. I tried several different batteries, but still nothing worked. This unit was also used gently and maybe 10 times total. Again, I contacted Garmin about repairs. I was informed that they have a flat fee of $99. I then e-mailed them, and stated my problems with their products, hoping they might help out with the repairs, but I never even received a response. So, I now have another expensive Garmin paperweight. I’m not sure what I’ll do with this one, but I can honestly say that I’ll never buy another Garmin product. I just don’t trust the brand. |
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Garmin nüvi 255W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator |
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Great product. it is worth the money as it helps you travel around big cities. Easy to use as well. |
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TomTom XXL 540S 5-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator |
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I’ve been using an OnCourseNavigator 8 on my PDA before, so this would be the basis of my comparison. The problem with PDA is that it requires carrying around too many components (PDA, mount, GPS receiver), and without power PDA discharges the battery and loses the information after a few days even when turned off. And PDA really is not intended for the in-car use, I’ve had a few failures with the cables or contacts. So I’ve decided to get a dedicated GPS unit. I’ve had a pretty bad experience with my old Garmin and would never buy a Garmin product again, so this time Tomtom it is. It turns on fast. It acquires the satellites fast (beats that old Garmin i’ve used for the receiver by a long way). The screen is bright and I’ve never had an issue with seeing it even in the bright sunlight, unlike the PDA. And obviously the 5″ display is much bigger and better than 3.5″ in the PDA. There is a choice of the pre-recorded voices but only one computer-generated US English voice “Susan”. People who complain that it’s hard to understand are probably from places where they speak slowly. If you’re from say New Jersey or Virgina, there is no problem. It’s not great, I’d like it to be a lot more high-pitched and thus clearer, but it’s acceptable. The pre-recorded voices aren’t any better. The directions given with the pre-recorded voices and with the computer-generated voice are different. With the pre-recorded voices they suck, with computer voice they’re OK and compensate for the deficiencies of the on-screen information. The volume changes with the speed, and I find it annoying. By comparison, in OCN8 the voice is much better, and the voice directions are somewhat better, even than the computer voice version, even without text-to-speech in OCN. I don’t use the 3D view since when the GPS determines an incorrect position (between tall buildings in a city, or just thinking of a parallel road, it goes crazy and unusable while the 2D view still gives the good idea. The 2D map view in Tomtom has a bunch of issues. First, almost all of the streets on it are left unlabeled. Second, there is no way to make it keep the same zoom. It rescales automatically after a little while. The zoom buttons don’t work continuously, they require the repeated poking. And the map redrawing is just glacial slow. There is also no way to drag the map on the screen, zooming in and out are the only options. There is a separate “map browse” mode where some of these issues go away: the streets get labeled, the scale stays fixed, zoom can be adjusted smoothly, and the map can be dragged. However getting into that mode takes 3 clicks. Every time it returns to the last browsed place, and getting to the GPS position takes one more click, and it doesn’t track the GPS position automatically. The redrawing is still hugely slow, both on zoom and on dragging, and very annoying. OCN8 is light years ahead here. There are multiple color modes for both day and night, all of them not that good. There is not enough contrast between the plotted route and the roads in general, especially interstates tend to be too close to it. For the day mode the best I’ve found is with red-brown route and greenish interstates. The night modes are all poor, with shades of the same color used for both the roads and the route. (OCN8 day mode is even worse but I use it always in the night mode with the roads blue and the route bright white). The routing is OK, about the same in Tomtom and OCN, both of them sometimes looking strange if you know the area. The route summary is much better in Tomtom, since it includes the interstate exit numbers. The driving instruction display is better in OCN, since it shows two steps ahead, not just one, but with the computer voice Tomtom at least tells the second step vocally. I still haven’t found a way to adjust the route manually in Tomtom. In OCN it’s a little awkward but doable and obvious. The battery life is not that good, about 90 minutes or so. The user-friendliness of setup is great, giving the explanations at just the right time during the initial setup. |
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Garmin nüvi 265W/265WT 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic |
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Got the 265WT two weeks ago. It worked well on my road trip to Maine. Picked up satellites quickly. Routing was fairly quick and traffic information was helpful. One issue involves updating the information on the points of interest function. We found a few of the points of interest were either closed or no longer exist. After my purchase I did see that Garmin started providing the traffic function on one of the lower models (255, I believe) and would have considered that model if I had seen it at that time which is 20 – 30 dollars cheaper. |
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Magellan RoadMate 760 3.8-Inch Portable GPS Navigator |
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The GPS came with no operation manual and the power supply cradle was defective. Lukily I still had the one from my former GPS that was stolen. |





