GPS: Garmin Vs. Magellan Vs. ?

 

Everyone has challenges and lessons to learn – we wouldn’t be who we are without them.

 

Having a good GPS is important to most RVers.  I've occasionally made comments about strange directions or features of our GPS units.  We started out with a Magellan and then purchased a Garmin about a year and a half.  Now I have a few more thoughts after some recent escapades.

When we’re in the market for a new item, I research and research and research.  What I’m looking for may not be what someone else is looking for.  The features we want or need may be totally different.  Terry gets pretty annoyed with me at times and can’t understand why I just don’t run out and buy something instead of taking a month or longer to be sure it’s the exact thing we may really want.  Sometimes we never know until we’ve purchased it either.  Some things we are familiar with on one brand or another and we like to stick with the same brand because there is less of a learning curve.  Other times we like to check out the latest and greatest things on the market.  However, the latest and greatest are not always the best.  The most popular brand is not always the best either.   How do I know that?  I’ve learned through experience.  The good thing is we can usually return such flops and get our money back if we buy at the right stores.

Of course, I feel the best GPS is someone sitting in the seat next to you who knows how to get to where you want to go.  It's like watching TV in "Live Mode".  However, not everyone feels that way and just try giving directions to someone who doesn't want them ... you just might get your head chopped off .... been there, done that.

There are many reviewers online who rate products.  Computers are rated, cameras are rated, phones are rated, GPS units are rated and the lists go on.  When the reviewers rate these items they take into account numerous features.  Some of those features I could care less about so have to read through them to find out what exactly that rating is based on and then come up with my own idea of what that rating would be to me.  In other words an 8.0 rating to a reviewer may really be a 10.0 to me or maybe just a 6.0.

Remember this?  It's Denise's high tech GPS.

Our first GPS unit was Magellan.  We replaced it with a Garmin 2365LMT about 18 months ago.  There were features that we wanted that were not on our Magellan.  I wanted a GPS showing the speed limit and also with the lane assist feature. Well, now that we’ve had it we’re thinking our next GPS will be another Magellan and not the Garmin.  Many of the items that we liked on the Garmin are now available on some of the Magellan GPS units. We'll just have to make sure of those features if we end up with another Magellan.

There have many times we have wanted to know where the next gas station is.  If you're on the freeway and have a Magellan,, you can select its Exit POI feature.  Gas stations pop up in the direction you are heading.  It's a super easy find.  On the Garmin it's a little difficult. The gas stations show up in order of distance from your current location regardless of the direction you are heading.  You may have to sort through several screens to find ones ahead of you and not behind you.

We've also had difficulty knowing what direction to turn when coming out of a parking lot with the Garmin.  It kind of stops until you exit the lot. If you’re in a new area and don’t know the street names, the Garmin isn't much help then.You really don’t realize what direction you’re suppose to go until you are told to make a u-turn.  The Magellan seemed to take us from our location in the lot and onto the road.   I don’t ever remember sitting and waiting and waiting for the recalculation to take place like we do with our Garmin.  The Garmin has more hiccups. When you’re moving and need directions we have passed our turn more than once.  With the Magellan a little bell would ding when you were at your turn.

When we were in Modesto and heading east for an appointment, the Garmin directed us in a huge U.  Only when we got back on the main road again did we wonder why the detour.  On our trip back we were directed in a straight line.  The U we made originally was definitely several miles out of the way.  This same thing happened in Salinas when we were directed via back roads through neighborhoods and even crossing busy roads without signals. 

The lifetime update is nice but for us may not be something we would be too concerned about in the future.  It took hours and hours and hours to download and install and that was off a DSL line. It wasn’t just us as the reviews on this update indicated most had the same problem.  We also have a traffic feature that turns red of we have traffic ahead plus our little person in the GPS tells us there is traffic.  This feature is something I wouldn't pay much for.  We can usually tell ourselves if we're in traffic.

One major feature we liked about the Garmin was the ability to add our own POIs to the unit.  We thought we couldn't do that with the Magellan.  However, I think we could but didn't know we could.  We bought an open box unit from Circuit City.  We were missing instructions and the CD with software for converting POIs. Magellan now has several different models that offer all of the features that we were looking for in the Garmin.  

We’re pretty sure our next GPS will be  another Magellan. One thing I do have yet to check out though is the ability to enter the latitude and longitude of a place we may want to head.  Sometimes that's all the information we can get.  We weren't able to do that with our previous Magellan.  Hopefully, that feature has also been added.

Check out the little Jaguar on the hood.  Terry has a Jag!  It was on one of our other ATVs but now sits on the Polaris.

I don't know much about the TomTom except it was my first GPS.  The earlier ones were pretty elementary so to compare that one to these would not be a fair comparison.  I'm still waiting for the day when Microsoft Streets and Trips comes out with their own little GPS unit.  I can't think of anything niftier.  You could work out your own little itinerary on your laptop and then transfer to the GPS.  My 2011 version of the software has a function to export my map to a gps file.  My Garmin software cannot convert and cannot read this file.

‘Tis life on the road.