gps points of interest canada
Which GPS for our road trips?
My gf and I both bought each other gps’s for christmas. She got me the tom tom xl 355s and I bought the Garmin 255wt. Which is better? We only need one and we don’t know which to return. I like the traffic feature on the Garmin. We like to do road trips and plan on doing one to Canada soon. Daily use is not really important as we both have very short commutes. Finding hospitals and points of interest is important since we are far from home and have no clue whats around especially in an emergency. We do go into mexico so if that’s an option its a real plus. We are in so cal if it helps. lastly budget; $300 since we both paid about $130 for each unit so if we have to return both and get something of better quality that’s fine. We obviously both feel its something we need… Thanks guys, I appreciate the opinion of someone who follows this technology. I’ve not had one before and the reviews all seem to say each one is pretty good…
I have tried both. The small screen version of garmin is not the way to go, if you are like me and you are used to a touch screen keyboard then another brand is needed – qwerty keyboards suck for me. The Tom Tom has better software to find something on route. For example, if you are travelling for a few hours and you would like to get a Thai dinner along the route, Tom Tom makes good choices. Garmin is SO SO stupid, the programmers should hide their heads in the sand, because it will actually route you to Thai restaurants that are not along the route but even ones behind you. Its just retarded. Tom tom is much better as I said. However the map in Tom Tom is just not as good. Way points vary from city to city between the two gps systems. Hard to call their tech support. Garmin`s maps are simply impossible to beat, but their software is not quite as good I would say. On the other hand for novice users the garmin is much easier software to use. Oh one other thing… Garmin does make it easy to click on the map and get an overview which is easy to zoom out and click and drag around to see where you are going and what the gps has planned for you. Tom Tom can give you an overview but its not draggable (not a word I know) as far as I can figure out. Also you have to go through 2 menus to even get the overview. I find this a very very bad shortcoming because you can`t just trust a gps you need to take a look at what its planning. Sometimes they make stupid choices and screw you up bad so you have to review what they are planning. So it must be dead easy to get that overview in map form. Garmin does this nicely.
If you want to have the best of both worlds then I would consider IGO Amigo. The Newelectronx igo amigo is very nice. It basically combines the good and the good of both Garmin and Tom Tom. Very easy to use, very easy to map, and mine came with:
FREE map updates
External SDcard slot
GPS, MP3 music playback, photo album, e-Book viewer, MP4 video playback, Flash swf file playback, optional radar detector / laser detector, video games, etc
5.0 inch vibrant color touch screen
Text to speech with turn by turn directions
Used for walking, running, climbing, or driving in a vehicle
Enter coordinates or addresses
Built-in speaker with 3.5mm earphone jack output
4GB SDcard containing USA nationwide street-level map, other maps are available
Plays your videos and supports: MPEG4, DIVX5.0/4.0/3.11, XVID, MPEG2
Plays your music and read audio format: MP3, WMA
LISTEN MUSIC AT THE SAME TIME THAT YOU GET TURN BY TURN DIRECTIONS… cool!
Stores and views your pictures in formats: JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG
Features a rechargeable lithium polymer battery
7 Languages support: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish
Package List: GPS, Car cigar lighter power charger, Home AC adapter, USB data sync and charging cable, car windshield / dashboard mount kit
All in all I have to give newelectronx the two thumbs up.
http://www.newelectronx.com/products.php?cat=46
http://www.newelectronx.com/proddetail.php?prod=gps-igo-amigo
for buying a new gps also see this link:
http://www.newelectronx.com/help.php?category_id=11&parent_id=11
