General GPS screen sizes, costs, value and performance discussion.

[96 EVO]

Ah, but you would be wrong!

As may of us Rand McNally owners discovered, 'Lifetime' in electronics, means 7yrs!

It's like dog years.... but worse!

[Happycarz]

There are many dead ATT areas in AZ. So I just download the Google map section I need. Just recently when I did such, the download area was many times bigger than a year ago.

Yellowstone National Park is another area for spotty ATT coverage.

Folks with Verizon often have better coverage than ATT out west. Not sure of TMobile. But knowing my limitations, I have no issues by downloading the map area to my device ahead of time.

[dl_racing427]

1 hour ago, jacwjames said:

Thanks Ivan

I'll dig into it a little more when I get a chance. 

Being able to use my Iphone as a backup would be great.  When I was in Utah and CO there were quite a few places with no cell reception. 

It would also be nice to be able to rely on the Garmin products.  I don't know if they are intentionally not fully supporting the older units or not but I would think that if bought one with Life Time Maps you'd get the POI's to go with them. 

Yeah.  After buying two, I found out the hard way that "lifetime maps" is a d*** lie!!!
That's why I won't waste my money on Garmin products anymore.

[Dennis H]

14 hours ago, Happycarz said:

There are many dead ATT areas in AZ. So I just download the Google map section I need. Just recently when I did such, the download area was many times bigger than a year ago.

Yellowstone National Park is another area for spotty ATT coverage.

Folks with Verizon often have better coverage than ATT out west. Not sure of TMobile. But knowing my limitations, I have no issues by downloading the map area to my device ahead of time.

Exactly why my wife has ATT and I have Verizon. One of us always has service. And "Lifetime" maps never specifies whose lifetime they consider....just sayin....Dennis

[Tom Cherry]

On 11/20/2023 at 10:03 PM, jacwjames said:

Thanks Ivan

I'll dig into it a little more when I get a chance. 

Being able to use my Iphone as a backup would be great.  When I was in Utah and CO there were quite a few places with no cell reception. 

It would also be nice to be able to rely on the Garmin products.  I don't know if they are intentionally not fully supporting the older units or not but I would think that if bought one with Life Time Maps you'd get the POI's to go with them. 

Maybe a little late, but been busy.

I guess that I must be lucky….or maybe there are some members that need to travel to New Orleans and find a great manbo and have her strike down the person or individuals that has their VooDoo doll and keeps sticking pins in it.  

I have used Garmin products since the mid 90’s.  I used my hunting hand held GPS and made up an RS232 adapter and used it with my laptop and Delorme software and had the equivalent of a big screen “Hertz Never Lost”.  Then updated or got a new hand held.  It routed me to our time share on the Big Island in HI in the middle of the night….and I have used it on desolate forest roads near Crater Lake or for a spectacular off road adventure in the Tetons.

I went through the first Garmins…..and then bought the 760.  That was over 10 years ago.  I can still get new maps and software and hardware updates for a 12 YO model my son has or the 760 or for my 5 year old hand held.  I use it to “plot” my best RV route.  I use the Garmin App on a cellular ipad for weather and road conditions and such.  My DW will use that to see what Google maps says or where the “red blob” or traffic tie ups are.

We also had a member that worked for the company that supplied Garmin with maps for the 760 and he would make updates like adding a “crossover” on a four lane road that Garmin didn’t have…so you didn’t have to drive a few miles and execute a “360” U turn.

Garmin is also, at least for me, very easy to contact by phone and help with an issue.  Once I added a memory card to the 760 as the maps and other features outgrew the internal memory….no issues.

I did, less than 3 months ago, do the updates for all my devices….easiest tech update that I have done in a while.

LTM truly, in my case, is LIFETIME.  I USED to use some of the Google Maps tools and download POI to the 760, but that was not productive when DW could get that instantly….assuming we had cell service.  I can also tell you that having a NON Cell iPad (which we upgraded to a Cell) and trying use an IPhone as a hot spot…to run Google maps on the NON cell ipad was a FIASCO.  The towers would triangulate ….sometimes miles after you missed a turn, then Google Maps would say…TURN AROUND.  

Just my experiences….