New GPS for the wife.

[dnoblett]

My wife has a good sense of direction and tends to get around town well without a GPS, but she does like having one to get her home or to odd places, over the years we have had a couple Magellan units, they seem to work well for a couple years each, the first one started getting crazy with it's routing, and map updates became unavailable, the second Magellan worked well, but lately it started having power issues.

 

This past week, I spotted a basic Garmin unit for sale at B.J.s Wholesale, the nüvi 50LM, price around $90, it has a lot for a basic unit, it seems to have a lot of map-data loaded, way more than just North-America, when setting it up it asks for Region, and has places in it's list like U.K, south Africa, Europe, even China, and Australia. It's language selection is very large too. I set it to display in English, and can set it's speech to Chinese, or English, my wife prefers English speech. The Garmin had lifetime map updates, where the Magellan I had to pay to update, the only + on the Magellan I had was traffic alerts, which the basic Garmin does not do, the next model up from Garmin does do traffic alerts.

 

Going to have to do some testing of it to see exactly what it can do, from what I read it should at least do Canada and the USA, which is all I really care about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dennis143]

My wife has a good sense of direction and tends to get around town well without a GPS, but she does like having one to get her home or to odd places, over the years we have had a couple Magellan units, they seem to work well for a couple years each, the first one started getting crazy with it's routing, and map updates became unavailable, the second Magellan worked well, but lately it started having power issues.

 

This past week, I spotted a basic Garmin unit for sale at B.J.s Wholesale, the nüvi 50LM, price around $90, it has a lot for a basic unit, it seems to have a lot of map-data loaded, way more than just North-America, when setting it up it asks for Region, and has places in it's list like U.K, south Africa, Europe, even China, and Australia. It's language selection is very large too. I set it to display in English, and can set it's speech to Chinese, or English, my wife prefers English speech. The Garmin had lifetime map updates, where the Magellan I had to pay to update, the only + on the Magellan I had was traffic alerts, which the basic Garmin does not do, the next model up from Garmin does do traffic alerts.

 

Going to have to do some testing of it to see exactly what it can do, from what I read it should at least do Canada and the USA, which is all I really care about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You may already know this, Dan. Make sure you set it up for quickest route and not the shortest or it will send you onto side streets with a direct route as the crow flies.

[ama537621]

Dan,

 

can that unit be set to display Chinese?

[Dennis143]

Dan,

 

can that unit be set to display Chinese?

I will chime in for Dan. Yes it displays Chinese characters and has a Chinese voice, as well as up to ~30 different languages.

 

My wife cannot read or write English. So, you can imagine how many times she's gotten lost and I had to go fetch her home. With her Garmin she can and does go anywhere without issue. She's even driven alone from LA to other cities 100 miles away with no problems.

[dnoblett]

Yep, speaks Mandarin, and can be set to display in Chinese.

 

We should use it to navigate and meet up somewhere between Us and You.

 

I need to test it to make sure it has Canada to, important for our neck of the woods.

[ama537621]

nice,

I will have to order one for when we return to the states. I will have to do some more overseas business trips and I will feel better if she has a unit that she can easily use.

getting her to not freak out by spending the money to buy it will be the battle.

[dnoblett]

I will add one more note about the nüvi 50LM, it does not indicate on the box that it only does the USA, I ended up spending an additional $50 to get the Canada download from Garmin. It does have lifetime map updates, and a lot of other free add-ons like voices, and car icons available for download from Garmin.

 

It has been a solid working unit so far.

[NickF]

I have a somewhat older Nuvi 255W that speaks and displays Mandarin. ChunMei doesn't drive, but likes to listen and watch it when we travel because it helps her become familiar with local areas. I purchased the lifetime updates package a couple of years back, and installed the local app on one of my PC's. I get notifications whenever there's a map update. I haul the GPS inside, plug it into a USB cable and tell the app to update. That's it.

 

I have the USA and Canadian maps installed, but a couple of updates back the maps became too large to hold both countries, so I had to buy a SIMM card in order to load everything.

 

I have noticed that sometimes there are routing issues. For example I regularly drive between Denver and Dallas, and the "fastest" route calculation adds about 250 miles to the trip. If I plot the route in segments from Denver to Raton, NM, to Wichita Falls to Dallas not only is it shorter, it's also faster than plotting directly. I reported this to Garmin a year ago, but it still happens.

 

In any case the lifetime map updates ($80 when I bought it) is well worth the money. I have a built-in GPS in our other car, and each map update for it is $135.

[dnoblett]

The Garmin I bought came with the life updates, however I had to buy Canada, so I guess a wash.

 

Yes sometimes they suggest routes that don't make sense, or don't take into account traffic in areas. for example Rochester to Myrtle Beach, they tend to route around DC which the beltway sucks, I tend to cut through the woods at Fredricksburg VA. I simply set the GPS for destination and ignore it's route and go the way I know is better, it tends to figure out what I am doing when I deviate and recalculates, sometimes trying to U-Turn me back to it's first route, then eventually to my Route. The ETA goes up and then eventually down or even shorter than when starting out.

 

http://i949.photobucket.com/albums/ad334/dnoblett/Misc%20Junk%20for%20posting/RocMyrt_zps88236220.jpg

 

I am old school trucker from before GPS navi devices, so I know how to use a map.

[dnoblett]

The whole reason I got the Garmin for the wife was my Magellan 3045 started having power problems, not wanting to power up, it would run in the car, but the battery in was DEAD. I finally got around to fixing it buying a $20 LI bat on amazon and replacing it. Works like a champ. The 3045 has a cell receiver that gets traffic alerts.

 

The video shows bat glued to the back of the case, mine was glued to the back of the display, it took some carefully cutting of the plastic wrap around the battery to get it removed, I did not wan to pry the battery off out of fear of damaging the display.