Garmin GPS V Deluxe > Reviews (1)

Garmin are famed for their GPS products and narrowing down the criteria was the first step in a product that suited my needs. The product was not only half the cost of a colour, speaking model, but it was half the size and weight; crucial for what I needed. The review is based upon what I wanted to see when considering the unit, so hopefully will answer the questions of those considering similar qualities.

Overview
The unit is compact, with a good sized monochrome display, which can be horizontally or vertically “flipped” via the internal software. A scalable backlight function allows easy lighting and contrast enhancements to meet your needs. The map software that comes with the unit is Mapsource City select (mine was European mapset). Interface to your PC is via a serial port. The deluxe package contains everything you need to get going plus a car-lighterpower adapter for in-car power. Internal memory is 19Mb, which is non-expandable.

Design
The unit can be handheld, car mounted or for use on motorbikes/cycles (with optional cycle mount bracket, sold separately to the package). Car mounting is via a docking cradle which can be permanently or temporarily attached to your dash. A bean-bag option is highly recommended for car use, which has the proper mounting brackets and is latex backed for non-slip use. The unit is weather-proof and all access ports are fitted with tight rubber gaskets. Construction is heavy-duty plastic, which appears solid enough to take a good battering (the weakest point being the screen display in my view).

Unit dimensions are 2.3”H x 5.0”W x 1.6”D (5.9 x 12.7 x 4.1 cm). It weights 255g (9oz).
Screen size is 1.5” x 2.2” (3.8 x 5.6 cm), consisting of a 4 grey level backlit LCD.

Further technical specifications on DGPS accuracy and performance are easily available on the Garmin website (www.garmin.com).

Operation.
The front of the unit has a rocker keypad with 8 additional buttons (Zoom in, zoom out, quit, lighting/contrast, find, enter, page, mark). Alphanumeric operation is via the rocker keypad, selecting from the onscreen alphabet. Entering addresses is reasonably quick this way, as successive keystrokes narrow down searched from the database of road names/places.

Getting going with the unit is really very simple, and you can start to navigate after a 10 minute scan through the excellent user manual.

Satellite acquisition is typically 45 seconds from cold start and reacquisition approx 10 seconds when running.

Auto-route replanning and recalculation is automatic, so pretty good if you need to take another road. There is also an off-track option for mountain bikers or walkers, so you can easily see where you are in relation to locations. The zoom function is very good, ranging from 1500 miles (for you F14 pilots), down to 80ft for trekkers.

If you want to stick it on your car dashboard and just go, all you need to do is set your destination, and select the Go To option. After a 40 second route calculation (maybe longer for more complicated or distanced locations, the unit clearly indicates where to go using both audible bleeps at junctions, turns and roundabouts, to zoomed out map display for longer stretched (I.

e., motorway runs). This is all user-definable, but the defaults work just fine. Backlighting will switch off if desired, between instructions (for increased battery life if not using the car power lead), but can stay on if you wish.

The main navigation page shows the map, location (street/road name) and additional sidebar information of Distance to next waypoint, time to next waypoint, Distance to final destination and ETA to final destination (which is great when asked what time you are arriving !).

There are other displays, such as a trip information page, showing current heading, speed, odometer, stopped/moving time, average speed, total time, GPS location, time and date and elevation.

The routing page will ignore the map and give you “autoroute style” turn indicators.

The direction finder is good for walkers or mountain bikers etc, and has a great course pointer, similar to those used in aircraft, indicating your direction and how far off course you may be.

Not that I ever have or will use it, but there is a “Hunt & Fish” option, which tells you the best time to go a huntin’ or a fishin’ !. Sun and moon locations for a specific time and day can be displayed, which is no use to me, but must have something of value to those hunters and fisherman. Mind you, might be handy if you live with a werewolf.

A nice feature was the “tracks” option, which displays a ‘breadcrumb’ track, so you can retrace your steps. This is particularly handy for bike or foot travel, but also helped me to easily navigate out of a large and mazy business park that was not mapped by the software.

What else…a calendar (if you get lost for days I suppose), a calculator, petrol mileage calculator, and even some games to keep you amused.

Mapping software
My only gripe is that registration of the software is not as easy as it could be. You need to unlock the CD on the internet and this is a nuisance to find. Instructions could be clearer on this.
You can upload 19MB of mapping data to the unit, easily selectable from the Mapsource software by selecting area grids that surround your location. Road heavy areas (such as central London) take up quite a lot of memory (3-4MB for central London), but suburban and rural areas only 0.5Mb to 2 Mb. An example of an area I uploaded to full capacity was from Northampton, south through Herts, Beds and Bucks, all central London and down to Kent. Main motorways are included on the unit as default, so if motorway / A road driving over a large distance, you only need upload your destination and any stop off points.

Overall
I am very happy with the unit and have used it on some complex areas, deliberately going off route to fool it. The firmware and software updates get rid of any earlier bugs with roundabouts (US made and they didn’t understand ‘em..put a man on the moon, yes, but navigate a roundabout…no way sir).

In car use is great, gets me to where I want to be. The additional benefit of the size means it is great for boat or foot use. I travel across Europe, so it is great to have with me when staying in a strange foreign city and want to find my way back to the hotel after a good stroll.

You can look up restaurants, pubs, service stations and a lot more besides. These are fairly mainstream, but great if you have a hunger and don’t know where to eat. They are broken down into categories depending on the type (Chinese, Indian, fast food etc).

If you don’t need colour displays or attractive sounding people telling you where to turn, this is a great unit. If you do need those options though, double the asking price and get what you pay for.

Finally…look around on the net for the cheapest seller. I got mine from a renound website (globalpositioningsystems.co.uk) for £120 cheaper than the average selling price. So for £350, this baby could be yours.