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.