GPS - Which do you recommend?

[Table 5]

I'm currently looking around for a GPS system, and am wondering what others recommend, and which features do they think are worth it, and which ones are just a waste of money.

Garmin? TomTom? Something else?

I'm also heading to Europe next month, so need to decide if its better to buy a unit with a Euro map included, or is it better to just download one later. Is there a difference in performance if its from a card as opposed to pre-loaded?

Was looking at the Garmin Nuvi 775T, as it has a lot of features as well as a Euro-map. The price has come down a lot on Amazon (was $599, now $372).

[csnarpy]

I have three GPS for my vehicles. All Garmin. They are wickedly good and my personal preference.

[wooohooo]

I don't really know the models or anything. But my friend has both a Garmin and TomTom of about the same features and he says he prefers the TomTom. I tried it too and I found the TomTom to be more user friendly and easier to see/use. But that said, they're both very fine products.

[psicodude]

I just purchased the Garmin 265WT from Costco last weekend, and I really like it. Easy to type in an address to search for, and the turn by turn navigation voice is loud and clear. It has a few nice features like the "Eco" driving assistant that basically teaches you how to drive using less fuel. The bluetooth connection works really well and will be handy once the new cell phone laws kick in.

I think the traffic update features are sort of useless in Calgary for the next year or two, so don't put any stock into it.

http://www.costco.ca/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=10324991&whse=BCCA&Ne=4000000& eCat=BCCA|79|21133&N=4009765&Mo=15&No=8&Nr=P_Catal ogName:BCCA&cat=21133&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1〈=e n-CA&Sp=C&topnav=

[GreenLantern]

Garmin all the way. In my line of work we use all types of GPS and Garmin is hands down the top brand out there.

$372 is a great price for that model. You can get the software yourself depending on how internet savy you are through *cough* torrents *cough*. I have done it for my personal use but use license maps for work.. I have not noticed a difference.

Make sure you get a stick, bigger the better, a lot of maps with high detail (city roads etc..) take up a lot of space. For example, in a Europe travel I would almost buy two sticks and load Europe west on one and Europe east on the other.. depending on your model it would make for faster load times and I doubt you can fit all of Europe in high detail on one stick. But the newer models might be different than the stuff I am using.

[CRXguy]

another vote for garmin. i compared it with a magellan and garmin was faster and to me, i found the interface more user friendly.

[Boblobla]

There is a ton of good advice in this thread:

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthr...highlight=GPS*

I vote for Garmin.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

I owned both a TomTom One 3rd Edition and a Garmin 275T that I used in Italy.

I can honestly say that the TT was by far the easier one to use. Menus and setting are far more intuitive on the TT.

One annoying thing on the Garmin I encountered was that if I was in Scarborough, Toronto and just entered "Toronto" as the City it wouldn't be able to find the address. You had to enter Scarborough as the city. Which is not always known when you're in a strange city. I can't verify the TT handles this better - can someone with a TomTom validate this?

Two things that are driving me crazy with my Garmin (anyone know the answers to these?)

1) The map shows the estimated time of arrival (ie 3:52 pm) vs # of hrs/mins remaining to destination (ie 1 hr 15 min)

2) My TT had the ability to set how much you exceeded the speed limit before it squaked to give you a warning. (ie limit + 10km). Garmin doesn't appear to have this.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

I have a Garmin and love it. I never considered anything else, I find them the easiest to use, and I like their on screen maps better than TomTom but that's just me.

I hear nothing bad about TomTom

[Regulator75]

He recommends the Garmin too!