OT - Best GPS system sub $1000

I suggest that you have a look at the GPSOZ website which has a lot of info on several brands, at

I've been told that Qantas pilots prefer Garmin GPS units, but that's unconfirmed. I'll never forget the review of a Tomtom I read, by a bloke in England. He was using it to get to a job interview in London, but it completely died on him. He had to buy a street directory to finish the journey. :) Apparently the Tomtoms are not the most reliable GPS receivers on the market... When you find a GPS which looks interesting, simply type its model number and "review" into Google, and you'll get tons of user opinions. Good luck.

Bob

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 19:49:13 +1100, "Mike" wrote:

I tried out a Destinator ND briefly. Apparently Destinator have the best maps in general, but they need to work out some kinks...

- It invited me to do a U-turn on a freeway.

- Asked me to turn right in the Burnley tunnel (it's a straight line! It probably got confused with the road above.)

- It gives instructions for intersections that are some distance ahead (it once told me that I had to turn left at a roundabout that was 3km ahead. It also yaps on at 500m and 200m which I think is more than sufficient.)

- Battery life is so severely limited that it's almost useless. It doesn't last more than 5 minutes out of the car. I thought it was a faulty battery but others have reported this also.

- Complains I'm over the speed limit when I'm doing 80km/hr on a freeway onramp.

- Told me to turn right into a road... that was blocked by a locked gate and a nasty warning sign about trespassing on federal airport property.

- Does some odd route calculations, in suburbia it tended to prefer weaving around back streets rather than sticking to the main roads. The former may have less DISTANCE than the latter, but because of all the turns, roundabouts, lower speed limits etc it takes LONGER.

- Blinking red and blue lights on each side of the unit make my car look like an unmarked police vehicle any time I need to turn (these can be disabled :) )

On the plus side, I did like that it was fairly flexible with route recalculation. I could ignore an instruction and it would figure out a new way that usually fitted in with what I wanted to do, rather than trying to guide me back onto the route it had previously chosen. This was handy as I tended to tune out when I was in my local area, I know it better than a computer. :)

Anyway, my brief experience with this product is apparently typical of the current generation of GPS navigators. They are not yet ready for general "hands off" public consumption. If you can live with the quirks and not rely 100% on it then you'll be right. Just make sure you have a return path in case you're unhappy with it. Mine went back a few days after I purchased it.

Thanks Bob. The GPSOZ site was useful but looks geared specifically to Garmin and Magellan etc. I'll keep up the search. Cheers Mike

Sounds like a fun toy!! Do you recall what release map software was on it?

Hi Mike, A mate of mine's got a Garmin GPSmap 60CS receiver running the City Navigator v6 maps. It's proved itself to be a very good compromise between a dedicated car unit and a fully portable one. Very sensitive receiver and generally excellent at autorouting a driver from one place to another with minimum problems, even when the driver goes past a recommended turnoff. It falls into the price category you're asking about, though the City Navigator CD is about $350 extra. :(

Regards Bob

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:17:03 +1100, "Mike" wrote:

Here's a thread I started on a web BBS... my msgs repeat a lot of what I've already outlined in this newsgroup thread, but there's some other useful info in it (including mention of other products) as well.

Um... helps if I post the URL

I have also been looking for a good portable GPS for the car. I have not yet come across a model that tells you both where to go, and where fixed speed cameras are. I am aware of the uniden unit that does the latter but I would be after a combined unit. It seems a trivial feature to have, so why have they not added it to other high end models?

I've been looking....

ICN 320 $450 at Strathfield ICN 510 with coupon for 2005 maps $688 at Dick Smith ICN 520 $850 pretty much everywhere at that price now HP 6515(?) PDA with inbuilt GPS reciever and coupon for TomTom software ~$900

Been trying to figure out any incentive to get the 520 over the 510 (old model, looks the same etc) but no-one can provide any guidance (email to Navman was supposedly ignored).

The 320 screen is pretty small.

320 only does 2D mapping which cut it out of my range. Not sure of difference from 510 to 520 but I'll look into that MIO 268 looks OK at ~ $800 but have not had any user comments. Cheers

Mike

I'm not up on the in-car solutions, but I'd make sure that it is a genuine PDA solution which allows you to run other programs like OziExplorerCE etc Much more flexibility if you ever want to get into Geocaching or other GPS related activities.

Dave :)