Navigation Unit

Portable GPS?

Need advice on what is a good portable GPS system to get. Can I please have sme advice from people who recently got one. My price range is around $500. Thanks

Public Comments

1. lucky you they have come down in price....check out tomtom.com pick one that suits your needs. i like th 910 it has maps of north america and europe
2. you should not pay more than 300 dollars. There is a new Garmin model that has a little sim card in it that is a memory chip. These are really nice because you can buy more chips and input more data. A standard Garmin comes with a usa map including all major freeways but if you buy the garmin software i think it is called usamap or something by garmin you get every street of every city in the usa and no gps can input all that so you gotta load cities you want. If you are traveling from New York to Los Angeles you select all the maps along the way you need and load them into the gps. If you want more than you can load get another sim card and simply change the sim card. With garmin you can also buy a topo usa map and there is also a garmin world map or euro map you can buy. You can take your laptop with you in the car and plug it into the cigarette lighter and have a 15 inch screen. But no gps will work good inside a car without an additional antenna. No gps will work in a forest under many trees. No gps will work inside your home without an additional antenna.
3. If you have a laptop you can purchase one to run off of your laptop from around $200. I just purchased one for a guys laptop I was working on and it works great.
4. i have a Magellan gps unit and i love it, its great i can find everything i need.....its accurate within in a house or business, also garmins are very good my friend has one and its very similar to the Magellan database and also is very accurate..they are really two great machines, i also used this site to buy mine and my friend used it also..just wanted to add i have driven across country with both a garmin and the magellan on our motorcycles we never had any problems and never had to input a new map and they both run off of 20gigs of memory...
5. I have the streetpilot c330. It is awesome! It is smaller than some, not so heavy that it falls down from the window as much as others and -- most of all -- the directions are accurate! I trust GPS lady more than my maps or people's directions. It's really cool that "she" is reliable -- and quite entertaining. I love the "recalculating" when you forget to follw a turn. She sounds like she's saying "you idiot!!" I think it would be funny if they programmed words like "what the *&^% are you doing? I told you to turn!!" Until that happens, you are safe in getting the Garmin streetpilot!
6. I bought the same one that "Wondering" is talking about. It really is pretty cool, but the cheapest I could find it was $635 including tax. It has a "traffic avoidance" feature that incorporates local traffic reports for a monthly fee. It's the Garmin Street Pilot 330.