Vehicle GPS? Whatchu gots? you likey?

My dad has one of the midrange Nuvis (350 maybe?), and it rocks. They're pretty consistantly rated as one of the best GPS devices. I think Consumer Reports puts them on top of the heap regularly.

Very intuitive touchscreen navigation. He and I share the fault of being able to get lost less than 10 miles from home (he is far worse than I am, though), so it saves him a whole lot of grief.

It makes trips a lot more enjoyable, just punch in your desitination and forget about it. No need to watch mileage, exit numbers, etc. You can also program in preferences... for example, my dad hates U-turns so he has the device set to use U-turns only as an absolute last resort. If you miss a turn, it'll just bring you around the block. Pretty cool.

I (my wife actually, she gets lost coming out of our street sometimes) has a Garmin i5. They don't make that one anymore, but interface wise I like the Garmin ones better than the rest.

You might want to look at the Streetpilot c330 if you don't need some of the fancier features. Best thing (as always) is to find a place that sells a few different models and try them out.

Bought the wife a Tom Tom, She loves it.
lots of cool features and not to bad on the price.
Only draw back is, it has a hard time if your not on a street. Does not have offroad features like some others do.

Garmin works great - I've had a c330 and c550. I've also used or had - Magellan (Hertz Never Lost), Mini Cooper (BMW) OEM, Chrysler (DCX) OEM, Lexus (Toyota) OEM, Infiniti (Nissan) OEM. The only comparable unit was the Nissan unit. I've heard the Honda/Acura factory units are decent too. I personally rather have the Garmin units over the generally overpriced and poor programmed factory GPS plus you can move them from car to car or remove them for security purposes. Another great thing with the Garmin is you can easily override the safety feature that prevents you from programming the unit while driving

The only issues I've had with Garmin is my first c550 dying shortly after I bought it and a Bluetooth firmware issue - their quality control/testing for new software releases could be better (I think my first unit died from a software bug) but they frequency release new updates and its easy to update via the web.

syadasti said:

Garmin works great - I've had a c330 and c550. I've also used or had - Magellan (Hertz Never Lost), Mini Cooper (BMW) OEM, Chrysler (DCX) OEM, Lexus (Toyota) OEM, Infiniti (Nissan) OEM. The only comparable unit was the Nissan unit. I've heard the Honda/Acura factory units are decent too.

Click to expand...

I haven't tried the Nissan one, but I do have first hand experience with the Acura and Toyota ones. The Acura one is good (I still prefer the Garmin over it) and the Toyota one has an interface that was obviously designed by drunk Japanese ex-Microsoft employee...

I've heard VW is teaming up with Google for their future GPS systems and Toyota is going to make their own OS for their vehicles:

http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198700986&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News