Scott_A_R's Full Review: Garmin StreetPilot??? 2620 Car GPS Receiver
I recently purchased the 2620 for a significant drive: a cross-country jaunt without any specific route plans besides "west, then east." As a result, I had a chance to do a real trial-by-fire. I had picked this model specifically because there aren't a large number of GPSs with the maps pre-loaded--and since none of the manufacturers support use with Macintoshes, I would otherwise have had trouble loading them myself.
The GPS has two main modes (these are my own terms, not the manufacturer's):
1) Tracking, where you turn the GPS on and it tells you where you are. It shows your car as an arrow overlapping a road, with speed and direction indicated. The road you're on is named, as is the next cross-street or exit.
2) Find/route, where you give the GPS a specific destination(s), and it calculates a way to get there, telling you where to turn. This is the unit's main function, and it works admirably.
There's a wealth of ways to program a destination: find it on a map, enter a specific address, a city, an exit off a highway, an intersection, etc. The GPS even has a "yellow pages/mapping" feature--if you suddenly realize you're low on gas, you can select Find, choose the Services icon, and select Auto Fuel on the submenu. You can then narrow it down based upon "Near here" (in a radius around you), or "Near route" (a certain distance off of the route you're traveling), or other criteria. If it's getting late and you want to find a motel or campground, it can find those too--and give you the place's phone number if you want to call ahead and get the rates. You can also add "vias"--aka waypoints, which are one or more brief stop-offs between the start and finish points on your route.
(Though there's an element of risk in finding these things while driving, the 2620 comes with a handy remote control makes it very easy).
I use the "beanbag" mount, which doesn't need to be affixed to the dash. I'm not a sedate driver, and I've had no problems with the GPS sliding around.
While being very pleased, overall, I've found some problems:
1) the Find function gives you the distance as the bird flies, not as you drive. That is, if you're looking for a gas station, and it says there's one 7 miles away, when it actually calculates the route, you may find it's about 15 or more miles. The 7 mile distance is straight-line, you to the destination, while the later route calculation is based on the likely situation that there's no ROAD straight from you to the place.
This problem extends to the "Find near route" feature. You can tell the GPS to find something X miles off of the current route (you can change X, from 1/2 to 15 miles), but it's X miles *as the bird flies.* On my trip, I asked it to find a gas station no more than 2 miles off the interstate I was on. It did. But by happenstance, I found out just before I was to exit that I'd have to backtrack 23 miles to get there. That is, after Finding the gas station, I'd driven 40 miles to get to its exit, and, rather than simply driving another two miles to a gas station, would now have to get off and drive 23 miles (back in the direction I'd just come from) on a road that almost paralleled the interstate in order to get to the gas station, which was *literally* less than two miles from the interstate, but without a nearby exit. Glad I caught that (you can call up a screen that gives you the entire route listing to your destination).
Lesson: always check your total mileage AFTER calculating the route.
2) sometimes the route choices are odd. Though I'd picked the "faster route" option, I've more than once been told to take a major road with traffic lights through a densely populated area over an interstate. The major road was likely shorter, but the lights would certainly have made the trip take quite a bit longer than the interstate. I can only guess that the GPS simply didn't recognize the presence of the lights.
3) sometimes, it adds on the strangest little detours. One time, I was traveling along a major road, and the GPS tells me to make a right, travel a few hundred feet, make a left, go a few hundred feet more, then another left, and rejoin the major road. I ignored this, and couldn't see any reason why it was put in--it didn't take me around anything. One time, I fell for it--the GPS had me make a left onto a minor road, and I did (thinking it was a shortcut to another major road I needed to take), but as I turned onto the side road I saw a sign that read "no outlet." Basically, it was going to have me take that left, drive a few hundred feet, take a fork to the right, and drive along a road that almost paralleled the main one until merging with it. I've found that these little detours don't seem to occur if you plot the same route on a later date. Weird.
5) sometimes the turns, especially where expressways "split," are less than obvious. There were a couple of times it would say to 'stay right," and I'd swear I did, but the next thing I hear is that I'm off-route.
6) each time you start up, you have to get past the "using the unit while driving" warning and the map copyright screen. They go away by themselves after a little while, or need to be acknowledged in order to get past them more quickly. It gets old very quickly, but there's no way to stop them.
7) I wish there was a "last search" feature. There *is* a "recent finds" feature: if you recently found "Mt. Rushmore" or the Best Western in Charlottesville, VA (pulling up that site's specific address onto the screen), you can use Recent Finds to easily get it again. But, if you'd recently searched in the Bed and Breakfasts submenu under Lodging for places in Great Barrington, MA with "Leaf" in their name, it seems that you can't repeat that same search without entering all the criteria again, one by one.
8) the "yellow pages" feature isn't entirely accurate. One gas station it guided me to was closed (an open one was across the street), it seems to think that ALL 7-11 stores have gas stations (few in my area do), and many places may not be listed (not surprising, compared to print and online yellow pages). Strangely, one restaurant I was looking for was NOT listed in the Food and Drink listing or any other heading, but it WAS listed in the "information" screen for the particular exit it was near (but without an address, or any way to find the place). Why it was in the "exit features" information screen, but didn't actually have a listing, I'll never know.
Now about those quirks: I just drove over 8000 miles across the United States in about three weeks, and the GPS was invaluable. The quirks were occasional, and I never got into any real trouble as a result. Rather, I relied a *lot* on the GPS (a good thing, considering I'd forgotten all my local maps at home before I left), and it made my trip incredibly easier.
UPDATE: Several months after I purchased the 2620, Garmin updated their City Navigator software to version 6. Happily, they sent me the DVD at no charge. Though I have a Mac (which is not directly supported by Garmin), I was able to install the update using Virtual PC, a Windows emulation software package. Of course, this meant that I could have simply purchased a 2610 and a 2 GB Compactflash card for less money than the 2620 (and the flash memory would arguably be more reliable than the 2620's hard drive), but I had no way of knowing for sure in advance.
UPDATE NUMBER TWO: I've had the 2620 for a year, though my uses have become more occasional. A few more quirks have popped up. Sometimes, the GPS simply doesn’t properly process intersections that occur at odd angles. Two different examples of this happened to me just miles apart on a recent trip. On the first, the GPS was showing a straight course, not indicating that I needed to turn or bear off. By happenstance, I happened to notice that the ROUTE actually curved off to the right even though the ROAD seemed (to sight and to the GPS) to go straight and a little to the left. That is, if I was taking Route 1 and needed to stay on it, it looked as if I’d basically keep the car pointed straight ahead, maybe a bit to the left as if I were on a slight curve; the GPS didn’t say otherwise. However, *that* way turned into Route 2; if I wanted to stay on Route 1, I’d have to bear about 40 degrees to the right. Luckily, I’d spotted a sign or I’d have gone right past the turn. Less than ten minutes later, the GPS exhorted me to stay to the right. But the turn it was telling me not to take wasn’t obvious until I’d almost passed it. I’d never have thought to take it.
In the first example, it didn’t tell me not to do the obvious, and in the second, it told to do the obvious.
If I could, I'd drop the rating a half-star, but dropping it a whole rating to three stars seems unfair.
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