The Garmin StreetPilot c530 GPS is amazing!

The Garmin StreetPilot c530 GPS Reciever is a digital mapping device that gives you real-time maps and directions to wherever you might be going, plus it’ll tell you what you can find along the way. It’ll even tell you exactly when you’ll reach the destination. It’s a dandy little invention that is a must-have for any road warrior.

I don’t actually own this GPS, but it does belong to my wife’s mother. She works for a company that requires her to travel to many different locations, often in smaller cities, and she bought this GPS to help her navigate. My mother-in-law let my wife and I borrow this GPS for a recent trip to Nashville to see Dancing with the Stars. This Nashville trip was not the first time we’ve had a chance to see the GPS in use, but it was the first time we made extensive use of it besides just riding around our neighborhood seeing which new roads have made it into Garmin’s mapping system. We spent the entire weekend relying on this GPS to get us around to various locations in Nashville, and it saved us a lot of time and trouble.

I know the $400+ price tag on this thing might make some people say “GUH!” and put it back on the shelf, but you have to remember that the cost is a one-time fee. GPS technology like this does not require any kind of monthly service fee and you don’t have to sign up for anything to make it work. It’s even free to download software updates from Garmin.com. Right out of the box, all you have to do is turn this thing on and it starts working, just like a radio.

Garmin, a company well known and respected for the wide variety of GPS products, has included pretty much all you need with the c530. It comes with a USB cable to connect it to your computer, a cigarette lighter power adapter for your car, a mounting device for those vehicles with a flat area on the dash, a carry case, and of course a built-in rechargeable battery. This device even has an SD Memory Card slot in case you want to add photos and such.

The battery lasts roughly 7-8 hours before it needs a recharge, but if you are traveling in your car you can always plug in the cigarette lighter adapter. If 7-8 hours seems a bit low, you have to keep in mind that this thing has a full color 3.5” screen that is constantly moving, so it takes a lot of juice to keep that thing refreshed. It will run just fine while the adapter is plugged in, so you won’t have to worry about getting lost if the battery runs down.

To use this GPS, all you have to do is turn it on and find a secure place to mount it inside your car. We drove to Nashville in my wife’s Nissan Altima, and we found that the c530 fit perfectly in the CD case slot right behind the shifter. I’m sure you can find someplace decent inside your own vehicle. This thing is about the size of a small tub of butter.

If you know the street address of where you are going, you can type it in using the touch screen. The buttons are all big and it’s quite easy to use. Once you have the address, the GPS will calculate the best route and then tell you where your next turn will be and how far away it is. It will also display your exact arrival time and update that time depending on how fast you are going or if you make any stops along the way. We found this time tracker to be quite accurate.

The display on this unit presents the map using an overhead view of the roads. You can zoom in or out depending on how cluttered the map becomes, but it will not give you any kind of display scale. For that reason, you have to be careful how much you have the zoom set or you might miss a turn if you follow the onscreen graphics too closely. Depending on the level of zoom, it will show you the names of roads nearby, as well as bodies of water or wooded areas.

The most important feature of this GPS is its ability to navigate you to your destination. I think this GPS does a good job, though the results sometimes vary. For example, we needed directions from our hotel room in Nashville to the downtown area. It told us to go up to the next Interstate exit, then take a left and follow that road all the way into the downtown area. It worked perfectly and took us right where we needed to go. However, on the way back, it provided us a completely different route. We found this odd that instead of making two simple turns and bringing us back to the hotel, this GPS wanted us to turn and merge and weave all through the downtown area in order to get back. I think the map system is defaulted to put you on major highways and interstates before any other streets, which would explain why it suggested a different way home. Because it was bad weather, we decided to go back home the way we came.

Another example of variation in the mapping ability is how it originally plotted our course from our home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to our destination in Nashville. It wanted us to drive all the way over to Mobile, then turn north and travel all the way up through Alabama and into Nashville. This seemed like a waste of time since Mobile is due East of here and it made no sense to go that way. Instead, we took Highway 49 up to Meridian, MS, then connected with some Interstates and eventually arrived at just about the same time that this GPS originally projected us to arrive going the other way. On the way back home, it plotted us to go the same way we came up.

One cool thing about the navigation feature on this GPS is that it quickly readjusts in case you miss a turn. When we first arrived in Nashville, we found a lot of construction going on and missed one of our exits. This GPS immediately recalculated the route and had us make a U-turn at the next exit. In other cases while traveling in the downtown area we missed some streets and it told us how to get back where we needed to go. I thought this was incredibly helpful and demonstrated how resourceful and brilliantly well this device works.

In addition to providing directions to your destination, you can go into the menu system and search for local attractions. For example, we got a craving for coffee and were able to pull up a listing for all the Starbucks stores in the area. Once you find one close enough, just press a button and this GPS will navigate you right there. This GPS also saves your last several destinations, so after making a side trip you can resume your original destination without having to type it back in. We also we able to get directions to several local stores we wanted to visit. We did find that the location database is not completely current, as some stores located here in Mississippi that have been open for a couple of years were still not listed on this GPS.

In the end, I was very impressed by the Garmin StreetPilot c530 and it truly made our trip to Nashville a lot easier. If you do a lot of traveling, I highly recommend you get one of these to better help you to find where you are going. It might be a little expensive, but at least there are no monthly fees. My parents are both retired and do a lot of traveling with their RV, so I’m hoping they will purchase one of these for their next road trip adventure. Maybe I’ll get my brother to splurge with me and get them one for Christmas.