My Favorite Gadget
Written: Mar 25 '05 (Updated Mar 25 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great mapping, endless features, beautiful screen
Cons: Complicated to learn
The Bottom Line: A well thought out, indispensable tool that may take some time to learn.
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| superfan's Full Review: Coiled USB Cable (WY0100026411) Battery Charger fo... |
I've always wanted a GPS system. The problem is, I travel a lot and have two cars. The best GPS units seemed to be the hardwired ones, until I went on a business trip with a colleague that had the Garmin iQue 3600. After that trip I went out and bought one! That was about 10 months ago. I haven't opened a map since.
I ended up buying a brand new one on eBay (which may have been a mistake - the Garmin website says that they don't honor warranty repairs on products bought on eBay!)
Map Database
The iQue 3600 has two map databases: a 'basemap' which includes major freeways and basic geography, and a 'detailed map' which includes all roads, gas stations, ATMs, restaurants, and other points of interest. Due to the limited amount of memory, you can't load all of the detailed data onto your iQue at once; you must select specific areas. The process of loading detailed maps is done through Palm Desktop and is pretty time consuming. It can also be buggy. I've found that loading the basemap and one 'tile' of the detailed map to the internal iQue memory and the rest of the detailed map to the expansion SD card memory works the best.
Memory
Since the iQue comes with only 32MB of memory (and only ~22MB of that will be free), an SD memory card will be helpful to load more map data, MP3s, programs, and whatever else you want. I have a 256 MB card, which is more than enough to fit maps of the SF Bay Area and a couple other metro areas, along with some music files and my contact database. Casual users would do well with a 128 MB card, while power users should get at least a 256 MB card.
GPS Features
The GPS system is very well thought out. It's not perfect, but there are many ways to customize your experience that could have easily been left out. Garmin enables you to adjust the map orientation (north up or track up), the level of map detail (less detail = faster map refresh), and zoom level at which map features appear. It also allows you to determine when voice cues are announced, enable or disable 'turn previews', edit what the 'que' button does within the GPS, edit route preferences (avoid freeways, u-turns, tool roads, and/or unpaved roads), and calculate routes for either cars, trucks, taxis, bicycles, etc.
The GPS also has features for diving, fishing, hunting, and hiking, which I have not used. The 'Track' feature allows you to see the path you have taken.
Routing
Routing is very good, with only a few misdirections and bugs. I was surprised to find that the maps include some private dirt roads that I use when on vacation to the
Tahoe area. To find an address, simply enter the number and street name; the iQue will usually find the correct city and state - unless it's something like 1st Street or Main Street, then you may want to enter the city to help it out. The Garmin will find the route with the fastest time or the shortest distance, depending on what you have it set up to do. For driving, the voice prompts are well done but the volume isn't loud enough unless you have the external speaker that comes with the car kits.
Setting up a trip with multiple stops is difficult to learn. It has to be done by selecting your destination, then adding 'vias' in between. A nice feature is the fact that it can sort this list of vias for the fastest trip.
The coolest feature of all is the database of ATMs, banks, gas stations, restaurants, auto repair stations, and other points of interest! With the GPS on you can find the nearest gas station (or other points of interest) to your current location, to your destination, to your current route (and tell it how far from your current route you're willing to stray), or to any point on the map you choose. You can find restaurants by type (Asian, BBQ, Italian, German, Deli, etc, etc), or you can find shopping, hotels, entertainment, hospital, or just about anything else. It even has the phone number for the places so you can call ahead! I use it as a phone book.
All these features take some time to learn, but it's well worth it.
Battery
Battery life is decent. With the backlight turned to it's lowest it will last a long time. However, the only time I use the iQue extensively without external power is to play it's addicting word games. When routing and not using external power, the Garmin will go to sleep, deactivating the screen and backlight. It will continue to route, all you need to do is press the power button to turn the screen back on.
Palm Pilot Features
The processor is fast enough to sort my 4000 contacts in less than a second, where my ancient Palm IIIve took a couple of minutes. The screen is 320x480, a respectable size for a PDA. The backlight is great, very bright when turned up, but a drain on the battery. The Garmin comes with a built in MP3 player and headphone jack. If you want to use it extensively as an MP3 player, I advise getting a 512 MB or 1 GB SD card. I can only fit about 15 songs on my 256 MB card (although I do have a lot of detailed maps on my iQue). Another very handy feature is the voice recorder. Using a button on the side, you can record through the built in microphone which will continue recording until you've used up all the available memory. I recorded a 1.5 hour lecture on mine and still didn't fill it up. If the GPS is turned on, the Garmin
will automatically put a waypoint where you recorded the voice note.
There is some cool shareware that comes with the iQue as well. WorldMate is my favorite utility, with a daylight map, times in various cities, an exchange rate table, metric/English conversion calculator, international dialing codes, foreign clothing size table, editable packing list, and weather forcasts for major cities worldwide. If you have a computer that connects to the internet, the program updates exchange rates and weather when you hotsync. It comes with several shareware games, including a version of Breakout and some very addicting word scramble games.
Software it should come with but doesn't is an image or video viewing program. I found an inexpensive image viewer called GRXView online to solve this problem.
Another accessory you should pick up when you buy it is a screen protector. I use Clear Touch Crystal from BoxWave. You need to increase pressure slightly on the touchscreen, but it saves your screen from getting scratched up.
Durability
I've read quite a bit online about people having to do warranty returns on the 3600. This may be for early adopters however. I haven't had much trouble with mine. I dropped it on hardwood flooring and was afraid I had broken it. After doing a couple of hard resets, it came back to life!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
superfan
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Location: Los Gatos
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Living in Los Gatos, CA, working in Santa Clara
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