Great little travel tool!

I've always wanted an travel GPS but they've always been way too pricey for me. After a co-worker showed me his Nuvi I was hooked.

I like the slim design (not much thicker than a deck of playing cards). It has a easy to navigate touch screen interface and built in antenna that flips down out of the way when not in use. The maps are pretty accurate as far as I can tell. Of course they're not going to be up to the minute. The auto route calculation is very accurate. Tools in the Nuvi enable you to account for time stopped, average speed, max speed, total trip time and mileage. Of course there is a compass and altimeter too. You can zoom the map. The bright display works well in my Expedition. It will switch to night time mode so that it doesn't glare at you too. It comes with a number of customizable features, languages and icons. (The wife made me change from the Australian female voice...said she couldn't understand her. I think she was jealous...LOL) The nuvi also has an SD memory slot to save your favorite waypoints, destinations, MP3s or E-books. I have a 1gig card in mine and I can't imagine needing anymore. The Nuvi also plays MP3 and E-books so if you're into tha while driving you can do that too. It even has a traffic watch system that alerts you to heavy traffic along your route (pay service). I don't really need that feature but I can see where it would come in handy if you were navigating constantly around in a big city.

We took our Nuvi to the Outer Banks for vacation and it performed great! The Nuvi automatically recalculates the route for missed turns and detours. The suction cup window mount never moved. It plotted our course and our estimated arrival time was dead on!

Now for things I wish were diffrent about the Nuvi. The battery life is not great. Oh its OK I suppose becaue I don't plan on putting it on my bicycle or being far from a 12v plug-in. The Nuvi isn't water proof or resistant. Again that's OK too because unless my Expedition gets flooded it won't matter... But it would be nice to put it on my motorcycle w/o worry. I still do but if it clouds up the Nuvi goes into a ziplock bag. I wish I could edit the maps or change road names. A lot of the roads the Nuvi has in its memory have County Route numbers. The Route numbers are totally correct. But I would like to use their common name. And finally the instructions that came with my Nuvi plain sucked. It is easy to use (thank god!), so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out. But little help would be nice.

I bought mine as a referb from Circuit City. ($50.00 cheaper) It came with a like new warranty and I have had NO problems with it. If I were going to buy a GPS this is the one I would buy. The only other one I would consider is its big brother that has Bluetooth built in.