Can any of you recommend a portable navigation system to use in the car? My wife wants one for our hurricane kit in case we need to use the back roads to get out of town.

I know there are many on the market, but having never used one, I don't know what to look for or what to stay away from.

Any help would be much appreciated such as links to sites, reviews, or personal experience.

Bud

I have a Garmin Nuvi 660 and it works pretty good for the most part, but there are a few issues.

In downtown areas especially, it seems as if it does get confused. It occasionaly wants me to literally turn in a complete circle and backtrack sometimes.

But on the open road, it does pretty good. I especially like the feature of the rapid recalculation of the route. Say it wants you to leave the freeway at a certain exit. If you miss the exit - say its blocked, you can't get into that lane, or simply are asleep, it rapidly recalculates the next best route.

Mine has bluetooth so that I can answer the phone through it. But about three months after I bought it, the bluetooth quit working. Garmin had me regress to an older firmware (prior to the one that came with the unit), and that fixed the problem.

Mine also has an FM transmitter so that it can play through the radio. In addition to the annucuation of the route and bluetooth function, the unit can play MP3 files as well as Audible books - which we use quite a bit when we travel. The typical FM transmitter means you tune to an unused station on your radio then tune the Nuvi to that station. But the problem is that about every half-hour, if you are travelling, you have to pull over and reset everything to a new channel. And sometimes in a big city, you cannot even find an unused channel. It does have an internal speaker, but it sux.

The cost of the bluetooth, MP3/Books, and FM transmitter ads a lot of price to the Nuvi, and if I did it over, I might have gone for a less costly basic unit without all of those features.

But overall its quite a nice unit. I especially like the lookup feature for things like the closest ATM machine, Post Office, and the like when you are in an unfamiliar area. Even if we take just a short day-trip, say a couple of hours driving, we have found that surprisingly enough, that feature is probably one of the most useful. I mean, we pretty much know how to get there, but if we are looking for a particular resturant, place of business, or so on, its really nice to be able to drive like you are not lost.

For those reasons, I think you'll find it much more useful than storing it in a hurricane kit.

I have a Nuvi 650, the model below Al's.

Wide screen, Touch Screen GUI, Voice prompts/text to speech, no Bluetooth, or FM transmitter.

Only fluff is MP3 player and Audio book capable.

You mentioned backroads, most units will try to place you on major roads, but there are settings you can change.

The 350 is a smaller screen version of the 650, and the 360 is a smaller screen version of Al's 660, bluetooth capable and all.

The 260 and 260W (wide screen) are the lowest basic units that still have text to speech. (says the name of the roads)

All the above are Nuvi models by Garmin.

Other manufacturer leaders are: Magellan, TomTom

Doing a quick web scan, maybe the above models are discontinued 07/08 models (Might be some bargains to be had...)

This site seems to show some of the newest Garmins.

http://www.gpsnow.com/gmauto.htm

I have a Garmin 340 (nothing fancy). It recites the name of the streets "turn on dexter st." instead of "turn on the next street" and that's all I wanted. I highly recommend these units

We have the Nuvi 350 and like it a lot. What I've found is if you don't know where your going, it will get you there with no problems. If you do know where your going, as Al said, some of the routes seem a little round about. It is user friendly with a lot of nice features.

+1 I have the Nuvi 360, it adds bluetooth and MP3 player.

There's another thread from about 5-6 months ago discussing GPS's for the car, lot's of good info.

I bought a Magellan and have used it extensively over the last 2 years. I bought this model (3000T i think) because it had buttons and control pad in addition to touch screen. I like the external buttons as you could quickly mute, zoom in/out, go to menu, etc. Only problem is the buttons are junk and the zoom out button broke, now I am zoomed all the way in with no way to zoom out.
My boss has a TomTom, seems slow and jumpy. My other boss has a Garmin, nice unit, don't remember which one.
Currently I leave my Magellan on the dash, windows unrolled, manual on the front seat.....

I deliver stuff all day and I use a Garmin 340 and am very happy with it.

As stated above it's no frills like having an integrated MP3 but that's why I have an IPOD.

One thing it is very good at is finding addresses and getting you there which it all I need. I also like the fact that it has an integrated long life battery in it which means that I don't always have to mess with the cable when setting it up. The battery will last for about 2 hrs on a full charge. I used a Nuvi one day and didn't like that without having it plugged in it would only last a few minutes.

I can get a few hours out of my Nuvi battery English Guy, wonder if the one you used wasn't fully charged?

I think the only real problem for the Nuvi is that there are too many to chose from. Hard to decide on which one is best for you.

I counted an incredible 31 Nuvi models on the Garmin web page. Maybe someone should tell them about "economy of scale"?

I went with the Garmin Nuvi 760. I found myself starting at the lower end, but when I compared them there would invariably be one feature that I wanted which made me go up the line. Then, when I went to buy it on eBay, for another $40, I could have the next model up, so I went with it. I hope to get it later this week.

BTW, despite having so many models, the Garmin web page made it really easy to compare up to five models at the same time. It racked-and-stacked them against each other and had the line be a different color if the items were different on some specification. I considered the Sony for a little while, but since I couldn't compare spec-to-spec, I quickly gave up on the Sony.

Congrats.

Without reading or knowing the specs/features, I'm assuming the 760 is a successor to the 660 that Al has...

(I hope you beat the COSTCO price they had for $350 for a few weeks....)

Welcome to the GPS world!

I think the 760 has a couple of additional features.

It was slightly over $350, but the difference was less than the amount of gas that it would have cost to drive the 60 miles round trip--not to mention the time and frustration on the roads.

I use one of the cheapest model Garmin Streetpilots - C330. It cost $120 on sale at Walmart before Christmas last year.

I carry it in my computer bag and use it all over the country. It's awesome - It has a battery, so I can put the address into it in my office at home, then simply recall the destination when I get off the plane and into my rental car.

A few weeks ago, I got a rental car with a Nav system in it, but rather than figure out how to use that system, I just turned on my little garmin an used it.

One of the neat things some of the Garmin Nuvis and Magellean GPS units have (maybe others too) is you can download a POI (Points of Interest) database.

There are literally thousands of POI databases; you name it. I have found everything from a list of West Marine stores in the US, to E85 gas station locations, to Hampton Inns. There are some databases available for a few states for boat launches, state parks, and even Starbucks!

And how about a database identifying intersections that have speed or red light cameras? How cool is that?

Most, if not all of the POIs are free, and many are done by corporate offices of the company that is in the database, state offices, or even individuals.

There are several places where you can get the POI databases; here is the one I use: http://www.poi-factory.com/

You have to download a POI downloader from Garmin, and optionally a POI creator if you want to make your own databases. Both are free from Garmin.

I think this feature tremendously increases the usefulness of the unit, so much so that it becomes a neat instrument to use locally (say you are looking for a particular resturant) rather than just during travel.

Al, thanks for the POI information. That is one of the features that I thought would really make this a useful gadget. The POI database link will help me get up-and-running quick.

We are traveling in the middle of July, and I just realized that with this Garmin using the only 12 volt receptacle, I'll have to buy one of those adapters that turn's one receptacle into two. That way, the inverter will be able to power the kids' machines.

Ditto

Yep, used and updated the Lakes West and CA Lakes POI's this weekend.

Looks like I need to learn how to add POI's. I know it is easy, but have never read the directions.

I recently acquired the Garmin Nuvi 680 (Costco - $350). Very cool device for traveling but the Bluetooth won't consistently work with my Blackberry which makes it borderline returnable. Without Bluetooth it becomes a toy that is useful only occasionally, like when I'm going somewhere I haven't been before which doesn't happen too often. With Bluetooth it is an everyday must have.

Jeffski. The bluetooth on my Nuvi 660 just quit working one day. I got with tech support and they admitted that the current bluetooth driver is goofy, and had me regress to an older driver.

So I should say that at least with the 660, there are some known issues with one of the bluetooth drivers.

My mother has the Garmin c330, the interface is very easy to use and she loves it.

My only issue is that the screen looks black through polarized lenses. I had never noticed till she loaned it to me yesterday for my Wyoming trip tomorrow. This is going to annoy me the whole way.

I have that problem with my iPod...can't see the screen with polarized shades on.

I was very relieved to find-out that I don't have any problem seeing the 760's screen while I'm wearing my polarized glasses.

Not to mention waiting in line at Costco. I limit my visits to that place to quarterly or even biannually but when I'm there I stock up on a very lot of stuff. Time is money so waiting in line at Costco costs money.

The next set of precription sun glasses will not have polarization on them because of the same thing you guys are mentioning. I've never had a problem with it until this latest set though.