Amazing for the price
Written: Nov 19 '02 (Updated Nov 19 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy to use, good display, very accurate
Cons: Menu system a bit irritating
The Bottom Line: If you want a light, portable, reliable GPS that is easy to use and simple to programme, this is the one.
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| liamabram's Full Review: Garmin GPS V GPS Receiver |
I have been a long user of the Magellan GPS Companion for the Handspring Visor palm pilot and decided I wanted to upgrade. Having read every review available of every type of portable and handheld GPS system (including additions to plug into my HP Jornada handheld PC) I decided (largely on the advice of the reviews on this website) to opt for the Garmin V Deluxe.
My first real test of the unit was a trip from Manchester city centre to Ruthin in North Wales and then back to Manchester with a stop in Denton (near Manchester).
Learning to use the Garmin V is very, very easy and, once you get used to scrolling through a few menus, it is intuitive and quick. Downloading of maps is very simple and is really just a case of selecting the region you want and then pressing the download button. As other have commented in these reviews, download times are slow but a good episode of Friends or Fraser should take care of the wait!
Arriving in Manchester it took the Garmin V a little time to locate a satellite due to the built up city centre area. This did cause a few problems and I had to follow my nose a little until it had locked on. Because of this I have now bought an external aerial, which I will be testing soon.
However, once the system was fully up and running then it worked like a dream. The ETA to each turning is amazingly accurate and the little beeps of the machine, alerting you to upcoming turns are quite reassuring. One point, however: it does not always alert you to turn left or right at roundabouts, taking the logic that the road is just a continuation. But keeping the backlight on constantly (therefore you have to power the unit with the supplied in car power cable) you can easily see which direction you need to take round a roundabout.
On the motorway it give you a good 1.5 miles notice for your turning and then tell you which lane to stay in once on the slip road. Genius!
If you miss a turn, the unit automatically recalculates and I found its computations to be quite quick and easy to follow.
One spurious instruction, however, took me down a side road that eventually ended up in a single track Welsh farm road that had a notice placed on it saying "unsuitable for road vehicles"! Retracing my route, I got back onto the main road, pressed Recalculate, and all was well again. So the moral of the story is that you still need to keep a quarter of your brain engaged, but not much more than that.
The feature I love most is the ETA to destination, which is spot on. It's great to know when you are going to arrive at a hotel when it is late at night or how far you are away from a meeting that you are already late for. A great feature.
Overall, this is a very good GPS and, for use in the UK, the 19mb memory is adequate for almost any journey. Apart from the slightly strange navigation onto the back roads of Wales and the difficulty locating a signal in big cities with the built in antenna, this machine will serve you well and get you where you need to go.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
liamabram
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Reviews written: 1
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