Looking For A Good Mid-range Gps Device

[WhenKittensATK]

Well instead of PC hardware this Christmas, I'm thinking of a GPS device for my car. I'm gonna be doing more driving next year and I suck with directions. I drive and give directions based on landmarks rather than street names. Yes I know I'm horribly useless if your trying to ask me for directions. Does anyone know of a good mid-range GPS device roughly $200-300 range. I can be above $300, but please be specific as to why that model and what are the benefits of any GPS device you list. They can be used/refurb models, if need be. I don't really care as long as it meets the reqs below.

 

I'm not sure how to list the requirments, because I know nothing about GPS devices. My guess would be, it has to be updatable for free or have a cheap fee. Something like voice turn by turn and recalulating routes if I take a wrong turn or have to take a detour due to construction. It doesn't have to have bluetooth, mp3 support, or anything extra that has nothing to do with making the gps functional.

Edited November 11, 2008 by Krazyxazn

[Crazy_Nate]

I have one for sale...name your price!

[suchuwato]

I've got a fairly cheap ($150) Garmin (one of the chunky ones) that's functional enough, but I'm not a fan of Garmin's mapping, which isn't the most accurate... also the voices are annoying as hell. However it's significantly better than the TomTom I've used before <_<

[Crazy_Nate]

Updates are usually done through SD cards, pretty painless...until you look at the price of the maps. Streets usually don't change too much, the only trouble I've ever had (streets were named differently) was in a little podunk town in Washington. I usually turn off the voices, but they can be helpful if you're not paying attention.

 

Just about every GPS will recalculate...so, if you don't want to go a certain way, just keep driving and it'll figure it out for you. I used my GPS to drive back and forth between MA and MD (college / home) and I've used it for inner city DC / NYC / Seattle driving without trouble. I even tried doing a shortest distance with no tolls route between school and home (not recommended). It worked surprisingly well, however, you learn that the shortest distance is definitely not the shortest time.

 

I think a lot of them have their quirks...especially if you are driving on a road that has, say, local lanes and express lanes. You just have to be smarter than the device, it'll figure it out eventually...

[WhenKittensATK]

If nothing comes up on BF, I'll probably buy your Nuvi 200.

[Crazy_Nate]

I'm in no rush to sell it, but...it's just sitting on the shelf nowadays (it doesn't do me any good now that I have sold my car )

[fire_storm]

Tomtom makes some pretty good GPS's.

 

I have the tomtom 930T always had great results with it. I used it when I took a summer trip from MA-FL which is about 1200 miles and there was only 1 road mistake but the gps self corrected it's self and almost no time was lost because of the mistake.

 

It's a little out of your price range though mostly because it is full of fancy features like dead reckoning and live traffic updates.

 

I'd also look at the tomtom 730 gps though because usually you can find it for around $350 USD because its basically the same as the 930 but doesn't included dead reckoning or live traffic.

 

I'd also look at there XL series of GPS's they don't have as many fancy things on them but they still get the job done for navigation.

 

When I was looking for a gps I found this website to be pretty helpful they practically have reviewed ever gps on the market and give some good in site into different gps's and their features.

 

GPS Reviews