What is a good, cheap portable GPS Unit I can use in my car.

[mschechter]

I have $200.00 to spend. I need a reliable GPS unit for my car. A unit that I can take in and out of my 2007 Toyota Corolla.

Please e-mail me at:
[[email address removed --TechGuy]]

 

[JohnWill]

Hard to go wrong with a Garmin of TomTom, here's one in your budget: http://www.comparemaster.com/produc...t=ppc&crsource=pricegrabber&crkw=010-00656-10

 

[TechGuy]

Hard to go wrong with a Garmin of TomTom, here's one in your budget]

I think you mean Garmin or TomTom. I just wanted to clarify that they're competitors.

I just bought a TomTom One 3rd Edition that we used extensively while out of town over the last two weeks, and I've got to tell you, I really missed my Garmin. The thing worked "OK", but was overall pretty disappointing. It was very slow to pick up our location, changed it's mind on what street we should take every few blocks in downtown Chicago, and it's lack of text-to-speech left the voice commands almost useless. It has a few cool features, but not enough for me to recommend it over a Garmin. Maybe I'll have to write up a full review sometime...

 

[dr911]

Good info Techguy (Mike)......also......mschechter edit your post, take out your e-mail address, unless you want a bunch of spam in your in box. There are "spam-bots" roaming forums like this.

Or if one of the "Mod" sees mschechter post here, could you notify mschechter ?

 

[JohnWill]

I have the TomTom Go 720, and it beats the pants of my previous Garmin unit. It's lightning quick to pick up the location when turned on, and has been very accurate in navigation. I don't know about the TomTom 1, but the Go 720 has text to speech if you use the computer voices, not if you use the custom ones, I have to believe the One is the same. OTOH, I was pretty happy with the Garmin as well, it did the job. All of them will have their idiosyncrasies.

I like the TomTom feature of on-line map corrections, my Garmin did nothing but update the firmware on-line.

 

[TechGuy]

You're right -- I even corrected "Green Castle" to be "Greencastle" (a local town) on the TomTom. Very smart feature to be able to share that. The TomTom One doesn't have text-to-speech, and I knew that when I bought it, but I still expected more than "Stay Left and then Stay Left and then Stay Left" (literally that's what it said once). I don't know why the GPS is so darn slow to pick up, but I'll just recommend staying away from the TomTom One. Glad to hear that their higher models are a little more useful.

 

[JohnWill]

If you connect it to the computer before a big trip, it downloads the positions of the GPS satellites and greatly speeds the acquisition of the signal. My TomTom is pretty quick to acquire the satellites if it's been inactive for a few weeks, but it's lightning quick if I've just updated the positions of the satellites in the last couple of days.