Gps

[abunaitoo]

Anyone have a hand held one???
I'm not great at directions and was thinking of getting one.
One that talks me to the destination.
Cell is a flip phone, so I don't think it can do it.
With the GPS, does it need some kind of service plan????
Any suggestions????

[kerplode]

Honestly, if you want to do road navigation and directions, you'd probably be better off upgrading to a modern smart phone and using google or apple maps. Even for backwoods stuff, a good smart phone pared with an app like onX is more flexible than a standard stand-alone GPS.

I have a couple handhelds. I haven't powered either on in probably 6 or 7 years. Iphone does everything I need and more.

The main issue with the stand-alone GPS units is that the basic ones will just give you coords and save routes, neither of which is that useful IMO. The fancier ones are limited by their on-board maps, which are often stale or incomplete. Plus their navigation isn't usually that good or that flexible and upgrading the maps on them generally involves shelling out cash.

Just my $0.02

[DCB]

I use a Garmin in my truck its easier for me to read.
I tried the phone and it wasnt for me.
I have a hand held Garmin as well and I have not used it in years

[rockshooter]

I just returned from a trip to Canada, didn't think I'd be there long enough to get the extra Verizon phone plan. I discovered as soon as I crossed the border that my phone's GPS stopped working. Wish I'd brought my stand-alone Garmin.
Loren

[elmacgyver0]

Most of the recent Garmins anymore have lifetime map updates.

[contender1]

By the comments in the Op,, I'm thinking the questions revolve around road navigation & not necessarily back woods or hunting or stuff like that.

I use a Garmin stand alone vehicle type GPS daily in my work. I've had one for many years. It's a serious necessity for me,, as I travel to new customers houses every week.
Yes,, they "talk" to you. Mine can't always pronounce things correctly,, but I can still understand it.
Sometimes,, they will send you to a dead end or a wrong place,, due to the changes by property owners etc. Example; I have a gated community,, that has (3) different ways OUT of them. There is one,, that USED to be the main entrance/exit. They switched things around. The GPS wants me to go IN the older gate,, but due to no code or clicker,, I can not enter there. AND,, inside that gated community,, some roads are now one way,, and it doesn't know that.

My Garmin has lifetime free upgrades. That's excellent,, IF the info it's provided with is correct. I'd say my GPS is about 96%-99% correct for much of my work.
Mine mounts on a stand,, which I have on my dash,, and plugs into my cig lighter socket. Works great.

[Froogal]

I have a Tom-Tom. Haven't used it much lately because I simply don't get far enough from home to need it. I'll say just one thing, consult with a good road map first to get a basic understanding of where you are going, and let the device alert you to where the exits are and such. The GPS maps are all programmed by humans, and sometimes they get it wrong.

[Hossfly]

One thing I learned about a GPS, if it tells you to turn off the blacktop, don’t. Re-route

[Froogal]

One thing I learned about a GPS, if it tells you to turn off the blacktop, don’t. Re-route

And if you are any where close to interstate 80, even though you don't want to use that highway because it takes you in the wrong direction, Tom-Tom insists that you should "turn around and go back to interstate 80". That is when I find the off button.

[ryanmattes]

You can get a cheapish Android tablet for around $100. Google maps does offline maps if you know where you're going ahead of time, so you don't need cell service to use it on the road. You can pre-plan your route before you leave, on wifi, and set the route to be offline, you just won't get real-time traffic updates, speed traps, etc.

Better would be to get the cell service, so you get real time rerouting for traffic, accidents, etc.

Google maps isn't the best because it's expensive or because of some magic technology. It's the best because literally billions of people use it every day, and it records all of those routes, and finds the fastest one for you. Crowd-sourcing. They know about changes to roads, closures, traffic, etc, because 50 of the hundred cars in front of you are using it too. If all the cars 5 miles ahead slow down, you'll get updated that there's a slowdown ahead. If you decide you want to stay on the highway instead of taking the back road, it'll re-route in real time.

There really is no competition. Apple maps killed someone in Australia by sending them out in the desert to a gas station that had been closed for a few years. Waze is Google maps with some cute features added on, like different voices to read you your directions. All the other services regularly send you the worse way, sometimes down dead ends. Google maps just always works. What did Ford say? I'm not trying to make a better horse, I'm making a car. Same level of difference here. They aren't making a better mapsco, they're trying to make mapsco a quaint relic of the past.

Just to give you an idea of the extent they'll go to to make maps better, Google invented a game engine, originally called Ingress, but which was eventually turned into the PokemonGo game. Given away free to a billion kids worldwide. The whole idea was to make kids walk around from place to place, so they could record all those routes and find the most efficient walking directions from point to point. Google knows if one intersection has a long light, so it's actually faster to send you a block over where the light is shorter, because 100,000 kids stood waiting for that light over the course of 5 years while playing their stupid game. They're not making educated guesses based on theoretical traffic flow patterns, they're saying "of the million times people have asked to go from here to there, this way was fastest the vast majority of the time, at this time of day, at this time of year, during these conditions." There really is nothing that even comes close to competing.

Sent from my Pixel 5a using Tapatalk

[Scrounge]

Honestly, if you want to do road navigation and directions, you'd probably be better off upgrading to a modern smart phone and using google or apple maps. Even for backwoods stuff, a good smart phone pared with an app like onX is more flexible than a standard stand-alone GPS.

I have a couple handhelds. I haven't powered either on in probably 6 or 7 years. Iphone does everything I need and more.

The main issue with the stand-alone GPS units is that the basic ones will just give you coords and save routes, neither of which is that useful IMO. The fancier ones are limited by their on-board maps, which are often stale or incomplete. Plus their navigation isn't usually that good or that flexible and upgrading the maps on them generally involves shelling out cash.

Just my $0.02

I absolutely hate Apple products, and use Android phones from Motorola these days, but otherwise completely agree. Both systems will download maps as long as you have enough signal to do so. I have the directions set so the phone reads them to me out loud, also a feature of both systems. That takes care of small screens, but you must also LOOK at where you're going. I've read too many stories about folks driving into rivers and ponds because they blindly followed the instructions. If you're in unfamiliar territory, slow down. Takes a while for the phone to reroute you if you don't go exactly where it expects you to go. So not perfect either, but a lot better than a dedicated GPS that doesn't have all the maps loaded.

Bill

[abunaitoo]

My cell is from Tracfone.
Flip phone.
$19.00 for 90 days. 60 minutes.
I almost never use it.
I don't think it can do GPS.
I only need it when I go to pick stuff up on craigs list.
I'm sure it will not say the street names right.
Most people living here can't.
I just need it to tell me when/where to turn.
Friend has one of those "smart" phones with the app.
It works well most of the time.
Seems like everyone used to have one before.
Wonder what they did with them???
I don