Garmin GPS V

Pros: accurate, compact and water resistant

Cons: slow programming, slow interface, slow route calculation, poor support

Summary: I bought this as an upgrade to a Garmin GPS III+ and it certainly was an upgrade. The screen is more legible and the maps are much more accurate and complete, in most areas. The receiver and positioning part of the system are great, it locks on fairly fast and provides good positional accuracy. The routing calculations are slow and occasionaly eccentric, it will sometimes tell you to go straight through a junction then turn right three times instead of turning left. The next day it will tell you to turn left, even though you have asked for exactly the same destination from the same start point. The screen refresh is sometimes so slow that you have no useful on screen guidance at a turn. If your route has a left followed a few hundred feet later by a right it may well show you the left turn again. Sometimes a reroute crashes and you have to start again. Loading 19Mb of maps takes around an hour. The latest update, v2.50, is a year and a half old. If you are travelling between two areas for which wou have loaded maps and the logical route takes in a section of the base map the unit will route you via the loaded map areas, even though the route is ridiculous. As an example I loaded maps for the San Francisco, Sacramento and Mendocino areas then drove to Willits which is about 125 miles north of San Francisco on US101. For the return trip I plugged in my home address and got an estimate of about five hours. Instead of just running straight back down 101 it took me over towards Sacramento where the loaded maps touched, that's nearly 100 miles off track. I reported the faults to Garmin a year ago, but since then there has been no update so I guess they don't do software quality.

Still, at the current prices this is a good unit if you want something hand portable that will also have a good go at finding you a route. Mostly my issues with it are niggles. But now I want something better for the car and I don't think Garmin are on my list any more.