Garmin 330 - Really Scary Experience

[AJSANTOS]

Went on Holiday to Florida and rented a GARMIN 330 as I couldn't find maps for my Blaupunkt Lucca MP3 in time.
Really happy with POI's and the software is very user friendly - but this is where the positive points of this unit ends.

It was a frightening experience driving around with one of these. Most the voice instructions were given late (95% of them 0.2 miles before, can you imagine? and if you're on a motorway, specially in the States, then it's even more serious...), rarely it would give you 2 instructions in advance and some of them were for magicians only... straight after entering a 4 lane motorway, asking you to go from the right lane to the left in 0.2 miles is a recipe for an accident, when there were clearly dif (and safer) alternatives to achieve the same destination. I don't know if the other Garmin Models use the same process of giving directions, If they do, then may god Help the Garmin Users, because frankly it is really, really bad.

The Lucca MP3 is not as user friendly as the Garmin and the structure of the POI's is also below of what this Garmin Unit provides to the users. But in terms of Voice directions, my God, is miles better. It gives you 2 direction changes in well in advance and you don't have to wait for the arrow to be shown up on the map to know what will be happening next - it displays a small square on the low left hand side of the screen with a symbol of what to expect next ( roundabout - including the exit you will need to take, left/right turn, T Junction...) along with a graphic bar indicating how far you are from the instructions given, and also the distance. All this info along with the map displayed on screen makes the whole experience much more enjoyable.

I was never confident with the Garmin - I needed to give extra attention to the info I was getting, something that I don't need to do with the Lucca MP3

[KeithO]

Most GPS units let you change how far in advance they give the warnings - are you sure this wasn't possible with the Garmin? 0.2 miles is 352 yards which is about what I have my TomTom set at. Still 12 seconds at 60 mph

Navigating across multiple lanes on the freeway is generally easier than in most countries, due to the tendency of all the traffic to travel at roughly the same speed. You want to try pulling out into the 'fast lane' on a german autobahn

[AJSANTOS]

Originally Posted by KeithO

Most GPS units let you change how far in advance they give the warnings - are you sure this wasn't possible with the Garmin? 0.2 miles is 352 yards which is about what I have my TomTom set at. Still 12 seconds at 60 mph

Navigating across multiple lanes on the freeway is generally easier than in most countries, due to the tendency of all the traffic to travel at roughly the same speed. You want to try pulling out into the 'fast lane' on a german autobahn

I'm quite sure you can't change it - I had to go through the settings as I wanted to avoid toll roads. 0.2 miles on a motorway when you're doing 60 mph is really short - in most cases, when you finished listening to the instruction, it is too late. Even off motorways is very dif. to change 2 lanes in a short space of time when you're dealing with heavy traffic - If you get the instructions well in advance you can avoid these issues - but not with this Garmin - and it's certainly not easy in Miami, believe me!