Thread: Please recommend a portable GPS

Thanks for the help guys. I'll study up on some TomToms. The advice about the $150 "disposable" GPS makes sense to me. Off to the TomTom website....

Quote: Originally Posted by jdaniels509 Hi. I want to ask Santa for a new portable GPS unit this Christmas. It needs to have Bluetooth for my cell phone. It needs to have some sort or Route Planning/Saving capability, where I can plan my own complex routes and save them off, so I can re-call them and drive them whenever I want. It needs to have capability to record where I'm going so I can later go back and see the route I took. It needs...

Another vote for TomTom. My last three GPS models have been TomTom. I messed with my friend's Garmin Nuvi one time and it just seemed not very user friendly compared to my TomTom. My current TomTom is the GO 740 Live. Best one so far, including a fantastic windshield mount. Mark

I've used cheapy Jensen's and a couple TomTom's. I have the 920T for my work. My only gripe with this TomTom is the lack of Points of Interest. It seems I have to download everything I want and then they are unverified user's POI's. I have been misdirected by one of the Walmart POI's on a couple occasions. The best POI's I have used were found on the cheapest Jensen but it is dead now. Hopefully, TomTom has...

Don't overlook Magelan. I have one of their better units, and have been very happy with it. I like it better than the tomtom I got my wife. It does all the things you list except storing prior routes. It will store prior destinations, but not the routes. I don't think my wife's tomtom does that either. Look closely if that feature is important to you.

I've had a Garmin (2 years), a Magellan (1 week), and two TomToms (1 week, 6 months). The first TomTom didn't work properly and was returned. The Magellan was returned as soon as I realized how annoying it is to not have a "find POI along route" function, which I use constantly while travelling. It would also behave poorly if you missed a turn and it had to reroute, so I didn't like it much anyways. I liked the...

I only have experience with one GPS, the Garmin 765T. I am very happy with it. It has lane assist, mp3, bluetooth, SD card, and audio out. I can store music on SD card. With the audio out you can use your car speakers if head unit has aux in or a cassette (Aux In can be added to stock earlier oem radios). This means you can listen to music from the SD card and the GPS will mute it when it needs to give you a voice command or you get a phone...

There are surprisingly few GPS units that will let you do route planning on your PC with their map software and then save it to the GPS to follow. When I bought mine about 18 months ago, Garmin actually only had one series of units that would do this and they were, of course, the expensive ones. I bought it so I could plan club runs on the PC, upload them to the Garmin and then just follow the directions. If will also let you save routes that...

I purchased a Magellan 1470 this past summer, and am very disapointed. It has numerous software bugs (such as forgetting settings, showing the map upside down, keeps reverting to a micro scope level zoom), and has a major issue where the unit reboots at critical times. I have upgraded the unit to the most current firmware, but the bugs persist. Magellan's website says the reboot will be fixed by Sept. Guess they missed that deadline....

I recommend the Garmin Nuvi 1390t, which I bought about two months ago. It is a new model that hit the market a little over four months ago. It meets all of your requirements but is pricier that many of the other alternatives mentioned in the previous posts. On the other hand, it is a fully loaded model that is really impressive and can also be used as a walk-around pedestrian model in cities. I only wish that it cold start faster and was more...