GPS?

[Hedy]

Anyone have a GPS out there they love? I'm thinking about getting one. I'm leaning towards the Magellan 3200 or 2000.

[Riyaa]

My dad and my brother both got TomToms for Christmas. Really easy to set up and use. I think if we get one in the near future that's what we'll get.

[Hedy]

My dad and my brother both got TomToms for Christmas. Really easy to set up and use. I think if we get one in the near future that's what we'll get.

I really liked the Tom Tom I saw, but supposedly it used a worse set of maps than Magellan and Garmin.

[spring]

It is ironic, but my DH and I unknowingly got each other a Garmin Nuvi. I did a lot of research and questioning people who had them, and got him a 350......but not before I did a LOT of comparison shopping to get a rock bottom price. My DH got me a 200.......not a lot of bells and whistles, but just fine for me and, I might add, easy to use. If you have a Best Buy near you, they have a nice display of all sorts of models in demo mode. I played with the 350 before I bought it.

[Hedy]

It is ironic, but my DH and I unknowingly got each other a Garmin Nuvi. I did a lot of research and questioning people who had them, and got him a 350......but not before I did a LOT of comparison shopping to get a rock bottom price. My DH got me a 200.......not a lot of bells and whistles, but just fine for me and, I might add, easy to use. If you have a Best Buy near you, they have a nice display of all sorts of models in demo mode. I played with the 350 before I bought it.
My Best Buy did not. I could see a little, but some were just searching for a signal. ;(

I like the nuvi as well. Does the 200 have the pedestrian setting?

[missangie]

We love our Garmin! I don't know what we did without it. It is so nice to have turn by turn directions. We used it while on vacation in DC this summer, and it made getting around a breeze. It was also awesome when we were stuck in traffic after a concert this fall and took a back road. All we needed to do was tell the GPS to take us home and it lead the way down roads we didn't even know existed!!

[faithhope]

learn to geocache... it is so much fun :-)

[bs4free]

or geotagging photos...

[spring]

My Best Buy did not. I could see a little, but some were just searching for a signal. ;(

I like the nuvi as well. Does the 200 have the pedestrian setting?

I have the book for the 200 in front of me and it doesn't say anything about a "pedestrian setting." Not sure what that is. I checked the book for the 350 and didn't see that either. Sorry.

[Hedy]

I have the book for the 200 in front of me and it doesn't say anything about a "pedestrian setting." Not sure what that is. I checked the book for the 350 and didn't see that either. Sorry.

Can you set it to have directions when you're walking.

[spring]

Can you set it to have directions when you're walking.

The book really doesn't say anything about that, however you can program it to get you to a destination. It shows streets, but also longitude and latitude of where you are. I have a 10 year old one used for hiking, and I think it depended on longitude and latitude to get you from point A to point B. However, you need to put in a city, street and street address in to find a location, so I'm not sure that is what you are looking for.

It has other capabilities, like finding a restaurant, point of interest, gas station, ATM, currency converter, world clock, etc., but I don't think this is what you are looking for, either. It gives an address of http://shop.garmin.com or www.garmin.com/extras to fine optional accessories. HTH

[Hedy]

The book really doesn't say anything about that, however you can program it to get you to a destination. It shows streets, but also longitude and latitude of where you are. I have a 10 year old one used for hiking, and I think it depended on longitude and latitude to get you from point A to point B. However, you need to put in a city, street and street address in to find a location, so I'm not sure that is what you are looking for.

It has other capabilities, like finding a restaurant, point of interest, gas station, ATM, currency converter, world clock, etc., but I don't think this is what you are looking for, either. It gives an address of http://shop.garmin.com or www.garmin.com/extras to fine optional accessories. HTH

Thanks! :sunshine2:

[missymouse]

We have the Magellan 2200T and love it. We have had it just over a year and use it actually more than we thought. It is nice driving at night because you can visually see twists and turns in the road before you get to them. It doesn't do perfect in very fast moving, complicated interchanges so in that case you sort of need to know where you are going, but on the positive side if you take a wrong turn it immediately re-routes you to get you going back in the right direction again. We looked at the Garmins, Tom Tom's, etc. and finally settled on this one and have never regretted it. I see that Costco has this model now for alot less than we paid a year or so ago. But it has been worth every penny we spent on it.

DH says that Magellan and Garmin maps use maps from "Navteq" which is a US based company and is said to be more accurate (at least in North America). Tom Tom uses maps from "Tele-Atlas" which is a Netherlands (European) based company and is said to be more accurate for Europe, but maybe not for North America. All three GPS manufacturers use the same "SiRF III" GPS receiver chipset, which means that they are electronically the same inside. The only difference DH says is the packaging, the user interface and the marketing. The packaging for the Magellan 2200T is waterproof, and has a much better suction cup windshield mount than the (non waterproof) Garmin Nuvi. The Magellan 2200T can also be software upgraded to be a 2500T model, which has topographical maps and is suitable for hiking, outdoor use, etc. Magellan 2200T also has a very nice user interface that makes searching for cities and street names very easy (as you type in the letters, the least likely next letters are dimmed out, while the most likely are highlighted. It can also do zip codes). Since Garmin and Magellan both use the same GPS chipset and Navteq maps, any claims of one being more accurate than the other should be taken with a grain of salt.

DH says you should look at comparable models in the same price range from all three manufacturers and decide based on your needs. All of them come with different standard accessories, and add on (at extra cost) accessories. Some are prettier than others, but they are (electronically) the same inside. Some models give you voice based instructions ("take the next left), and some give you voice based instructions with street names ("take a left at Main Street"), others have no voice based instructions at all. This is something you should also pay attention to. DH says he found the user comments posted on Amazon to be extremely useful.

[PSL1013]

Can you set it to have directions when you're walking.

Both my son and myself/husband each have the Garmin Nuvi 350 and love it, it is really compact and easy to carry around. We have never used it to walk around but my son and his girlfriend used it this past November to walk all around NYC and they said it worked great except for alot of times it lost the connection because of all the tall buildings but he said without it they would have not gotten to where they wanted to go. HTH :)

[Hedy]

Thanks all! I wound up getting the Nuvi 200 (which has the pedestrian feature I want). Amazon has the best price. Stinks to miss out on the SR credit, but at least it helps fund the cruise and games. :)

[spring]

Thanks all! I wound up getting the Nuvi 200 (which has the pedestrian feature I want). Amazon has the best price. Stinks to miss out on the SR credit, but at least it helps fund the cruise and games. :)

Since I also have the Garmin Nuvi, could you please explain the pedestrian feature to me? I'd like to get the most out of it that I can. Thanks!:sunshine:

[Hedy]

Since I also have the Garmin Nuvi, could you please explain the pedestrian feature to me? I'd like to get the most out of it that I can. Thanks!:sunshine:

Under route settings, you can set it to pedestrain-which you can use when walking around a city for walkable directions. HTH.

[spring]

Under route settings, you can set it to pedestrain-which you can use when walking around a city for walkable directions. HTH.

Yes, that makes perfect sense. Thanks!:sunshine:

[PartiesByCatharine]

I got a Garmin Nuvi 650 for Christmas. It's so easy to setup. I LOVE IT! :)