I've had Garmins for a long time. And I've recommended them to family and friends who have thanked me later. I have the 760 in my car and it was time replace my wife's old 330C. For the record it lasted about five years. :) I almost got a TomTom this time around, since they have some neat features, but ultimately, this model of Garmin just had nearly everything and then some.
Okay, pros and cons and a few tips.
Pros:
- Boots up fast.
- The new surface mounting grip is awesome (it's an additional expense, but I kinda sorta stole it from my wife since I have this weird bumpy dash, and my current sandbag mount slides all over the place! But this thing has a rubberized bottom that bends and hooks over the dash. I highly recommend getting one!)
- The MSN Direct service is amazing. We paid the $30 to basically extend it out for two years. It's so worth it. First off, the thing boots up with the temperature right on your home screen. It does traffic, of course, but it also has weather, movies, and a whole bunch more. Do you know how cool it is to pull up a weather radar on your GPS? Wow!
- The driving layout is a bit different than my 760. It's actually easier to read. On the 760, the directions are on the top and they look like "Turn Right on Main Street". On the bottom are your distance to the destination and the Arrival time.
Well, what the 285 does is (as you can see by one of the screens) is put your turn direction as an arrow, how far away it is, up at the top. They also squeeze in an easy to read current speed limit on the map, your current speed at the bottom (kind of a nice reminder of when you're speeding! :) ) as well as, if you have the MSN Direct service, the traffic, and a number to easily see how much traffic is impacting your trip. I mean, that's a ton of useful information on one screen. The 760 is still more than a hundred bucks more than this thing! Crazy.
- Pretty much has a lot of other cool features - bluetooth, etc etc. The traffic receiver is also MUCH more stable than on the 760 which is semi-notorious for breaking. I don't see that happening with this one.
- This model supposedly doesn't have multi-destination. Or at least, Garmin says it doesn't, but now that I think about it, I believe it's included automatically. I was just using the thing yesterday, had changed my route and it asked me if I wanted to change my destination or add it. So.. call me confused. ;)
Cons: very few, since I love garmins.
- There are some neat features that are available now that this doesn't have - like being able to input a picture and have the GPS figure out where it is. Not sure how useful this is, but it sure sounds neat.
- Doesn't have the FM transmitter - this is kinda useful.
In Summary, I don't know how you could possibly find more bang for your buck in a GPS, particularly if you spend the extra $30 to get nearly TWO years of traffic, weather, and all the other bells and whistles from MSN Direct. We spent $365 last year for a GPS that needs a new map soon, that is matched by this GPS that was selling for $99 a few days ago.
0 comments:
Post a Comment