Navigation system advice

[Dman877]

My brother and I are going in on a portable nav unit for my Dad this year. Neither of us know anything about the stuff.

Our budget is $200. Is this market such that $200 worth of any major brand nets you the same features? Our folks have two cars and they will use this in both of them. I don't think they need any special features like bluetooth or whatever, just directions and maps.

Any recommendations or advice is appreciated.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

My parents are looking at the Garmin 750, Costco has it for $199.

 

[Dman877]

Prices on that range wildly. Google search turns up everything from 180 to 400. Looks like it got some good reviews though.

 

[SoulAssassin]

nuvi

 

[sdifox]

I just ordered a Nuvi 760 for 250 from amazon...

http://www.amazon.com/Garmin-7...qid=1227999106&sr=8-10

so the 750 would be 209 (including shipping). Maybe I should go that way too.

 

[Dman877]

Looks like the 760 just adds bluetooth to the 750. What does bluetooth actually do for you anyway? Hands free phone stuff?

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Dman877
Looks like the 760 just adds bluetooth to the 750. What does bluetooth actually do for you anyway? Hands free phone stuff?

I don't really know 🙂 I think it acts as handsfree. The car this is going in does not have BlueTooth built in.

I am not in the states and I no longer have a Costco card so I am not sure I can get in on the 199 deal.


amazon wants 302 for the 750... so I guess I am getting the 760 🙂

 

[Matilda]

You can pick up the TomTom 130S and 330S in most places for reasonably affordable prices. Very easy to use, and extremely accurate.

 

[vi edit]

I know some people have been scoring the 760 off of Ebay for around $200 with the Live cashback.

I hopped on the $250 deal on Amazon for one.

 

[996GT2]

The Mio C320 we got at Black Friday 2007 for $150 is awesome. There is a huge modding community out there for Mio GPS units, and with a 5 minute firmware flash you can use much more detailed (8 million POI I believe) maps of the US, Mexico, Canada, and many other countries just by inserting an SD card. The firmware flash also enables a lot of very useful features, such as text to speech.

It's also quite accurate and very easy to use; the 4.3" touchscreen is a big improvement over smaller 3.5" square units found in many cheap GPSes.

Best of all, the Mio map files are hosted on the internet (not hard to find cough cough)...the same cannot be said of other manufacturers' units.