Summary: After 2 months’ use in the Boston, Washington DC, and Portland (OR) metropolitan areas, and also on O?ahu, I feel qualified to review this product. I chose this model because it combined the functions in which I was interested, which I’ll discuss in turn.
Basic navigation functions
I’ve not had much experience with auto GPS units since the original Hertz “NeverLost” model, so I can't compare the nüvi with current competitors. However, I’m very impressed with the speed and spatial precision of this unit. Even long and complicated routes are computed in less than 10 seconds. Route variations are detected quickly and a revised route is computed speedily. I can pass a speed limit sign and within no more than one or two seconds the changed speed limit will usually appear on the screen. I’m impressed, too, with how the unit automatically scales the map to a level appropriate for current navigation purposes.
Problems with basic navigation are few. The most serious one happened only in Portland (OR), perhaps relating to the quality of the mapping there. The unit pinpoints the vehicle’s start position within a rectangular grid of streets absolutely correctly, but when I request a routing the unit sometimes tells me to “drive to the highlighted route” starting several blocks away from my current position (sometimes even off the current map). Yet it has no difficulty navigating back correctly through the same grid all the way to the starting point.
I've also noticed variability between cities in what are regarded as decision points meriting the provision of route guidance there. On the Washington DC highway system, for example, merges and splits that in Boston would have been treated as decision points are not identified in the same way.
Another improvement to “basic navigation” would be valuable. At the highest levels of map magnification, it would be useful to have arrows showing the directions of one-way streets.
Street name pronunciation
The unit comes with a wide array of voices, languages, and national shades of English. I’m impressed with the capabilities of the name pronunciation feature; it works well most of the time, and given the idiosyncrasies of the English language that’s quite an achievement. It struggles, of course, with unfamiliar word structures (e.g., Hawai?ian names) or non-standard pronunciations (e.g., “Van-cow-ver”), but there are a few more mundane peculiarities. In Washington DC, where a compass quadrant designation follows many street names, the “St.” is invariably pronounced “Saint.” “Rt.” for “route” is pronounced “artee.” The most ingenious muddle so far has been “Ames St.,” parsed as “American English Street.”
Lane assist
In Massachusetts the highway department’s motto is “Never give a sucker advance notification of the lane he needs to be in,” so Garmin’s “Lane assist” feature was a strong reason to choose this model. But as of now, it is the most disappointing feature. First, only certain areas currently have this capability, and I have been unable to find on the Garmin website any indications of just where it is available. It is available in the Boston and Portland areas, for example, but I saw no evidence of it in the Washington DC and Honolulu areas. Secondly, it appears to be currently available primarily on the Interstate system (where highway signage standards are relatively good), whereas it would be of much greater value to drivers in dense urban core areas (e.g., lane guidance for Dupont and Washington Circles and the Potomac bridges in Washington DC). But it isn’t clear to me whether the Navteq maps used by Garmin even have the basic lane detail to allow such guidance to be feasible eventually, even with a significant expansion of the geographical coverage for “Lane assist.”
Free real-time traffic information
This was another strong attraction of this model. I concur with other reviewers who have opined that the advertising that allows the information to be accessed without a subscription charge is not at all a distraction (it’s small, and appears only at the end of a trip or when the vehicle is stationary). But I haven’t experienced congested conditions often enough yet to form strong opinions about its efficacy. In the Boston area I’ve experienced slow moving highway traffic a number of times (an amber traffic symbol on the screen, along with an estimate of the traffic delay minutes) and have occasionally noted that the system’s information was not very current, but up to now I haven’t had a high enough congestion level for the system to generate an alternate routing.
In overview, I’m very pleased with this model and glad that I bought it (particularly at a Thanksgiving weekend 43% discount from MSRP), but I would caution purchasers not to expect too much from either “Lane assist” or Navteq FM traffic at this stage of their development.
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