| Still Got to Watch the Signs |
Plugged in to find nearest Walmart in Atlanta, GA and ended up at the flag with no Walmart in site. Sometimes can't find satelite and asked you what city you are in. Maybe the battery was low...who knows. Those 6 lane highways you really got to watch the signs and don't depend completely on the Garmin Nuvi to know it all. Other then that it serves the purpose in keeping you from getting lost and always being able to find home. :) |
3 Rating
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| Very good, but can use improvement! |
Like many other reviewers, I'm a first-time GPS buyer and thoroughly researched the ones currently available and ultimately decided on this one. I have used it now for about two months, and am generally satisfied with it, but as other reviewers have pointed out, you must use your own common sense in combination with it to obtain the optimum benefit. Sometimes it takes several minutes to acquire satellites, and sometimes it takes me in the opposite direction of where I need to go, tells me to go the wrong way down one-way streets, tells me the wrong side of the street the address is on, etc. Once in awhile it seems to get lost, but luckily I've been able to stumble upon the street since it took me to the proper area. It has a mind of it's own and wants me to go where it wants me to go - sometimes via a very circuitous route. Just today I was in the 3500 block of a certain street, wanting to go to the 600 block of that same street, in a straight line from point "A" to point "B". It wanted me to go several miles off that route in another direction for some reason, and it kept telling me to turn at each intersection. Another problem is that if you need to exit to the frontage road of a highway, it never says "Frontage Road", but tells you to exit onto the highway. This is sometimes confusing, but once I understood how it works, it wasn't so much of a problem.
One of the reasons I purchased the unit was for the voice prompts, which are a little disappointing. Often I'm not told to make a turn until the very last minute when there simply isn't adequate time to turn. The voice often doesn't properly read or speak many common street names. One glaring example is "First St." which the voice pronounces as "First Saint". Many other names are mis-pronounced, such as "Burjer King" for "Burger King". Maybe it's just my imagination, but when I decide to take a more direct route than the one it is giving me, the voice seems to angrily snarl when it says "Recalculating"!
I guess I must have large fingertips, because I kept making errors in entry. I swear I was hitting the proper keys, but I finally learned that if I use the fingerNAIL to touch the screen, I always hit the right key. Also, a KWERTY keyboard would be easier to use.
The few negatives aside, I am quite pleased with the unit. I can generaly depend on it to get me where I need to go. I often must travel in unfamiliar, congested areas, and most of the time it gets me where I'm going via the quickest and most direct route. The price I paid was good through Amazon (although it went down the very next week!) and delivery was earlier than expected. The graphics are good, even in bright sunlight.
It's not perfect, but I would recommend it to anyone needing a GPS. After using it for 2 months, I heavily depend on it to get me where I'm going. It's far easier than using a Mapsco or fumbling with a map!
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4 Rating
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