Garmin Nuvi 200
Posted December 8th, 2008 @ 03:38pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Last year I played with a Garmin Nüvi 200W. This year, my in-laws bought a Garmin Nüvi 200 for me for Christmas.
Last year - with coupons - I paid something like $250. This year, the unit's free (or, if you're an opportunity cost kind of person, it cost me "$100 in other presents").
For $250, the 200W wasn't worth it. For free/$100, the 200 is a great fit. I'm looking forward to using it immediately. We've been borrowing their rather bulbous GPS model for various trips this past year, and it turns out I really don't need much. Though it'd be nice if we had the "speaks street names" feature, that's about the only one that could really add to the experience. The others - Bluetooth (we don't live in New York state and don't talk on the phone all that much to begin with), traffic (don't live in an area with a lot of traffic), and who knows what - don't do much to excite me.
I will likely find it annoying that custom POIs can't be added to the generic search at some point, though. I'm guessing that's still not a problem that's been fixed. Perhaps I just won't install my own POIs.
Donate Life
Posted 09 Dec 2008 at 8:18pm #
Do you mean your annoyed that they "can't" be added to the generic search? (rather than "can"?)
I concur it would be nice if custom POIs were more integrated on Garmins.
The real annoyance though (at least with my Oregon) is that Custom POI searching is very slow with thousands of POIs. Actually, all POI searching is slow. Waypoint/Geocache searching is quite fast, though.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 1:31am #
I travel a lot (2-3 weeks a month) and have been using the Garmin Nuvi 780 for over a year now. I tried damn near every GPS on the market before I settled on this one cause it was a great price at Costco and I had some gifts to exchange.
Bluetooth: I travel in some states where I must use a headset like California and New Mexico. Personally I think the Bluetooth on the Garmin’s suck (when paired with the Blackberry Pearls and 8300's) the connection is spotty even with upgraded firmware. Then there is the issue (or perhaps only an issue to me) with the one volume control, which means both navigation and phone have to be at the same volume. I need the volume on the phone louder than I need Jill giving me directions. The call logs and address books don’t sync well either, again I’ve tried different model Blackberry’s and firmware updates but seems odd to me that some of the most popular phones in North American wouldn’t work better with this unit. During my experience with the Harmon Kardon 810 I thought it had better Bluetooth and actually has separate navigation and phone volume controls. I’ve ultimately given up on using the Bluetooth with the Garmin and am perfectly happy with my Oakley ROKR sunglasses, at least with these I get stereo Bluetooth.
Waypoints: I'm amazed that someone somewhere still hasn't figured out a way to let me import my list of clients/prospects via tab delimited text files or other formats like CSV. It's seem ridiculous to me that I have to manually enter my addresses one at a time. The included software will allow me to enter multiple addresses...if I know the lat/long, WTF? How many times have you called someone for their address and they give you coordinates instead!?
Maps: Personally I like the look and accuracy of the Garmin maps more than others but wish we'd get updates more than just once a year.
MSN direct: After using MSN direct for free this year I'm choosing not to renew, below I explain why I don't think the $49 a yr or $129 lifetime is worth it.
Gas prices: While it's nice to know which gas station has the cheaper gas, I'm not going to drive 3 or more miles out of my way to save .03 a gallon.
Movie times and location: Please give me a more useful feature. I can use Google Text or some other service and get the same if not better results for FREE
Traffic: Doesn't help to tell me there's a traffic delay when I've already passed any exits I could have taken to avoid it OR if the accident/delay has already been cleaned up.
Weather: Really I can't see out of my windshield to know what the weather is like. Oh but it is nice to know what the weather is like in another city, lol. Also like the movies times I can go elsewhere for that information.
While this all may seem like a rant, I don’t think I could do my job or travel on vacation as effectively without a GPS unit. The directions and accuracy of the routes and travel times is spot on. The GPS has also helped me find countless businesses, gas stations, restaurants and other places of interest which has cut my travel times considerably. I am going to start shopping for a replacement though. So I just meant to post my two cents but this seems more like a mini review, huh?
Posted 07 Jan 2009 at 4:57pm #
Garmin announced a new GPS made just for golfing today:
http://garmin.blogs.com/pr/2009/01/garmin-goes-gol.html?activeBranchId=newsroom
Looks right up your alley. 🙂