Garmin V Review (Long)

[+WARTIDE]

Well as most of you know from my other threads, I had to go to Miami for a funeral on Wed. and Thurs. of this week. I didn't want the family to have to shuttle my wife and myself all over town, I knew they had enough to deal with already. My Garmin V arrived early from Amazon (just in time actually, I received it the afternoon before I left). I had no preconceived notions regarding brands but went with the Garmin V deluxe on your recommendations and online info that I found.

 

I played with the GPS on Tuesday afternoon. I read up on the features, loaded the mapsource CD to my computer, and generally just drove around with it locally to see what to expect. I was very nervous about driving around Miami blind because I've only been twice and I've always had my buddy driving me around. My wife and I rented a car, popped the GPS in the dash mount that came with it and entered our destination. After several seconds, it told me which direction to go. The funeral home was about 12 miles from the hotel. The only problem I had was this, the SUV of my wifes that we tried the V out in has a compass on an info. screen but the rental car had no compass. The first directions were to go south on such and such street. I didn't see the little north arrow right off and went the wrong way. I hear a beep and the V started recalculating the route. A few turns to get going in the right direction and everything was fine. This is the absolute best investment a traveler can make. I would have never been able to follow maps or directions to the address I had to go.

My wife did the navigating and setting of different addresses on the GPS. It is very intuitive because she caught on to it in minutes, actually quicker than I did. Anyway, we found out quickly to rely more on the distance to turn than on which exit to take. You see Miami has renumbered exits and the old exit number is just a small sign off to the side of the big exit sign. We were able to just watch the distance and exit as directed. The autorouting and recalc. are my favorite features. If for some reason you miss a turn, just slow down and let it recalc. and you'll soon be back on track. It instills a confidence that no matter where you are, you can always find where you are going.

We found every address we entered without much trouble even in the beginning when we were really learning how it worked. After several short trips with it, we were nearly flawless. After the viewing at the funeral home, we wanted to get a bite to eat. We sat in the parking lot looking through the restaurant list. My wife decided to try to find an Outback steakhouse. We found the nearest one and drove to it in about 5 minutes. Getting back to the hotel was not as easy. Ongoing construction had detours going everywhere. The GPS got us within a few hundred yards of the hotel and was prompting me to turn left even though no left turns were permitted. We simply went straight and made a couple of right turns to get on the other side of the highway and went right to the hotel.

I don't know if I can ever explain the difference this device made on this sad trip. It was a comfort to be able to navigate around a city that is just about terrifying to someone who has no idea of where to go and some neighborhoods that are very dangerous. I tip my hat to each and everyone of you that suggested the V.

I can't say enough good things about the GPS to do it justice. If some of you are wondering which GPS to get, I don't see how you could go wrong with this one.

BTW, my wife no longer thinks of it as a toy or a fun gadget. She plainly stated after getting back to the hotel the first night, "We would have been screwed without this thing." We are both looking forward to our first geocaching trip, hopefully this weekend.

 

Thanks for all your help.

[billsumrall]

quote:

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Originally posted by chiro:

 

BTW, my wife no longer thinks of it as a toy or a fun gadget. She plainly stated after getting back to the hotel the first night, "We would have been screwed without this thing." We are both looking forward to our first geocaching trip, hopefully this weekend.

 

Thanks for all your help.

---

Good experience for you! I can relate to the 'wife' portion as well. When my V arrived (without mentioning to wife of the order) she was a little perturbed. I soothed her somewhat by saying if I didn't like it, I could sell it on eBay. Well, after the first trip her words were, "I'm glad I lived long enough to see something like this available."

 

As we are both nearing age 70, I also reminded her that 'old folks' need this to find their way to grocery store and back!

 

Bill

[+Tahoe Skier5000]

good story!

 

Remember, when autorouting, the GPS gives you an advanced warning of the upcoming turn, usually about 1.5 miles out from it. It will beep, and then show you a picture of the turn with instructions. That will go away after a few seconds, and then once you are about 500 feet from the turn, the gps beeps again and shows you a picture along with distance from the turn, and instructions once again. The important thing is to pay attention to the distances given. More importantly, make your turn into the turning lane during the warning message, so you don't have to try to jam into place at the last second.

 

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Garmin V

Garmin III+

[+Cheval]

Great experience. Thanks for sharing.

 

I love my V! I had my husband's old III when he got his V and I couldn't understand why he was so enamoured of it. Until I got my own.

 

See, he wanted to buy a V Deluxe because it came with all the CitySelect regions unlocked (he bought one right when they came out and only had 1 region unlocked). So instead of buying the unlock codes, we just bought another GPS V that came with all the regions unlocked. Thanks to a clause that says if you own two GPS V's, you can have them both set up to use the regions you've paid to unlock (in our case, those that came with our second V), we are both able to put any of the maps on either machine.

 

My V goes everywhere with me. It's here at work (in my office...didn't want to leave it in the car!). It goes with me when I ride my horse, when I drive my car, and when I go caching or walking (NEVER without a cache at the end, though!).

 

Only 2 complaints I have. 1) It needs more trackpoints! I never use the saved tracklogs and wish I could free up that memory to be used for the active track (or they'd just up the points to 10,000, but I understand the basic limits of that).

 

And 2) It could use more memory for maps. If it took data cards, my husband and I would be extremely happy! But it's fine the way it is. We use both GPSrs on a trip, so my V has some of the maps, his has others, and we both try to have the destination city. The driver gets the GPS with the current maps and that switches halfway through a trip.

 

If they ever came out with a GPS V+ (or a GPS VI) that's just the V that takes data cards, we'd be all over that.

 

Cheval

[+Team Shibby]

quote:

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as quoted by cheval:

It needs more trackpoints! I never use the saved tracklogs and wish I could free up that memory to be used for the active track (or they'd just up the points to 10,000, but I understand the basic limits of that).

---

 

If you pay close attention to the track log memory meter, you can save it when it is almost full and start a complete new one. This can be done up to ten times

 

Kar

[+mrp]

quote:

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Originally posted by Team Shibby:

If you pay close attention to the track log memory meter, you can save it when it is almost full and start a complete new one. This can be done up to ten times

---

 

While true, this is misleading. When you "save" a track it reduces the number of trackpoints to the maximum allowed for a saved track, 200 I think. In order to do this , it trows away almost all the trackpoints except for those that represent major changes in direction. It also throws away all date/time information, so you can't reconstruct "speed" when you download those tracks.

 

-- Pneumatic

[+Cheval]

The problem with saving the tracklogs is that the saved tracks are only, what, 250 points max? So you lose accuracy. Also, unfortunately, the track points saved do NOT save time with each point. For my purposes (horse endurance training), that doesn't work at all. I need to know time and speed for my training logs. But that does work in some situations, just not mine.

 

What I do is figure how long I need to ride, and calculate how often the GPSr should save a point in order to track the whole ride with 2999 points. For example, for 12.5 hours, I set the GPS to save a point every 15 seconds. I just lose accuracy. I like accuracy (for switchbacks and the like), so the closer the points, the better my accuracy.

 

But I do love my V. It's a good all-around unit. I use it every day I leave the house for all sorts of things. :-) Didn't mean to move the thread away from that. If I didn't ride long distances, the trackpoints would be enough.

 

Cheval

 

P.S. I didn't read Pneumatic's post before I wrote this...

[+Team Shibby]

See that! You learn something every day!

 

Kar

[+Brian - Team A.I.]

I recall the V giving you notice of an upcoming turn at .1 miles, not 1.5. At least that's when it beeps.

 

Brian

Team A.I.

[billsumrall]

quote:

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Originally posted by Brian - Team A.I.:

I recall the V giving you notice of an upcoming turn at .1 miles, not 1.5. At least that's when it beeps.

 

Brian

Team A.I.

---

It may have something to do with speed (time to turn) as I have had it beep 1.5 miles from turn at 70 mph, then another set of beeps within a few hundred feet of turn. Also at about 30 mph it has beeped about .25 miles (maybe less) from turn.

I'll check it out next drive.

 

Bill

[+Team DEMP]

quote:

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Originally posted by Brian - Team A.I.:

I recall the V giving you notice of an upcoming turn at .1 miles, not 1.5. At least that's when it beeps.

 

Brian

Team A.I.

---

The unit definitely detects the speed you are traveling at and alerts you about (from what I can tell) 1 minute before you're going to get to the turn.

 

So, at 60 mph that would be 1 mile before. At 30 mph that would be about 1/2 mile before.

 

David

[kb9nvh]

I may be wrong but I think it ignores your speed and just uses the appointed speed for the road you are on to determine when to alert you to the next turn.

 

I have had some inconsistent results though. We need a garmin "firmware" guy on this list to answer these kind of questions..

[+elsinga]

I know from personal experience that the V uses the speed to tell when to beep for a turn. I do a lot of highway driving here in the Netherlands (Europe) and the V beeps at 3 kms ahead when at 120km/h, but at 3.2 or so kms when doing 140km/h. I guess it's beeping about 1.5 minutes before the turn.

 

--

Robert Elsinga =8-)

geocaching (at) elsinga.org

[kb9nvh]

Deleted

[kb9nvh]

Deleted

[kb9nvh]

I wonder if it uses an "average" speed over the past minute or so....

 

Just that there are times when I notifies me a mile away and I'm moving pretty slowly ...

 

My V worked "flawlessly" on the interstate going through louisville for turn to turn navigation. I always knew my next exit, whether it was to the right or the left and how far and how long it was away....I'm telling you, for what it lacks in that area for rural directions it makes up for on the highway.

 

Automatic recalculation has to be turned off if your far from your destination and you get off course...I was leaving louisville and had my route back home (130miles). Getting off the route it would be so long to recalculate that by the time I knew the new route you were too far down the road and it had to do it all over again...the only hope is for you to stop and wait for it to redo its thing..

[The Cuthberts]

If it helps, the Smart ST software that I use zooms out from the map the faster I go and warns of the exits further away. If it went by speed limits, I'd be stuffed as most of the roads around where I live are 60mph but it is impossible to drive at that speed due to the narrowness and bends and the fact that I'm watching the GPS coords at the same time

 

Andy