Saved my butt a few time's while travelling!

Although I have had this little unit for a while now, I was recently able to use it to it's full potential the past couple of days while visiting some friends in Chicago. It helped me more than a few times trying to find my way around the North and West sides of Chicago.

The c550 is the same size as all the other Garmin C series; such as the "c330, c510, c530" When I was selecting it the size never became an issue with the different models from the "c" class. If your wanting something a bit more compact then check out the "Nuvi" model. Although similar in many ways, the c550 and the Nuvi do have their differences.

The c550 is an amazing product that has a very clear screen, works quite well in direct sunlight or brightly lit areas. The main features that sold me on the c550 over the Nuvi (although they were the same price at the store I was shopping at) the c550 had the built in traffic transmitter in the 550's car charger, if I had bought the Nuvi, I would have had to of bought a $199 traffic module to use the traffic capabilities.

The second selling feature was that the c550 also had the ability to link up to your Blue tooth cell phone. This is a great tool to utilize when traveling in an area and your searching for something on the c550. For example, you are able to search for almost any business in your surrounding area. We were looking for a certain store in Chicago entered the partial name of it into the GPS unit, it quickly brought the name of the store, we were able to press "go" and it gave us our route immediately, the blue tooth feature allowed us to hit the "phone" on the screen and the c550 automatically dialed the companies phone number via my cell phone - converting my GPS unit into a giant speakerphone for the car. The microphone apparently worked fine, I had no complaints from anyone with echo's or any other problem and I made no effort to speak close to the unit, I just sat comfortably in my car and found that everyone heard me just fine. The speakers however when you put the volume to max the sound and voices started to crackle and so hearing was a little bit more difficult, I did have to ask a few people to repeat themselves, but overall the phone feature worked great. I like the sense of security it gives you of being able to call anyone or business it finds in case your vehicle breaks down and you have to look for a tow company, or if you just looking for a place to sit down and eat you can search the restaurants in the area and call them to see if their open etc.

The big feature I was looking forward to testing was the "Traffic information channel" I live in central Illinois and there is no need for this feature, but I do travel to big cities quite frequently, mainly Chicago and although you have to subscribe for this feature the annual $60.00 fee I believe is well worth it, especially if you live in a big city the feature would come in handy every time your out on the road, it indicates for you: Road Congestion, construction zones, accidents etc. If somewhere along your route the c550 detects a accident or congestion it will ask if you want to avoid this problem, I did have the opportunity to click yes this weekend and it worked AMAZING. The unit re-routed me around the congestion and brought me to my exit without even getting messed up with the traffic jam.

Other features, which are nice: all of North America is loaded on this unit, as well as Europe. You can play MP3's on the c550, there is a slot on the side of the unit to put a SD memory card in for Music and pictures and extra map software etc.

The unit is easy to navigate around with the touch-screen, the screen worked very well and is accurate to my touch, spelling addresses and business names was easy with the large keypad on the screen.

Upgrading the software on the unit is very easy, Garmin has an "auto-updater" program that you download onto your computer, upon connection to your computer the c550 via an included USB cable the auto-updater program will update your c550 with all the latest updates, fixes, you can even download new vehicle pictures to get rid of the boring triangle that indicates your exact location, you can download and install compact cars, monster trucks, motorcycles and sports cars.

Other than that, the c550 seems to be very accurate on the exact time of arrival to your location, it maintains and stores your trips progress with Max speed, avg speed, time driving and time stopped.

This unit is a great piece of equipment to have in the vehicle, I travel allot and love to explore and this unit just made it that much easier, with giving me an added sense of security. Being able to call anyone with a touch of a button is nice and knowing I don't have to mess with any traffic issue in large cities is a nice feature to have.

I would highly recommend this product and would not hesitate to tell anyone that you will not be disappointed with the Garmin c550 GPS unit.

Price paid: $799.00 at Circuit City