I am looking for a decent navigation system.
But the price range is so large that I just cannot pick one.
It looks like a navigation system costs $500-$1500.
Anyone know why such a big range?
What do I get for paying more? Or what do I lose by choosing a cheaper one?
Thanks.

10/10/2006 2:07:31 PM

a lot of the more expensive ones are integrated into your dash, kinda like a factory system (and have radio tuner, cd player, etc all built it)

another higher-end feature is being satellite linked so that the GPS knows where traffic jams and stuff are, and it will route you around them.

[Edited on October 10, 2006 at 2:11 PM. Reason : asdfad]

10/10/2006 2:10:27 PM

have you done any research?

10/10/2006 2:22:01 PM

Make the decision between an in-dash unit and a portable one then I'll give you some advice. I've had probably 6 different ones so I can actually give you real info, not just the shit everybody can read about in the reviews.

10/10/2006 3:13:41 PM

Quote :

"another higher-end feature is being satellite linked so that the GPS knows where traffic jams and stuff are, and it will route you around them."

as great as a feature that is...still not available in north carolina cause i've had XM NAV traffic box hooked up and just waiting for them to add Raleigh to the service area.

10/10/2006 4:33:46 PM

^true... but damn if every electronics store will tell you that before you buy the box. I was in Tweeter and they swore to me it'd work around here so I should spend the extra $$ (they were asking OVER the price you could buy it from pioneer.com for also btw, fucking bastards) on the box... Doesn't work around here, I think Atlanta is about the closest place that it does work.

10/10/2006 8:49:33 PM

Quote :

"Make the decision between an in-dash unit and a portable one then I'll give you some advice. I've had probably 6 different ones so I can actually give you real info, not just the shit everybody can read about in the reviews. "

Great!
I will go for a portable one.
Because in-dash systems should be more expensive and I already have 6-disc CD player in dash (which I don't want to be replaced by navigation system).

Please, tell me about the portable things.
It seems that portable ones also have wide price range ($400 ~ $1500), don't they?

10/11/2006 10:17:18 AM

I bought my daughter a magellan 700 because she couldn't find her way out of wet paper bag and she doesn't get lost at all any more. I have "borrowed" it when I have travelled to California and Illinois and it has been very reliable. Has update CD available as well.

I am very happy with it.

10/11/2006 1:02:10 PM

^ LOOK! Another creepy old guy on tdub!

10/11/2006 1:15:16 PM

Alrighty, I'll comment on a few models real quick:

Garmin Nuvi 350, $549 retail: Small as hell. Maybe an inch thick and has built-in battery/mp3 player/photo viewer so you can actually use it for hiking and shit like that if you wanted to. I loved the screen on this one and how easy it was to use. It has a glossy screen that is very bright and all the on screen prompts have large, easy to hit buttons so it isn't a pain to use while driving. It does a good job of helping you find something... say you're searching for "home depot", it gives you a list of all home depots, a distance to them and a directional arrow in relation to the direction you're currently traveling. After you tap on one of them it shows you the address and gives you the option to get direction to that one or to go back to the list. Sounds like an obvious feature but some of the other models that even cost more don't have it, or they just don't work as well. Doesn't include European maps. Auto zoom when navigating was a bit of a pain and wanted to leave it zoomed out too far all the time so you either have to turn the autozoom off and just leave it zoomed in or deal with hitting zoom in every so often to be able to see where the hell you're going. This is probably my top choice however and what I'm using now.

TomTom GO 910, $799 retail: Little bigger than the Nuvi350 but still not big by any means. Has built-in hard drive, battery and bluetooth. Comes with European maps already programmed in which was very useful for me a few months ago when traveling around Europe. That, and the bluetooth, were the main reasons I bought it. Unfortunately the bluetooth didnt work so well for me. It's suppose to be able to connect to the internet through your phone to get both traffic and weather updates which is obviously both useful and a cool as hell feature, but it never worked all that well for me. The updates always took so long to get that I guess it was pretty pointless to even have. Having the weather was cool..but again, I could just hit one button on my phone and get that info a hell of a lot faster. It always went to a screen to show the status of downloading the new info when it was downloading something and quit showing you how to get where you were going, so that was pretty annoying. As far as making/receiving calls via bluetooth it didn't work that well either. It has a microphone that comes with it so I figured it'd work pretty well. People could hear me fine but I could never hear them and none of the volume controls seemed to do anything. When the unit is speaking navigation instructions it can be very loud if you want it to, but phone calls I could never get to be loud enough to hear the person at all even with the radio off if you were going down the road. That was pretty much a deal breaker for me and made its bluetooth ablities, which were one of the reasons I thought I would like it, basically useless. I also didn't like the screen on this one. The roads looks like tiny thin lines on the screen no matter how far I zoomed in and the touchscreen overlay on the screen almost seemed like it was too thick or something and made everything blurry. Take my example in the previous unit about navigating to home depot... with this one, it only shows you a list of distances to the stores and after you select one it never shows you the address and immediatly goes to navigating you to that store. To me this was a big problem because if two stores were about the same distance away and there was a particular one I wanted to go to, I had almost no way of knowing which it picked for me without zooming out on the map after it was navigating me and figuring it out that way. Anyways, overall this one was good for me because of the European maps and the autozoom really worked well on it, but I just didn't like it. It also didn't have a lot of road names for small roads, only "county road xxxx". This was the only unit I've used with that problem. Battery life was very good on this model, suprisingly. I figured with the built in 20gb hard drive it'd be killing the battery but it really wasn't bad. I actually forgot my charger when I went to Europe and it did fine getting me from southern Germany to Paris and back. I turned it off when I had a long stretch of autobahn to go but anyways, battery life was the best I've seen.

RoadMate 760: I think this was the first one I ever really had that was worth a damn and unfortunately it's been a while so I don't remember a whole lot about it. I know it didn't have a built-in battery and was pretty big considering the screen size. But, I liked having some real mechanical buttons to push instead of everything being on the screen. It's just a lot easier when driving sometimes. It did a good job of finding detours around traffic when it noticed you were going slow on a major highway and is the only one I could get to do a decent job with multiple destinations. This is probably my second choice and could be first if it had a bigger screen and the unit was smaller overall, IMO.


I've also had the AVIC-N2 in dash unit from Pioneer which I think you might should consider. If you're really interested in spending over $1000, you can get a decent in-dash unit these days pretty easily. Hell, bestbuy even had the N2's on sale for less than $1000 a month or two ago since they were last years model. The new Z1 (or is it Z2?) is a pretty cool model and has bluetooth capabilities and I believe a built-in hard drive so you didn't have to keep up with a nav disk all the time.

Well, I think that's about all I can think of off the top of my head... if you've got questions just ask.

10/11/2006 1:39:41 PM

10/11/2006 1:56:30 PM

^ LOOK! Another creepy old guy on tdub!

Old guy, yes, I am old, not ancient, but old.

Creepy, nah, unless you are near my daughters... I have 4 big doggies for good reasons

10/11/2006 4:28:52 PM

the portable units offer much more flexibility, as u can use it in different cars, outside the cars, etc. .Another advantage is that most of the indash units use dvd navigation with only a single dvd drive, meaning u have to remove your movie put in the navi dvd then put the movie back in. the advatanges of the indash units is that they offer much bigger screens, and they offer a nice integrated solution without the eye sore on your dash/windshield. if i were you i would go with a portable unit instead of an indash unit but that's just me

my favorite unit hands down is the new nuvi 660 by garmin. The garmin brand has by far the easiest user interface and even though it's packed with features this model is no exception. In addition to the awesome looking 4.3" widescreen lcd, this unit has bluetooth, mp3/picture viewer, built in fm modulator for playing through your car stereo and even a traffic reciver THAT DOES WORK IN THE TRIANGLE as well as over 60 other metro areas (it's through clear channel not xm-nav). All this is packed into a unit a bit larger than an index card and about 1" thick. For 999 this unit is very very hard to beat.
(damn i should be working for a marketing firm or cnet out this bitch)

We have it on display at the cary circuit city if u wanna take a looksy... if u wanna buy it talk to sam or at least menation my name to a manager and them bitches i need a raise.

[Edited on October 11, 2006 at 9:57 PM. Reason : .]

10/11/2006 9:55:11 PM

Just an FYI, many cellphone carriers have a navigation system available on the phones. I know Sprint/Nextel does and I know that we carry VZNavigator at Verizon Wireless. It runs $9.99/month or $2.99/24-hour period, whichever you want.

Yea its not an incar or portable unit. I have a Magellan 700 and got Streets and Maps for it and have fucking loved that. But I dropped a couple hundred on that 2.5 years ago. If you are just looking for something cheap to get you places, the phone navigation systems are probably gonna do a lot more for less. Mine for example does not give audible directions, but VZNavigator does.

10/11/2006 10:41:41 PM

Quote :

"Age : 23"

talk to iphotou for creepy and old

10/11/2006 10:44:10 PM

damnit bill
the n00b wasn't calling you creepy (which you are )
he just didn't know how to use quotes

10/11/2006 10:45:08 PM

creepy is fun

10/11/2006 10:54:31 PM

There is value if you travel a lot or are in a big city. Not sure it is a must-have for raleigh. Other features like a nice ipod interface would make it mroe compelling, though.

10/11/2006 11:51:30 PM

http://store.mp3car.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=SDK%2D007


that one is 2200$, but it runs windows XP and can do anything windows xp does. It can provide wireless internet to your car if you get satellite internet. It's pretty much an in-dash computer.

[Edited on October 11, 2006 at 11:56 PM. Reason : I would worry about people stealing it.]

10/11/2006 11:55:02 PM

i highly recommend streetdeck if you have the cash to pay for it and the time to keep up with the mp3car.com streetdeck forum

10/12/2006 9:05:27 AM

Thanks so much.
I guess I will buy a cheap portable one.
Carrying it on travel sounds a big merit.

Is there any reason why I should not buy a cheap one like this?
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4366081
Or like magellan 700 that someone suggested above?

10/13/2006 12:15:53 PM

My friends dad has that one and we have borrowed it on a trip to Florida and it worked fine. I haven't used it enough to give any real feedback on it though. You can of course find them cheaper on ebay but IMO you'll be best off getting it at wal-mart or something so you can take it back and exchange it for a few other models if you don't like the first one you get.

10/13/2006 12:30:33 PM