7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Everything I need
Date of Review: Aug 10, 2007
The Bottom Line: Perfect for those who want a fully functional GPS without all the redundant gizmos. Great price too.
This is my first GPS, and I love it. I've had it about six months and it has opened up the world for my family.
When we would take a road-trip, it involved my husband driving while I used a paper map to navigate.
Hubby would get frustrated with detours, poorly marked and missed turns and would turn into a total bear. I would always swear that we would never take another road trip. We didn't travel nearly as much as we wanted, because it was always such an ordeal. However, this little beauty has given us back our love of travel.
I did quite a bit of comparing first, and realized that I didn't need a built in MP3 player (my car has a CD player and a radio) I didn't need a picture viewer (I have one built into my camera) and I didn't need a map of all of Europe, the USA and Canada.
So, I decided on the ONE. Since we rarely drive outside of the UK, I got the regional, with maps of the UK and Ireland. It was under $300. It also came with safety camera alerts and when I registered it with the US site (we are American military serving in the UK) they mailed me a free CD with a map of the US and Canada, which will come in handy when we are re-stationed in the states next year.
It is easy to program and once I type in the address, it tells me turn by turn where I need to go and even when I am in a roundabout, it knows right where I should exit.
There is no need to guess. It comes pre-loaded with historic landmarks, public parks, museums, certain restaurants, libraries, scenic overlooks, major shopping centers and much, much more. You can ask it to find the closest landmark, zoo or whatever to where you are at that moment, somewhere on your programed route or nearest to your final destination.
Last weekend I loaded up the ladies and took a shopping trip to Stoke on Trent. It got us there in record time and it found each and every shop that we looked for. It even told us where we could get something to eat and beeped at all the safety cameras. What a wonderful product.
It is small, about the size of a billfold and is nearly all screen. It has a touch-screen menu which is really easy to navigate. It has a visual map mode, which highlights your route against a map or you can view text only. The software is easy to learn, I had it figured out in less than an hour. I love the self correcting feature. If you should somehow miss your turn (say a traffic accident) it will allow you to pass it, and then tell you how to get to your destination using an alternate route with no prompting from you. Great stuff.
The only real con I can think of is the window mount. It's weak and tends to fall off the windshield. The more expensive TomToms have a better mount. We are going to buy the flexible mount kit (about $25) to correct this problem.
