Variable Fragment

I’ve been using a new in-car GPS for about 2 months now, and I wanted to share my thoughts in case other people are on the fence. I think these units have come a long way since the last time I seriously looked at them, and they’re pretty effective at getting you to where you are going.

I’ll write this from the perspective that you haven’t taken a serious look at what a recent unit can do, so I’ll list out what I think are the key features.

• A flexible route-generation algorithm.  Stuck in traffic? Click the “detour” button and have it route you around the area you are currently entering. Take a wrong turn and it can generate a new route for you in a few seconds.
• A large, searchable index of locations, stores, parks, restaurants, museums etc.  It can be searchable both near where you are, near your destination, or find matches along your current route. As an example, my wife and I were just out running errands and remembered that we needed to buy a new bed frame.  I typed “mattress” into the GPS and it pulled up the name, address and phone number of half a dozen nearby stores.
• A map that you can scroll through by touch-screen.  Drag your finger on the screen and the map drags with you to allow you to see nearby map areas without zooming out.

I found that pretty much all of the units I looked at had the same features listed regardless of price, but when I actually used them in the store there were huge differences in the implementation of those features.

As an example of some differentiating factors:

• Some units did not allow you to drag-scroll the map, which I really like
• Some touch screens are better than others for women with longer nails.  My wife hated the first one we looked at, but I would never have thought about it since it was fine for me.
• The responsiveness of the touchscreen for typing.  Some units take a perceptible amount of time for a letter to appear, which is pretty annoying.
• The speed with which search results appear varies a lot.

Some features that aren’t worth considering, in my opinion:

• The actual GPS chipset in all of the units I considered was the same.  It’s the SirfStar III chipset that’s pretty much the de-facto standard used in all models.  It has rapid signal aquisition, good accuracy and all that.  So from the standpoint of just finding your latitude and longitude, the units are all the same.  The difference is in the interface and features that go with it.
• Media playback, playing MP3s, showing photos etc.  This is utterly pointless to me.  The tiny speaker is terrible for music, and I see no value in displaying photos.
• Acting as a bluetooth speakerphone.  It’s interesting that I could search for a destination on the unit and dial it directly from the GPS, but in practice I have never done so, and doubt I ever will.

I think the best thing to do is go find a store with several units set up side by side and actually run through some tests with them.

• Turn them off and on and see how long it takes to boot up.
• See how easy it is to browse through the map and zoom in and out.
• Search for some destination, like your home address, and see how long it takes to find.
• Search for a generic name, like “pizza” and see how many results you get, and how long it takes for the search to run.

The unit I ended up buying is the Garmin Nuvi 360, which is about the cheapest unit you can buy.  I originally planned to buy the TomTom One, which is actually about half the price, but when I actually used it side-by-side with the more expensive models I realized that it was worth more money to me.