What features do you care about?
We have two Mio Digiwalker C310's that we bought for ~$125 around five years
ago and we loved them.
The power cord failed on one of them (and the batteries gave up the ghost a
very long time ago), so we got a Garmin Nuvi 1490T at the beginning of this
year. We didn't know what we were missing!
The 1490T has a few features that the older Mios do not that I would miss if
they were gone:
1) The bigger screen: I didn't think that I'd care, but you can just get a
ton more info on the new 5" widescreen GPS and it's really nice.
2) Text-to-Speech: It speaks the road names, which saves you having to
look at the GPS to figure out _which_ of the upcoming left turns is the one
that you need to make.
3) MUCH faster startup: When I power the Mio up, it might take a mile or
two of driving before it knows where we're at. The Nuvi is tracking by the
time I get out of the garage. I'm guessing that it never drops the GPS
signal when it's in 'standby.'
4) Auto-power on/off: Our cigarette lighters in our two daily drivers are
switched with the ignition. When the Garmin senses power, it comes on.
When you shut the car off, it automatically powers down after 30 seconds
unless you press a button to tell it to stay on. It's nice to just have it
take care of itself when you're making a long drive and stopping for
fuel/lunch/the night/etc.
Garmin also offers lifetime map updates with some of their GPS's, which is a
really nice perk. The maps on the Mio's are way out of date and I'm too
cheap to pay for the updates.
Another feature we have in the Nuvi is traffic. If you're out in the
boonies, this isn't much of a benefit, but it's really nice in densely
populated areas.
My in-laws had a Tom-Tom, and it was OK, but they've also recently purchased
a Nuvi and prefer it. I don't have any experience with Magellans.
-Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: shop-talk-bounces at autox.team.net
[mailto:shop-talk-bounces at autox.team.net] On Behalf Of john niolon
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 12:51 PM
To: shop-talk
Subject: [Shop-talk] gps to find the shop
to keep it shop related... sometimes losing my way to the shop I'm
considering
buying a GPS for the car.
I start looking and realize that each manufacturer has at least 76 models
available... I need something in the range of $0 - $200 and easy enough for
an old man to use... as a backup plan I do have a 10 year old grandson that
could probably program it for me...
recommendations ??
thanks
john
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