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The Trouble With In-Car GPS Systems
PM senior automotive editor Mike Allen loves GPS systems both in and out of automobiles. But he finds that portable GPS devices beat factory-installed car navigation systems almost every time in terms of price, flexibility and ease-of-use.
By Mike Allen
Nick Koudis/Getty Images
I'm a navigation-system junkie. I looked in a drawer this morning before leaving for the office. I counted three handheld units, one of them, a Trimble; dates back to the early '90s when GPS first rose to American mainstream consciousness. But these, days I'm testing about five GPS systems--three portable ones, intended to be suction-cupped to the windscreen, plus a motorcycle-specific Garmin 660 and a DeLorme PN-40, designed to be good both for driving and hiking. Most of the cars I drive have a nav system built in to the dash too. Oh yeah, there's one in my phone, as well. I use them even if I know where I'm going, which drives my wife crazy.
I've come to one conclusion recently--I'll probably never buy a new car with a factory-installed nav system. I find portable systems far more useful. The built-in systems are expensive, usually $1500 to $2500, and are only available with the high-end stereo system.
I'm currently using three different portable systems: A Mio that's been kicking around the PM office for a couple of years, the Garmin Zumo 660 and the DeLorme PN-40 mentioned earlier.
The Mio C320 is a simple unit with a touchscreen and a built-in database. It was a great value. Like all nav systems, sometimes it takes a bizarre route to an easy-to-find location, but you get used to it. The simple user interface is only simple after you've used it for a few weeks. Reading the manual before walking out to the driveway is recommended.
The Garmin 660 is a much more sophisticated unit. It's intended for use on motorcycles, but it also has provision to mount inside a car rather than on the handlebars. The unit comes with a Ram handlebar mount, and there's no better way to attach stuff to a motorcycle. Ram mounts use a thumbscrew clamp that grips a pair of small rubber-coated balls. It's secure, shock-absorbing and lets you put your GPS or other device wherever you need it. And it works on snowmobiles, personal watercraft, bicycles, airplanes--just about any vehicle. ). The 660 is one of the few units on the market that's waterproof. It's got a fairly large (4.3-inch) touchscreen, and doubles as an MP3 player and a Bluetooth speaker phone. The list price is also nearly $900. Ouch. But I've done a fair amount of motorcycle touring with it this summer, and there's nothing else I'd rather have on my handlebars.
Traveling with a GPS is very liberating. My wife and I tend to take back roads most of the time, and it's easy to explore when you've got the security of a GPS-- keep the sun over the same shoulder most of the time and just follow interesting roads. When it's time for gas or lunch, just pull over and let the GPS search for the nearest or most interesting place. That's how we found Heavy Evie's Happy Kitchen somewhere in the wilds of central Massachusetts. Lunch took two delightful hours, and now we know why Evie is Heavy.
PM has an off-roading story coming up in the magazine, and I'm looking forward to trying the DeLorme PN-40, which is actually more like a handheld unit intended for hikers and mountain bikers. The DeLorme is also waterproof, and it will fit into a Ram mount cradle for vehicular use. Load it with road maps and topographic maps, and it's perfect for dual-sport motorcycling and fine for ordinary automotive uses too. DeLorme caters to high-end users--so be aware that many features of the PN-series machines require a fairly steep learning curve. At around $500, it's still more expensive than a generic GPS from RadioShack or Costco--but you wouldn't dare take one of those units white water rafting. Still, the screen is small (1-3/8 x 1-3/4 in), requiring that you mount it close to your face (or have really good eyesight). That's a result of the PN-40's hiking/skiing heritage.
This morning, I set up a route from my house to the office using the built-in nav system on a Honda Insight. It was relatively simple to set up a single route, but asking it to do something more complex, like find a point-of-interest in a town 50 miles away, is nearly impossible. And you can't even have your navigator/passenger tinker with the thing unless you pull over and put the car in Park. That feature is supposed to prevent texting-while-driving shenanigans, but it's impractical for trips with the family.
Recently, I've found that the portable systems will get you where you need to go just as well as factory-supplied built-ins, and generally for far less cost. Even if you need some sort of special feature in your nav systems like topo maps or weatherproofing, the aftermarket portable units are still far cheaper.
11 reasons why portable GPS nav systems are better than factory-installed systems:
* $200 is better than $2000. Way better.
* You only need one portable system for whatever you're driving, not one in each vehicle.
* You can input destinations from your kitchen table, not solely while sitting at the curb.
* You can route plan a trip from your computer on a big screen and download the route beforehand.
* You can save the actual route you took back to the computer for another visit. And print it out.
* The software on portables is usually way easier to use than built-ins, and easier to update.
* Your passenger/navigator can program or query the nav system while you drive, instead of having to pull over and put the car in park to change an address or look for a gas station.
* Snoops might try to access the address list on your built-in.
* If you're really paranoid, you don't need to worry about systems like GM's OnStar or Ford Sync being able to track your travel on their cellphone links without your knowledge.
* Updating the map database on the factory systems costs somewhere between $200-400 for a replacement DVD, often more than a complete new portable system in the box.
* Updating the database on a portable is often simply a free download .
And some reasons you might actually want to pay the extra freight for a built-in:
* Can't be lost or stolen (unless you lose the whole car--or the whole car is stolen).
* Potential better resale value for vehicle with nav, though studies suggest that may not be the case.
* Bigger screen that's not in your line of sight.
* You won't have all those cables, and octopus marks on the windshield.
* Louder voice instructions that can override the jams on the stereo--nice if you tend to get distracted while rocking out.
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