Garmin Quest Handheld GPS Receiver

Wow. That's all I can say. I've been a GPS fan for almost 5 years now. I've owned a Garmin eMap, Garmin eTrex Vista, a Socket Bluetooth GPS that I used with my old PocketPC & laptop, and an iTrek Mouse GPS for use with my Treo 600 and laptop. I've used several different software packages, from Microsoft Streets and Trips, to Mapopolis for my PPC & Treo, to Street Atlas USA.

The Quest trumps them all. While the laptop is the king of quick routing, it's cumbersome and bulky to use while on the road (not to mention dangerous). The Quest is far superior to the PDA & GPS combinations, both in terms of speed and cost (and durability!). Routing is quick and very simple, and off-route situations are recognized and re-routed very quickly. Voice navigation is very easy to understand (especially when updated to the new 3.0 text engine offered on Garmin's website) and works flawlessly. On familiar trips, the Quest chosen the route I would have taken anyway about 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time it's picking a route that is perfectly acceptable, but real-world experience and/or very recent road changes dictate taking a slightly different route. I am extremely happy with its performance. Some of my old Garmin units were just too pokey to use sometimes, taking several seconds to redraw maps as you moved across the screen. Not this one. Even highly detailed maps on the highest level of detail are drawn within a second or two at the most, and "normal" detail maps are drawn instantly. It's the perfect size for handheld use as well, something that no other auto-routing GPS can do. The battery life (so far) has been extraordinary. The Quest kit includes everything you need, including a home cradle/AC charger, a car cradle w/ speaker and DC charger, the very latest detailed routable maps with full unlock code.

The Mapsource software is smart enough to automatically load the maps you will need given a route, or you can select them yourself. A very cool feature. It also understands how to route between detailed maps. The Quest has a routable basemap of the entire US. That means that out-of-the-box, it will be able to route you from LA to NY. What it won't know is where your favorite coffee shop is. That's what the detailed maps are for. The Quest understands how to use it's basemap between pockets of detailed maps.


Negatives? If I had to list some it would be that while the included stuff is great, it didn't include a carrying case. They sell one, but it would have been nice to include at least a cheap slip case. That would cost you like $2, Garmin. The unit has 115mb of memory available for uploaded maps. While this is quite sufficient to put a couple of state's worth of detailed maps into memory (depending on the density of cities in the states), more memory is always better. In today's market of cheap memory, it's a shame that the Quest doesn't have 256 or even 512MB of memory for user maps. I'm not going to complain about the lack of CF or SD slot, as I appreciate that the Quest is completely sealed and lightly waterproof.


I'm sure that the Garmin 26xx models might be better, but they're $1,000+. The new c320/c330 seem pretty cool, but they seemed a little "dumbed-down" for my taste. The Quest is the most cost effective GPS solution that Garmin offers right now. I found mine for less than $400 on clearance at a local electronics superstore.